Problems keeping track of attendance and money at a charter school for children at North County Indian reservations could lead to its closure if they're not fixed.
The board of the Valley Center-Pauma Unified School District tonight will consider revoking the charter for the All-Tribes American Indian Charter School on the Rincon reservation.
State officials are expecting the school to repay $143,000 after an independent audit completed in February found the 62-student school couldn't back up attendance for the equivalent of 22 students.
Auditors at an El Cajon accounting firm said that loss, coupled with state budget cuts, “raise doubt about (the school's) ability to continue as a going concern.”
The audit also found problems in accounting for grants and some expenditures.
School officials admit they haven't done everything expected of them, but they say the questions don't warrant closing the sixth-through-12th-grade school, which is open to all students.
The school isn't at risk of closing before graduation June 18. If the school board votes for revocation, it will have to schedule a public hearing within 30 days, and then another vote 30 days after the hearing.
School officials could appeal those moves to county and state education officials.
Some of the same issues have surfaced in a wrongful-termination lawsuit by the school's former registrar, who accuses the school's principal of faking attendance forms to get state funds.
The principal, Mary Ann Donohue, denies faking attendance records and said the accusations come from a “disgruntled employee.”
District officials sent an eight-page letter last month telling the school to fix the problems or lose its charter.
The school responded yesterday afternoon, but that document wasn't available.
In interviews, All-Tribes administrators said they have a good explanation for telling state officials that they had higher attendance than they could prove – they didn't know about new rules on how to account for students on independent study.
“We thought we were doing everything right,” said Donohue, who is also the school's bus driver and sometimes the cook. She said she has the school work from the independent study students.
Lead teacher Michelle Parada said the school will appeal because it believes it can prove it “substantially complied” with state rules.
And even if the school has to pay, it should be fine, she said.
“We have the money to pay that back and still be in the black,” she said.
Valley Center-Pauma Superintendent Lou Obermeyer said the issues go beyond the missing attendance records and include failing to account for $10,000 in grants and money used for a teacher's retreat.
“Those are the kinds of things you can't do,” she said. “You have to show where you deposited the money, and if you spend the money, you have to show receipts.”
Donohue said the school is working on improving how it deals with money and has contracted with a private company to do its accounting.
Donohue, Parada and teachers said the district is trying to close the school to get its funding.
“They want us to fail,” Donohue said.
Obermeyer said that's not true. She said the school must be run properly.
All-Tribes gets nearly twice as much money per student as most other schools.
Charter schools rely heavily on state funding based on average daily attendance, which typically brings in $5,000 to $6,000 per student.
Federal assistance means more money for American Indian pupils, and even more for those who live on reservations and have problems learning.
Donohue and Parada started the school six years ago after seeing repeated failures at traditional efforts to get Indian students to graduate from high school.
“I'm tired of being last” in achievement and graduation rates, said Parada, a member of the Rincon Indian band.
Donohue, a former Escondido police officer-turned-teacher, wrote her master's thesis at National University on American Indian students.
“We work with students really hard to get them to be successful,” she said.
The school used to operate out of double-wide trailers, but it is now run in portable classrooms it got from a Vista charter school.
It didn't have a janitor until two years ago, and teachers and other staff members took out the garbage and cleaned the classrooms.
Donohue said last week that the school has 24 graduates between its two graduating classes. “Twenty-two of those will tell you they never expected to graduate.”
The California Department of Education's Web site indicates the school had nine dropouts in the 2005-06 school year, the latest for which statistics were available.
It also indicates the school has the lowest academic performance scores in the district, but they have been improving every year.
Onell Soto: (619) 593-4958; onell.soto@uniontrib.com
