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"how long would Newpoint have been allowed to keep this charade going on--allegedly jeopardizing student safety, cheating on grades, cheating to earn bonus money from taxpayers, stealing money from students---if not for the whistle-blower coming forward?"
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Everyone is gleeful over the
announcement yesterday that owner of Newpoint Partners Marcus May will face criminal charges. He allegedly misused public funds for a variety of reasons and there has been a thorough investigation into this which has led to these charges. I'm thankful he will face justice.
But as a former school board member who was intimately involved in the matter as it unfolded--I am disappointed over this case for two big reasons:
1. This misuse of funds was known for more than a year before the Escambia County School Board was ever told. The whistle-blower who gave me the documentation and the phone records in late March of 2015 was exasperated over the district's inaction in the wake of all the problems at Newpoint. The whistle-blower herself had told the superintendent and members of his staff about the grade-fixing, state standardized test cheating, and student safety issues at Newpoint a full year before she contacted me. Students had contacted the district office about money being stolen. Parents had lodged complaints. But the board was not told any of this. The whistle-blower was an insider-an employee of Newpoint--, she knew there was wrongdoing but nothing was being done, and nobody was listening to her. She begged the superintendent's office to do something about Newpoint with multiple calls to that office in 2014. Nothing was done, but more importantly--staff deliberately withheld these complaints from the school board. Although we held quarterly charter school reviews at our workshops---
NONE of this
information was
given during these
sessions. Several employees confided in me that they were told NOT to tell the board about the problems at Newpoint. As a result, Newpoint received state bonus money from Governor Rick Scott at a celebration ceremony in March of 2015. This was an embarrassment that was the impetus for the insider to contact me. I'm glad she did. But this all could have been prevented if the School Board had known about the problems.
2. When the investigation was finally launched- and I went with the school board attorney and the whistle-blower and testified under oath about what I was told and what staff had told me---
apparently these important items were never investigated. This continues to leave me very suspicious about how this investigation was conducted. The school district's investigator (a former employee of the state attorney's office) --who reports directly to the superintendent of schools -- was allowed wide berth to participate in this investigation with the state attorney's office. In fact, I'm told he conducted several of the interviews in this investigation and participated in many for the State Attorney's office. Why was this allowed to happen? Was this not a blatant conflict of interest? This, in my opinion, is the fox being allowed to watch the henhouse. One particularly high-placed employee of the school
