Two charter schools in Jefferson Parish failed this year to publicize their budgets as required by state law, according to public records and interviews with school officials. Administrators at the two-campus Jefferson Chamber Foundation Academy and at Young Audiences Charter School in Gretna said they either didn’t know about the law or were unaware they had not complied.
Charter schools receive public money, although they are privately run. They are subject to the same fiscal accountability laws as the Jefferson Parish School Board.
Even that board, which oversees five of the six charters in Jefferson Parish, has not followed all aspects of the law. It has not published a second notice announcing the end of its budgeting process; a spokeswoman said that notice is forthcoming.
Caroline Roemer Shirley, director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools, said that charter authorizers such as the Jefferson School Board are as much at fault as the charters themselves for failure to comply with state law.
She also said she didn’t think charters are violating the law on purpose. “It’s just not something that gets discussed with any of these folks,” she said.
What the law says
The relevant law is the Louisiana Local Government Budget Act, which seeks to open budgets to public scrutiny. It says school boards must:
Publish a notice in an official journal announcing that the proposed budget is available for review at the school or board office. The notice must also specify the date, time and place of a planned public hearing on the budget
Wait at least 10 days after publication before holding the public hearing
Approve the budget at a subsequent public meeting
Publish a notice that the budget process is complete.
The official journal must be one that prints issues at least weekly. Though Jefferson’s journal had long been The Times-Picayune, laws passed in recent years allow Gambit, The New Orleans Advocate and other newspapers to compete in the legal advertising market. School boards and other entities may now choose where to advertise, as long as such papers have offices in or near the parish.
What schools did
Millie Harris, executive director of Jefferson Chamber Foundation Academy, which has campuses in Metairie and Harvey, said her board didn’t advertise before approving its budget because officials “just forgot.” But she said the school informs the public another way: “We keep our budget posted on the website year ’round, and update it as it is updated with the state.”
At Young Audiences, director of operations Meghan Mercadel said the school did not publish budget notices in an official journal. But she said Young Audiences distributed school board meeting dates to its parents during May registration, published those dates on its website and listed them in the student handbook.
She also said officials also placed a sign with the meeting dates and times on the door before the July meeting at which the board discussed the budget and the August meeting at which it approved the budget. It didn’t receive any public comments, she said.
Posting a notice on the school’s door 24 hours before the board meets is in line with the state’s open-meetings law. But it doesn’t meet the stricter standards of public budgeting law.
Shortly after being contacted by a reporter, Principal Folwell Dunbar pledged to rectify Young Audiences’ error. The school then advertised its budget hearing and vote in The Times-Picayune and published a second notice indicating completion.
Generally, the four other charter schools in Jefferson came closer to compliance. Still there were some missteps:
When board that runs Celerity Woodmere Charter School in Harvey announced that its budget was available for public review, it came in a July 23 notice in PennySaverUSA’s online classified ads, according to records provided by the school. The notice said the board would have a public hearing on the budget Aug. 2. State law requires that public entities advertise budgets in newspapers with offices in or near the school’s parish; PennySaver prints papers in California, where its offices are located. The Celerity Woodmere board did run a separate ad in The Advocate, announcing the end of its budgeting process.
Milestone Academy in Old Jefferson, according to public records, complied with state law.
Common problem
Jefferson charters are not alone in the spotty compliance. In New Orleans, few of the city’s more than 40 charter school boards complied with state law in 2011, according to news website The Lens. Many officials said they simply didn’t know about this law.
More boards complied a year later, after that initial news report and after Shirley’s charter school association ramped up its training efforts. In September, her group released a guidebook for the state’s more than 130 charter schools in September, outlining public budgeting laws, open meetings laws and other requirements for charters.
Additionally, the group sent a similar guide for charter authorizers to school systems around the state. Still, she said, “We have some work to do as an organization in Jefferson Parish.”
Consequences
The Jefferson Parish School Board and the state Education Department have split authority over charters. The state oversees Milestone and Jefferson Chamber Foundation Academy’s Metairie campus; the School Board has authority over the Jefferson Chamber Harvey campus and the others.
Under Jefferson school system policy, charters must notify the system if they receive any formal complaint about their failure to adhere to state laws, spokeswoman Tina Chong said. Once it receives a formal complaint, the School Board will call for corrective action, per the school’s charter contract. “Egregious and/or consistent violations of applicable federal, state or local law could result in termination or non-renewal of the charter contract,” Chong said.
She said the school system has yet to receive any complaints. The School Board is also looking for a new charter schools director; it could approve the new position at its Dec. 17 meeting.
As for its own failure to publish a budget-completion notice, Chong said the school system plans to do so soon. She also pointed out that there is no legal deadline for publication of that notice.
Schools may be penalized if they don’t follow open meetings laws and public records laws; state officials may issue a notice of concern, the lowest step on an escalating scale of charter reprimand. Repeated violations lead to increased oversight, and eventually, charter revocation. There is no mention of the state budgeting law in a performance compact state eduction officials judge charters by; Jefferson’s own charter performance compact likewise doesn’t mention the budgeting law.
Barry Landry, state Education Department spokesman, said that the department monitors timely budget submissions.
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