See all Mike Hazelton posts here.
The following story from Voice of San Diego is so good, I can't think of anything to add to it:
The School Guru Who Promised Rescue and Brought Ruin
By EMILY ALPERT
Part one of a two-part series. Read part two.
Sept. 24, 2008
"...Michael R. Hazelton sold himself as an expert who could help. He was soothing. Gray-haired. Nice. A Harvard University seminar topped his resume, loaded with impressive work at a national company and a school that had once aided Cortez Hill. The school hired him as its executive director to reverse its fortunes.
"Instead its deficit ballooned from $16,559 to $188,187 in the single year that it employed Hazelton. When an audit revealed that he gave himself an $18,350 raise without the blessing of the Cortez Hill board, boosting the six-figure salary that had already dwarfed what his predecessor had earned, Hazelton was already gone..."
Read the whole story HERE.
Photo of Mike Hazelton (above) is from the TIP Academy yearbook.
2 comments:
OPEN LETTER TO Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-445-2841
RE: AB 2115
Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,
Yesterday I read on the news and reported on the net that you vetoed AB 2115 authored by Assembly Member Gene Mullin (D-South San Francisco). A bill that would requires a charter school to adopt and comply with a conflict-of-interest policy applicable to public agencies in the state of California.
The Net article says that the bill would have forced every charter school to reconstitute their governing boards…you are quoted as saying:
"Not only would this bill create state mandated costs for charter schools to comply with its provisions," said the Governor in his veto letter, "the measure runs counter to the intent of charter schools, which were created to be free from many of the laws governing school districts."
Governor Schwarzenegger perhaps you should have been more informed about what goes on in our state than simply rubber stamping advise from charter school lobbyists. I wonder if the facts about charter schools would have made a difference or if you are just as twisted as the Charter School Association and SIATech/Guajome Park Academy the only two opponents to AB 2115 bill.
Yesterday on my way home from San Diego I noticed that our tax dollars were paying for security for First Lady Maria Shriver who came to San Diego to promote “family day.”
The First Lady first stopped at Ramona, where she marked the start of construction on a playground at Camp Hope, which serves at-risk, abused and neglected children.
Now Governor isn’t this a bite too hypocritical because if you, the first lady and your administrative staff truly cared about and wanted to prevent abuse and neglect in our American children you would take measures to prevent abuse and neglect in PUBLIC charter schools. So reasonably and logically you would take steeps to create policies and regulations to PROTECT the HEALTH and SAFETY of ALL of California students.
Yet you placed lobbyists interest ahead of the HEALTH and SAFETY of CALIFORNIA’S CHILDREN.
Perhaps I can assist you in finding your interests or a conscience if you have one. Look up SIATech the only charter school who opposed AB 2115 in the IRS form 990’s of 2005 filed 2006 and 2006 filed 2007. Both state contributions of $ 55,599 for the year 2005 and $ 55, 467 for 2006. Political contributions paid with PUBLIC FUNDS. So Governor Schwarzenegger who got paid from PUBLIC FUNDS to sit in your office and convinced you to oppose AB 2115? That people of the State of California are entitled to know this much, but there is much more.
We finally have a well written a report by a gutsy reporter Emily Alpert who is not afraid to research, chase the stories and write about the facts as they are.
In the Voice of San Diego Reporter Emily Alphert is correct Mr. Hazelton was very successful starting up flout charter schools up and down the state of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Georgia, Florida….and they were all started under the Charter that was granted and sanctioned by Vista Unified School District “VUSD,” Guajome Park Academy. Would you believe that VUSD claims to be ignorant about the illegal operations of Guajome Park Academy?
The Drop out recovery program is alive and well at both Guajome Park and SIATech. The New Education for the Workforce is doing well too so much that SIATech top executive salaries for former employees of Guajome Park Academy cap the California Governor and the California Superintendent of Education salaries with only about 5,000 enrolled students. Yes, Hazelton was very successful in popping these charter schools all over the country.
While you report that these fellows left Guajome Park Academy you will be glad to know that they only left to go off into SIATech [division of Guajome Park] to collect their high roller salaries and continued their clandestine practices with unregulated federal fund from the United States Department of Labor.
SIATech another VUSD charter school 100% funded by the United States Department of Labor (Job Corps) The CA state scores showed rankings 904 in 2007 and 858 in 2008. Now these scores are impressive at a glance! When you look closer at the numbers you will find that the SIATech student composition on the tests are African American 15 students Hispanic 39 students White students 4 English Language Learners 3 socioecomomically 67 students and American Indian or Alaska Native 2, one Filipino and no students with disabilities. According to the federal regulations under the NCLB and also state regs schools are supposed to test over 90 or 95% of students.
SO HOW DOES SIATech GET WAY WITH ONLY TESTING ABOUT 3% OF THE TOTAL STUDENT POPULATION?
SIATch tested a total of 135 students out of almost five thousand-student enrollments according to their own numbers in the form 990’s and state stats.
Now based on the salaries for SIATech Board of Directors and employees one can see that there is some real serious scamming of PUBLIC FUNDS:
LINDA DOWSON President of the Board of Directors and Operations Manager $ 220,461.
ED BROWN Director and Operations Manager $ 124,878.
LINDA MILLER Director of Educational Services $172,860.
DAVID JENKINS Assistant Supervisor $ 169,81.
KRISTIN MALLORY Assistant Supervisor $ 168, 896.
DIANE FAIRCHILD Director of Special Education $ 161,348
MANOUCHEHR HADJIAGHAI Director of Administrative Services $ 160, 210.
http://api.cde.ca.gov/AcntRpt2008/2008GrowthSch.aspx?cYear=2005-06&allcds=37- 684520106120
http://jobcorps.dol.gov/centers/ca.htm
Maybe you can contact the United States Department of Labor and ask them to see a copy of SIATech/Guajome Park Audit? He! They don’t have one try the Director of Job Corps Esther Johnson at 202-693-3000 or Chris Convoy at 202-693-3093. Maybe they have some answers as to how money can be handed out with no accountability no IRS tax forms and no audits. Thank the Vista Unified School District for failing to monitor them and have looked the other way while SIATech continues to pop satellites all over the states.
Like VUSD Board Member David Hubbard says, he doesn’t care about organizations doing ILLEGAL businesses under VUSD’s roof as long as they can get an insurance company to cover them it is perfectly OK.
By the way Stephen Halfaker and SIATech high-ranking employees come from Poway Unified School District just like VUSD and SDCOE preferred Attorney Daniel Shinoff.
Halfaker is a Board Member at SIATech and his brother is an administrator some of their board members are high salaried administrators who pad their wallets with unregulated PUBLIC FUNDS. That is ok! Guajome Park incestuous relationships also extend to the majority of their 23 employee run and operated Board of Directors and their families who are also sitting as Board of Directors and sit on all of Guajome Park Committees. Unreliable the VUSD claims to have no knowledge of Guajome Park and SIATech’s clandestine endeavors. Hazelton continued his practices from Guajome Park and SIATech on to TIP Academy. However Guajome and SIATech make TIP, Las Banderas, El Cortez and all of the other satellites looks like alter boys in comparison to the criminal activity-taking place at Guajome Park.
You can rest assure that the Hazelton’s recommendations were true and correct however those closely associated with the Hazelton’s are trying to distance themselves from them.
Roy Adams president of Adams and Associates, Inc. is just bluffing Hazelton was very much involved in developing new charters and pushing the curriculum for alternative high school programs through out the state and other states as well.
Yes Hazelton was and can be tracked as co-founder and board president of the award-winning School for Integrated Academics and Technologies “SIATech” headquartered in Vista between 2001 and 2002. It is virtually impossible to believe unanimous spokespersons for SIATech and Guajome Park Academy since they have a track record of double-dipping, incestuous relationships, deceitfulness, fraud, lack of reporting and accountability and theft of public funds.
Oh, yes the so-called award winning elite International Baccalaureate program is alive and not doing so well at Guajome Park Academy but no one seems to care around here and certainly not the Vista Unified School District, the San Diego County Office of Education, and the California Department of Education Charter School Division. After all according to CDE’s Kathleen Seaborne it’s a federal program and CDE has no oversight over charter schools (not true).
Here is the well kept San Diego County cover up: The SDCOE, VUSD and Guajome Park Academy all belong to the same JPA where SDCOE Diane Crosier is the Director and represents the SD JPA’s with SELF. http://mauralarkins.com/SanDiegoCountyOfficeofEducation.html
Crosier reports back to SELF where the other JPA’s come together to form what it is called a “super pool.” http://www.selfjpa.org/links/lnk_memjpa.htm
http://mauralarkins.com/GuajomeParkAcademy.html
Three insurance brokers namely Alliant Driver, Keenan and Associates and Marsh & McLennan manage these super pools. These insurance brokers are being sued in Alameda County where the allegations are for unlawful business practices, in violation of California Business and Profession Code section 17200 et. seq. false and misleading advertisement where they cream millions of dollars in public funds in violation of Business and Profession Government Code Section 17500 et. seq., breach of fiduciary duty, illegal and secret kickbacks, steering premium dollars and getting public agencies to purchase services at high rates.
San Diego County Office of Education, “SDCOE” refers to their JPA’s as the “The Authority.”
Keenan and Associates has a “HYBRID SELF- INSURANCE and REINSURANCE” [SDCOE has SELF-JPA where Keenan is also a member of this “Super Pool”] pooling program for nearly 400 schools and community colleges.
Keenan advertised for its Super Pool’s conference at Lake Tahoe as, “The Pudding is in the Pooling,” in their invitations. Yes, the pudding is good, they are raking in Millions of PUBLIC FUNDS through their billable hours and their preferred attorney Daniel Shinoff is rolling in the CASH $$$.
Daniel Shinoff and his SASH firm takes the cream of the Southern District billable hours for BOTH Keenan and SELF which are brokered by Marsh & McLennan. The premium billable hours are steered to his firm with the blessing of Keenan, SELF and Diane Crosier.
Keenan and Marsh and McLennan as the agents of California’s public entities have a fiduciary duty to recommend the best coverage at the best price for its clients. They are to provide independent, objective advice, and to put ‘their clients best interests’ ahead of their own. Keenan and Driver and Marsh and McLennan are hired to act as consulting, billing/premium administration, and claims administration. Their duty is to provide full disclosure, candor, and loyalty. Disclose the amounts of income; Contingent Commissions Agreements and remuneration they receive form all transactions to the public agencies they represent. Keenan has a policy where every employee, associate and partner has to belong to several churches, golf clubs, non-profit organizations and civic groups. This is how they create friendships with judges, political figures, churches and organizations who look the other way. While attorneys like Daniel Shinoff bully public boards into contractual agreements and decisions that are not in the best interest of PUBLIC AGENCIES but bring in a lot of billable hours to his firm and bigger premiums for insurance Brokers and JPA’s.
The agreements that the PUBLIC AGENCIES get pressured into signing with the JPA’s have different names like: “Contingent Income Agreements” “Production Service Agreements” “Volume Based Commission Agreements” “Profit-Sharing Commission Agreements” “Commission Override Agreements” Premium Value Contingent Commission Agreements” “Preferred Agency Agreements” and “Platinum Profit Sharing Agreements.”
These commissions create a blatant CONFLICT of INERESTS and a direct financial interest for these brokers, JPA’s and preferred law firms. These commission and preferred agreements cause CONFLICT of INTERESTS, along with premium prices in many cases with lower benefits. The insurance companies recoup the kickbacks paid to marsh & Marsh and McLennan, Keenan and Driver by higher insurance prices passed on to the public agencies. Whereby, suppressing competition in the market of insurance.
This is the reason why the PUBLIC AGENCIES in San Diego cannot get insurance apart from the JPA’s. No insurance company can do business in California without belonging to one of the three “insurance brokers.” The insurance brokers have contractual agreements with certain JPA’s; like SDCOE SELF and these JPA use the same law firms they have contractual agreements with like Best Best and Krieger, Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff and Holtz “SASH” and Winet.
Daniel Shinoff’s firm is the choice preferred attorney for Keenan and SELF. He is a friend with Crosier and according to Rodger Hartnett very, very close to an investigator. I wonder if this is one of the investigators who SASH uses to spy on parents, track parents, tap parents or anyone who dares to criticize their illegal actions?
Daniel Shinoff also has complaints with the Bar Association by elected officials. The Bar Association up to now has failed to investigate him. I wonder why isn’t San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis a member of the Board in the Bar Association? Isn’t Leslie Devaney a friend of Bonnie Dumanis and a registered lobbyist?
San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis claims to be investigating his involvement in the Palmgate MiraCosta Community College scandal. Many elected officials have given up on her investigation and have seen the light and the intertwined corruption that extends to the highest levels of government.
http://apps.alameda.courts.ca.gov/fortecgi/fortecgi.exe?ServiceName=DomainWebService&TemplateName=html/complitcase.html&CurrBatchNbr=1&CaseNbr=RG04183334
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3975/is_200507/ai_n14684403
Back to the charter schools, how can the Vista Unified School District, the SDCOE investigate Guajome Park Academy and SIATech if they all belong to the same buddy pool? How Can Daniel Shinoff investigate these charter schools if he works to protect them through their contractual agreement with the JPA’s? It is like investigating yourself or a member in your immediate family. Talk about “CONFLICT of INTERESTS.”
So Governor Schwarzenegger is your job as a Governor to protect white-collar criminal activity taking place in the state of California or to protect the constitutes in your state? Your vetoed sends a message loud and clear.
Governor Schwarzenegger you have no interest in protecting the health and safety of students because the civil right violations in these charter schools are acquiesced and enabled by these tumultuous incestuous relationships that you just rubberstamped.
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2008/09/26/education/879hazelton092508.prt
Here is the other charter school article by Emily Alpert.
SPECIAL REPORT
With Freedoms, Charter Schools Face Financial Risks
By EMILY ALPERT
Part two of a two-part series. Read part one.
Thursday, Sept. 25, 2008 | Charter schools were first dreamed up as hotbeds of innovation. They are public schools that are run independently by their own boards, free from school district rules and red tape.
Teachers unions are optional. Hiring isn't controlled by the school district. Many excelling charters in San Diego chalk up their success to those freedoms.
They can hire teachers without worrying about seniority. They can choose their own custodians and spend the savings in the classroom if they get a good deal. And they generally don't have to follow the rules that their local school board passes; instead they are run by their own boards that craft policies for each individual school.
Their freedom comes with greater responsibilities and harsher consequences, meant to make charters accountable and limit abuses. Unlike traditional schools, they can be shuttered by school districts if they break their own policies or the law, mismanage their funds, or fall short of their student goals.
But that same freedom has spawned an unintended risk for charter schools: vulnerability to fiscal mismanagement. Charter schools usually shoulder the business tasks that school districts handle for traditional schools, and some educators and boards are overwhelmed by the task.
Michael R. Hazelton is a charter school administrator who specialized in the business side of education, and his story underscores the financial perils for charters that entrust their operations to a single person. He oversaw the business side of three charter schools in four years, and each has suffered from deficits, allegations that Hazelton improperly enriched himself, or both.
His last school in Encinitas was shuttered based on allegations of fiscal mismanagement and self-dealing by Hazelton and his wife; two earlier schools he ran were destroyed or hobbled by deficits. A school outside San Bernardino tanked while both Hazelton and his corporation were paid with school funds. Another charter in downtown San Diego lost money while Hazelton boosted his own pay, according to an audit.
His "track record has not been the best," said Gary Larson, spokesman for California Charter Schools Association.
His story is not unique: Charter advocates say far more charter schools fall prey to financial woes or mismanagement than close because test scores are faltering. Roughly 5 percent of the 1,043 charter schools that have opened in California have been shut down and an additional 17 percent have closed on their own as of July 2008, according to staff at the California Department of Education.
The California Charter Association estimates the figure slightly lower at 4 percent closed and 4 percent shuttered, and states that charters usually close for financial reasons, such as lacking affordable facilities. A nonprofit that advocates choice among schools, the Center for Education Reform, identified only two California charters that were closed for academic reasons out of 73 schools closed or shut down statewide as of February 2006.
Loath to see more scandals and school meltdowns, the group is prodding leaders and boards to seek out training and support. It is branding schools with good governance as "certified." It aims to prevent abuses without quashing successes and recreating the bureaucracy that charters were created to escape. And it readily criticizes charters that give the movement a bad name.
"Charter schools are a viable movement that is happening across the nation," said Emma Lechuga, who cofounded a school with Mike Hazelton and later quit because of disagreements with him. "Unfortunately, individuals like Mike put the movement in a bad light."
Hazelton has denied the accusations of the Encinitas Union School District that led to his last school's closing, arguing that he and his wife were unfairly attacked because their school competed successfully with district-run schools in Encinitas.
Most charters are stuck in the awkward position of competing with the same school districts that oversee them, a situation that Larson compares to Blockbuster overseeing Netflix. When school districts lose students to charter schools, they also lose funding to them.
That tension undergirds the interrelationship between school districts and charters, and politicizes the already heated debates over when troubled charters should be given a chance, and when to pull the plug.
Proposed Law Would Combat Conflicts of Interest
School districts are pushing a different solution: Making charter schools follow a key code meant to stop employees from milking public funds.
State Government Code 1090 bans public officials and employees from participating in the creation of contracts that could impact them financially. Experts dispute whether 1090, which predates charter schools, already applies to them.
Major groups such as the San Diego County Office of Education and the statewide Association of California School Administrators back a proposed law that would make charters follow the same conflict of interest rules as school districts. They invoke the notorious case of C. Steven Cox, a charter school operator who diverted millions in public funds to his own corporation. It was only after a highly unusual and rigorous audit found evidence of actual theft -- not just conflicts of interest -- that prosecutors could charge Cox in a case with millions at stake.
"It has to rise to the level of the worst imaginable offense before we can do anything about it," said Pamela Bachilla, a lobbyist with School Innovation and Advocacy, a firm that advocates for school districts. "That's ridiculous."
Cox was also panned by the California Charter School Association, which laid some blame with the school districts charged with overseeing his many schools. It pushed for a rule that banned charters from being sponsored by faraway school districts that could only exercise limited oversight, and lobbied unsuccessfully for another that would allow the state Board of Education to stop school districts from approving future charters if they fail to properly oversee them.
Charters argue that the proposed conflict of interest law is a ham-handed way to pluck "bad apples" such as Cox, and are prodding Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to veto the bill, which has already passed through the Legislature.
The bill would also force board members to live in the area served by the school, preventing experts who don't live nearby from overseeing schools. It would also keep employees such as teachers off their governing boards to avoid conflicts.
That would undermine the do-it-yourself quality of charters, said Eric Premack, director of the Charter Schools Development Center.
"We can get around the we-them relationship that decimates so many traditional school districts," Premack said, noting that nonprofit boards routinely and legally include employees. "There are other ways to mitigate those conflicts of interest," such as employees recusing themselves from voting on their salaries.
The clash over the law is unsurprising. Tension is already built into the relationship between charter schools and school districts, which oversee the same schools they compete with, and districts are sometimes accused of unfairly eliminating their rivals.
Shutting down the last school that Hazelton headed, Theory Into Practice Academy, spurred similar complaints from parents and charter advocates who argued that Encinitas Union School District discounted their efforts to reform the school, such as remaking their board and firing Hazelton and his wife, the principal.
"The school district gets to be the judge and jury," said parent Tim Cusac.
Weak Oversight by Boards and Educators
Ideally a board or principal would squelch financial mismanagement before a school was endangered, preventing the heartbreak and controversy of closing a charter. But educators who lack financial savvy may not discover problems until they become glaringly obvious.
A recent study by the National Charter School Research Project at the University of Washington found that charter leaders tend to be newcomers to running schools, less seasoned than their counterparts in traditional public schools.
Management expertise was a liability for two of the educators who partnered with Hazelton as their financial guru.
One was Lechuga, the cofounder of a small nonprofit that helped high school dropouts earn their degrees. Leaders at a San Bernardino-area school district rejected her efforts to form a school singlehandedly, but got behind the idea once she paired with Hazelton. Another principal who joined with Hazelton, Jacqueline Hicks, said her heart was in counseling teens, not handling "the business side" of Cortez Hill Academy.
Boards are also vulnerable, often lacking the training and expertise to oversee schools, said Priscilla Wohlstetter, director of the Center on Educational Governance at the University of Southern California.
Weak boards with revolving doors were unable to properly oversee Hazelton or effectively question how he managed his schools.
Board members were constantly changing at Las Banderas, which only learned of its financial woes from an outside audit. Teacher and board member JoAnne Hux confessed she still doesn't understand how the school was being run and why another corporation founded by Hazelton was contracting with the school. Even the school district representative on the Las Banderas board was clueless.
"I wasn't really knowledgeable as to how they actually were to operate," said Marge Mendoza-Ware, a board member at the Colton Joint Unified School District. "... Finance was not my area of expertise."
Similar turnover afflicted the Cortez Hill board, which replaced at least five of its seven voting members under Hazelton. Board members weren't aware of financial problems until after Hazelton quit with the rent unpaid. Months later an audit concluded that deficits had grown and Hazelton had given himself an unauthorized $18,350 raise.
"The board was not very functional under Mike," said Will Stillwell, secretary of the Cortez Hill Academy board. "We were supposedly over him, but we were not."
Hazelton made it even tougher to track school finances because he formed corporations that contracted -- or tried to -- with his schools. Hiring a nonprofit or corporation as a manager is legal and common among charters, but it complicates oversight of public funds. Questions about whether Hazelton was double-dipping by earning a Las Banderas salary and paying his corporation as well went unanswered; the corporation never filed its tax returns, leaving no paper trail to track who earned money from the group.
"You lose the opportunity to follow the money" when outside corporations are involved, said Herbert Fischer, formerly superintendent in San Bernardino County, where the California Charter Academy scandal erupted. "The school district or the county office of education can't oversee a private entity."
To avoid the headaches and risks of running their own operations, some "dependent charters" pay school districts to manage functions such as finances, payroll and staffing, freeing them to focus on instruction. That model provides more oversight from experienced bookkeepers and business staffers, said Susan Fahle, assistant superintendent of business for Chula Vista Elementary School District.
But dependency means "you're stuck with their rules and procedures," said Tad Parzen, a charter school consultant. Instead of relying on school districts or a single financial expert, many Southern California charters have remained independent but outsourced their operations to a recognized nonprofit or corporation. Several have sprung up across the state, and the California Charter Schools Association recommends them to newly started schools.
It is a delicate question of balancing the risks and rewards of the freedom that charter schools enjoy -- a question that still worries parents such as Ginger Relyea, a mother who loved the educational outlook of Theory Into Practice Academy but condemned the way that Hazelton ran the school.
"I still really believe in charter schools. They fulfill a need," Relyea said. "But the system is broken."
Please contact Emily Alpert directly at emily.alpert@voiceofsandiego.org with your thoughts, ideas, personal stories or tips. Or set the tone of the debate with a letter to the editor.
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