D.C. Charter School Inquiry May Broaden Beyond Chief

Federal officials investigating the executive director of the D.C. Board of Education's charter school office are trying to determine whether any city officials had knowledge of or should have prevented any improprieties, according to city and other sources.

Brenda L. Belton is at the center of a wide-ranging investigation by the fraud and public corruption section of the U.S. attorney's office into whether she used her role to enrich herself and her friends. Federal investigators want to know whether she extracted favors from people petitioning the board to open a charter school and from officials at existing schools, according to several sources familiar with the investigation. They said they would speak only on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

Among the allegations against Belton, who was placed on paid administrative leave in June, is that she manipulated the chartering process to help some schools. Part of the inquiry involves the possible misuse of hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal and city money intended to help students in struggling charter schools.

Another part involves Equal Access in Education, a company paid more than $350,000 by Belton's office to monitor the city's charter schools, the sources said. The firm is in a building that Belton once owned and that is now owned by her daughter, according to city records. The principal of a charter school lives in the building.

Federal officials are interested in learning whether Belton had connections to city or school officials or staff members who knew or should have known what she was doing, and whether any of them profited, the sources said.

Belton's attorney, Vincent Cohen Jr., said he had no comment on the investigation.

Channing D. Phillips, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, could not be reached for comment.

Belton became head of the charter office in 2003, overseeing 17 schools. Several Board of Education members, who said they would speak only on the condition of anonymity, said they essentially ceded authority to her without proper oversight.

Without that oversight, officials at charter schools said, she ran the office as a fiefdom. For example, in 2004, some trustees at the Options Public Charter School sought to fire Charles Vincent, a school employee, because they believed he had misused a few thousand dollars in school money while serving earlier as chairman of the trustees, according to several sources with detailed knowledge of the events.

Belton intervened, threatening to close the school if the board did not retain the man, according to the sources, and sent monitors into the school. Vincent still works at the school as director of program development, with a salary of more than $110,000, sources said. He also taught Spanish last year at Young America Works, another charter school, while keeping his position at Options.

Vincent said that the trustees were mistaken about the money and that no one wanted to fire him. The executive director of Options, Donna Montgomery, said she did not know about any effort to fire him but did know he held the two jobs.

There also are questions about Belton's efforts to help resettle students from Jos-Arz Therapeutic Public Charter School after it was closed this year by the board for failing to maintain enough students.

Instead of sending the children to a special-education charter school that had the room and educational programs to accommodate them, she became involved in an effort to allow Young America Works to become a special-education school and take the children.

Brenda Williams, executive director of Young America Works, lives in the building where Equal Access for Education is housed, according to city records. Williams did not return phone calls.