D.C. Paid For Training Schools Say Didn't Occur

Officials Try to Trace Firm's Connections In Charter Probe

In September 2005, Equal Access in Education billed the city $76,250 to train math and reading teachers in techniques to boost student performance at five D.C. public charter schools that failed to meet academic targets.

But principals at four of the schools (the fifth one has closed) say that they never heard of Equal Access and that their teachers never received training from the company.

"It boggles my mind that this could have happened," said Norman Johnson, executive director of Integrated Design & Electronics Academy Public Charter School (IDEA) in Northeast Washington. "We certainly needed those services."

Federal authorities are investigating whether Equal Access was connected to Brenda L. Belton, the former executive director of the Board of Education's charter schools office. The company submitted invoices requesting that payments be sent to 26 Underwood Pl. NW, the address of a duplex formerly owned by Belton and currently owned by her daughter Lindsay Holmes. In May, the FBI raided Belton's office and home as well as the Underwood Place property as part of its investigation into the possible misuse of public funds by the board's charter school oversight office.

Documents obtained by The Washington Post through the Freedom of Information Act show that Equal Access charged the city at least $395,000 between 2002 and 2006 to monitor charter schools to ensure they were meeting financial and academic targets and to provide teacher training. One Equal Access invoice indicated that in addition to the IDEA charter school, four other charter schools -- Booker T. Washington in Northwest, Elsie Whitlow Stokes in Northwest, Options in Northeast and the now-closed Jos-Arz Therapeutic in Northeast -- had received training services. But officials at the three open schools said Equal Access was not one of their vendors.

In some of the documents requesting payments, Equal Access did not specify which schools were supposed to have received the services.

"I think everybody associated with this mess should pass 'Go' and go straight to jail," school board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz said when told about the five schools that did not receive services detailed in invoices from Equal Access.

Next month, Cafritz said, the school board will consider hiring a university or a nonprofit group to manage the 18 charter schools it currently oversees.

According to school and city officials who are seeking answers about the charter funds, Belton, who was fired this month, had worked without many of the checks and balances imposed on other agency executives.

The school board gave Belton, who at times supervised five employees, broad authority to issue hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts to consultants to monitor the schools under the school board's charge and to help those failing to meet academic targets. For many of those contracts, Belton used a special school system fund that allowed her to bypass city regulations that require agencies seeking contract work to put potential vendors through an extensive vetting and bidding process.

For a vendor to be paid, agencies must submit an invoice and a form verifying that the service or merchandise was satisfactorily provided.

"There are no excuses for apparently misappropriating funds or giving funds to consultants without a work product," said D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3), who chairs the education committee and first alerted the school board to a potential problem with Belton. "The board had a responsibility to supervise that office, and the board failed to do so."