Waste of the Day: California School is Actually a Baseball Stadium

Topline: The State of California sent school funding to a minor-league baseball stadium as part of a potentially illegal scheme by a charter school district, according to a June 24 report from the California State Auditor.

A case of charter school fraud

Key facts: Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools is a nonprofit that runs more than 50 schools for students aged 22 or older, but it can still access K-12 funding because of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act — a federal law meant to help job seekers improve their qualifications.

The district has come under fire since 2019 for “attendance discrepancies, conflicts of interest, and excessive spending,” according to the audit report, and it has now been confirmed that it was never eligible for the $180.5 million of state funding it received in 2022 and 2023. 

Students in California schools must spend at least 80% of their time in the classroom — not learning online — but auditors found the charter schools’ students “typically” are only in-person two to three hours per day. The rest of the charter school’s six-hour day is “optional,” and “nearly all” students did not stick around. Some students were “leaving immediately after signing in for attendance, and teachers did not attempt to enforce any attendance requirement,” the audit found.

The Highlands charter school received $3.5 million by illegally and “intentionally” inflating its attendance numbers, according to the audit. Charter schools are funded based on how often their students are present in school, so Highlands removed some student absences from their records to increase their funding, the state auditor alleges.

One school turned out to be a professional baseball stadium

The Twin Rivers Unified School District is responsible for overseeing the charter schools, but officials visited “only a handful” of school locations, even though they are required by state law to visit each one annually. Highlands was also not required to get approval from Twin Rivers before opening new schools.

Officials finally hired a contractor to visit 32 of the schools in 2024, who found that one of them was actually a “professional baseball stadium with no classes or students.”

Highlands officials explained they were no longer leasing the baseball stadium but were locked into monthly payments totaling $33,000 through April 2026. School officials were receiving VIP tickets to games through a sponsorship arrangement, according to the audit.

The audit is presumably referencing Bryant Park, home of the minor-league Yuba-Sutter High Wheelers in Marysville, which in 2023 agreed to let Highlands use the park for three years in exchange for help with repainting, electrical wiring and more.

The school district’s other “wasteful spending” included $1,630 for a one-night hotel stay for one employee, almost $2 million for a three-day professional development conference, $80,000 for seven employees to attend a conference in Maui and $2,600 for an employee to attend a technology conference in Paris run by their mother’s company.

School audit turns up nepotism and other kinds of fraud

One of the school’s directors hired his wife as a “mentor” for the district for $3,000 and told auditors he “was not aware this was a violation.” The school also spent $146,650 on beanies, scarves and other winter gifts for students, including $8,750 of “holiday blankets” purchased from one of the director’s spouses.

Auditors also reviewed 30 teachers’ credentials and found 27 of them were not qualified for the classes they were teaching, including five who had no teaching license at all.

Highlands Charter Schools’ Executive Officer Murdock Smith made $347,479 in 2023, tax returns show.

Summary: California taxpayers need much stronger oversight of the Highlands school district, and it may be on the way. On July 7, the district’s entire board either resigned or agreed to resign once their replacement is found, according to ABC10, whose years of reporting led to the state audit.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

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Photo by Chris Briggs on Unsplash

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.