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Missouri has sued a now-closed Kansas City charter school to recover $3.7 million the state paid the school based on what it said were false and inflated figures for student attendance.
Attorney General Chris Koster said in a statement released Monday that Hope Academy “failed to live up to its promises in educating the children in its school.” The suit his office filed Friday in Jackson County Circuit Court calls for the school and two former employees to account for all money received from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. It also demands “any relief that is just is proper.”
Hope Academy attorney Dana Cutler said she couldn’t comment because her clients hadn’t yet received the lawsuit.
The suit said the school reported a 97.9 percent attendance rate when the actual rate was closer to 30 percent. The inflated attendance boosted the school’s budget because charter schools, like traditional public schools, receive state funding based on student enrollment and attendance.
An earlier state audit also found students received credit for classes in which they weren’t participating and for unapproved activities outside of the classroom, such as grocery shopping, house cleaning and dog walking.
The school, whose mission was helping dropouts and students at risk of dropping out, operated from 2009 to 2014. With its academic performance among the lowest in the state, it already had been placed on probation by its sponsor, the University of Missouri-Kansas City, when the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education conducted a surprise visit in the fall of 2013.
Administrators and some staff were immediately placed on leave, and the state auditor’s office began its investigation. The audit found that in the two years before the school closed, it was overpaid $4.3. The problems led the state to withhold its final financial payments to the school, reducing the amount that was overpaid to $3.74 million. The lawsuit said that attendance data for previous years also was high but that there weren’t adequate records to estimate an overpayment.
The lawsuit said the school’s leadership used the overpayments to help purchase two buildings but later defaulted on the loans.
The school had about $374,000 on hand as of July. Charter schools sometimes keep money in their coffers to cover the cost of closure activities. But the suit said the money should go toward educating students in Kansas City.
