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Charter school faces financial inquiry

The superintendent asks for a criminal investigation of the Language Academy. The Sheriff's Office wants to know if it's embezzlement or just bad accounting.

By MARY SPICUZZA
Published August 22, 2006

LAND O'LAKES - Pasco County schools superintendent Heather Fiorentino has asked for a criminal investigation into the Language Academy after someone told district officials that there had been embezzlement at the charter school, she said.

"It's my job to make sure that they're accountable to the public and follow the contract," Fiorentino said Monday.

The Pasco County Sheriff's Office is having "ongoing discussions" with school district officials in an effort to determine whether there was a crime - or possibly bad accounting - at the school.

"We're still determining what direction we need to go," sheriff's spokesman Doug Tobin said.

An audit of the bilingual school is expected to come out later this month. Fiorentino believes the school is about $150,000 in debt and said as much as $500,000 may be unaccounted for from the tenure of the academy's founder and former principal, the Rev. Gary Carson.

Carson resigned as the charter school's principal in March 2004, citing the demands of dealing with a family illness and heading the Westminster Presbyterian Church as its pastor.

During its first two years, the Language Academy was cited twice in school district audits for not complying with financial, staffing and curriculum rules. The school also struggled to keep balanced bank accounts and failed to properly document some purchases.

Pasco County has six charter schools - publicly funded schools that are run by private organizations. Another school, Deerwood Academy, closed in 2003 amid financial struggles.

But school district officials and a former church treasurer say the problems at the Language Academy ran much deeper than unbalanced checkbooks.

"A lot of things going on at the school shouldn't have been going on, in terms of administration," former church treasurer Walter Sellers said.

Sellers said that Carson was recently "defrocked," or stripped of his ministerial duties, for seven years by the Presbytery of Tampa Bay.

A written report addressing Carson's tenure at the Language Academy and the church will be presented at a meeting next month at the First Presbyterian Church in Winter Haven, executive presbyter Gerry Tyer said Monday.

The Rev. Carson told the Times he couldn't discuss his role in the church, but said that during his tenure the school had a "full and complete audit every year."

Fiorentino said the district's staff had warned the school about "problems with the signatures on the checks" in 2004.

They raised questions about suspicious-looking signatures but were told that checks had not been forged.

"They told the staff that the church would handle any concerns," she said.

Things appeared to be improving at the Language Academy until this fall, Fiorentino said, when only half of the 120 expected students registered for classes.

Fiorentino said she went to the Sheriff's Office only after "someone informed us that there had been embezzlement."

However, Language Academy principal Joyce Nunn said Monday the school has 74 students and is "doing well." The school, which opened in August 2002, integrates Spanish into all of its subjects.

Nunn said she hasn't received a copy of the latest audit.

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

Mary Spicuzza covers education in Pasco County. She can be reached at (813) 909-4614 or at mspicuzza@sptimes.com.

[Last modified August 21, 2006, 22:51:10]