Charter Watch

Insiders say state didn't scrutinize ABQ school even though FBI did

One hallmark of the leadership of newly confirmed state Education Secretary Hanna Skandera is her open embrace of charter schools.

Under Skandera's Public Education Department, more than 80 charter schools are currently overseen directly under the state and not local school districts. They include Santa Fe's own Turquoise Trail Charter School, Tierra Encantada Charter School and The MASTERS Program Early College Charter School.

Likewise, Skandera has approved previously rejected charters for schools like the Santa Fe-based New Mexico Connections Academy, whose students do most learning online.

Yet during debate of her confirmation in the Roundhouse last week, some senators raised concerns indicating maybe that trend is because the state's oversight gives charters too much freedom. One lawmaker cited email exchanges about PED's oversight of Southwest Secondary Learning Centers, a coalition of three charter schools in Albuquerque that were raided last summer by the FBI and against which an investigation is still pending.

Officials raised questions that the centers' former head administrator was personally siphoning money from the schools to his private businesses. A recent audit found that two schools paid $1.1 million in leases to an aircraft company owned by Scott Glasrud, who served as the schools' head administrator until he resigned shortly after the FBI raid. Glasrud is also co-owner of a company that leases a building for classroom use to Southwest Secondary Learning Centers.

In December, PED Deputy Secretary Paul Aguilar pointed the finger at his department's contracted auditor for missing the problems in its 2013 audit of the charter schools.

But documents reveal that PED employees were looking into problems with the charter school at least one year before the FBI raid. A former agency investigator says, however, that PED sidelined a full probe.

"I was asked to look at SSLC some time ago…and then told there was nothing to look at—move along," Brenda Mares wrote to the State Auditor's Office in January 2014. "I think there was an issue about whether the guy is profiting from the charter school. Still don't know, because I was pulled off."

PED spokeswoman Ellen Hur tells SFR this week that Mares was employed in the Professional Licensure Bureau and therefore "her duties were limited to investigating complaints in that arena."

"She is not an auditor or financial investigator," Hur says.

Mares, who now works in the state Regulation and Licensing Department, referred questions to her attorney, who didn't return SFR's phone calls before press time.

In mid-2013, PED's Charter School Division Director Tony Gerlicz served as its director and performed a site visit. He tells SFR that at the time, concerns of impropriety at SSLC had already long been raised.

"That charter school had an excellent reputation," says Gerlicz, who is now principal of Santa Fe's Mandela International Magnet School. Yet, Gerlicz was troubled by what he called some of the schools' "operations."

After the visit, Gerlicz posed a few questions in a letter to Glasrud. First, he raised concerns about the building lease, noting that while at first it was reasonable to use the building, by now, the school should have a facility that does not present a "possible conflict of interest."

The conflict, he wrote, is "not only a possible serious violation but causes damage to the charter movement."

The schools' attorney Patty Matthews responded that the company Glasrud co-owns, Southwest Educational Consultants, does not actually own the building but merely "acts as a pass through entity" and sublets it to the school. Matthews went on to write that Glasrud had disclosed his ties to the firm to the SSLC's governing board.

She then invited PED to look at the school's previous audits as well as "perhaps a close look at the motivation of those who keep this issue in the spotlight."

The fact that Gerlicz was addressing Matthews about the school is indeed incestuous—Matthews served as PED's head of the charter schools division before Gerlicz took the job.

SSLC's director of operations, Leslie Lujan, also came directly from PED in 2012 after seven years as a senior budget analyst at the education department.

To Public Education Commissioner Jeff Carr, the many connections raise red flags. The independently elected commission asked the PED to look into the charter school's conflicts in 2012, but Carr says the department didn't properly act.

"They looked into it and said everything was fine," Carr says.

Hur rejects that notion, maintaining that PED first referred allegations to the state auditor in October 2012.

Former State Auditor Hector Balderas, who is now attorney general, began pressuring PED to act on the charter school last August. Despite all the controversy, the education commission still renewed SSLC's charter for another three years at the recommendation of PED last December. Just one commissioner, Carr, voted no.

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