SISTERS --Suzanne Moore spent almost two years teaching at Sisters AllPrep Web Academy, but what she described as the "best job in the whole world" became a precarious one in mid-March.
That's when administrators told Moore that the Clackamas-based company that operated the school was struggling to pay her March salary. She was told to expect a paycheck in her bank account by April 5.
The paycheck didn't appear, and on April 9, the school closed.
She is one of hundreds of people affected when a network of at least 10 publicly funded charter schools ran into deep financial troubles this year. Three of them, based in Sisters and Marcola but serving students across the state, shut their doors in March and April.
Teachers have gone unpaid or lost their jobs, students have had to find new schools, and some families have been asked to pay community college tuition after the charter schools failed to make those payments.
Schools in the network mostly offered online instruction or college-credit courses in partnership with local community colleges. Most were called AllPrep academies and all were founded by educational entrepreneur Tim King, a former North Clackamas School District teacher.
Trail of financial problems
Nearly a decade ago, King founded three charter schools in that district: New Urban High, Clackamas Middle College and Clackamas Web Academy. In 2008, he left to start the AllPrep and other charter schools in a half-dozen small districts across the state, from Sheridan to Estacada to Sisters to Burns.
After he left, serious financial problems were discovered at the Clackamas charters, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in questioned expenditures. The three schools were ordered to repay the district almost $400,000, a debt load that has crimped their operations.
King's new network of schools was operated by a nonprofit known as EdChoices, which is now under investigation by Oregon's education and justice departments. The state, which paid King more than $2 million worth of federal startup funding to launch the schools, has since suspended additional grants it had planned to award him.
After the investigations were launched, King stepped down from his role running EdChoices. He has defended his schools' practices and said stepping aside would help the schools move forward.
Not only did some of the schools close, but also EdChoices was locked out of its Clackamas headquarters.
The Oregon Department of Education sent a letter in January to the districts with EdChoices schools announcing the state was investigating the company for a variety of possible violations, including improperly commingling funds among charter schools and transferring students among the company's schools without parent or district permission.
Sheridan district cancels
King could not be reached by phone for comment. He did not respond to e-mails to his personal account. He said in a statement in January that "our biggest challenge is communication. What we are doing has never been done in Oregon, and it's hard to explain to people."
Among concerns the state is investigating: Schools may have exaggerated or falsified records to show that enough students were getting AllPrep-led education in the brick-and-mortar schools at Sheridan, Burns and elsewhere to qualify the online schools for state funding. Under state law, online charter schools can only be funded for as many out-of-district students as they serve in the district that sponsors them.
The Sheridan School District, which sponsored an AllPrep Academy that opened last fall, had trouble getting timely information from EdChoices and canceled its arrangements with the firm last month. Sheridan is operating the online academy on its own for the rest of the school year, said Superintendent A.J. Grauer.
Grauer said King tried to assure Sheridan officials in January that the school was in solid financial shape, despite the lack of records and the ongoing investigation.
"We got snowed," Grauer said.
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