Oregon charter school founders accused in $20 million racketeering lawsuit
Source: Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian
Tim King and Norm Donohoe, who ran a chain of taxpayer-funded charter schools across small-town Oregon from their headquarters in Clackamas, scammed the state out of $17 million and must repay that plus $2.7 million more, the state said in a court filing this week.
The legal claim, brought Thursday by the Oregon Department of Justice in Marion County Circuit Court, accuses the pair of racketeering, money laundering and other fraud from 2007 to 2010.
King and Donohoe, who were the director and president, respectively, of a nonprofit they named EdChoices, submitted false, incomplete and misleading records about how many students were enrolled in the schools and how they were spending the state's money, state prosecutors say in the complaint.
Read more: http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2013/01/oregon_charter_school_founders.html
FROM: Portland Association of Teachers Facebook:
This is scandalous, and a good example of what happens when public dollars are transfered to the private sector without the same kind of scrutiny people give government budgets. Oh the things $20 million could have purchased for the benefit of Oregon public school students. What do you think the money could have been spent on that would actually improve public schools?
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