The Witch Hunt Continues Against Epic Charter Schools

 The Witch Hunt Continues Against Epic Charter Schools

The six year long witch hunt against Epic Charter Schools continued this week with another OSBI media release disguised as a search warrant. The search warrant alleged embezzlement and forgery by Epic's co found and CFO David Chaney, unlawful proceeds by Chaney, and willful neglect and omission by four board members of the schools governing board.

The “charges” rest upon a search warrant for the home of Kurk Talbott, a homeschool student provider of athletic opportunities, seizing his bank statements and his computer. Talbott runs OKC Storm Athletics, which allows homeschool and charter school students to participate in organized school sports. The funding comes from Epic's Learning Fund, a $1000 fund set aside each year out of Epic's income from the state to be used for extracurricular activities, educational activities, or needed items such as laptops, internet connection, or software.
Not a dime of this money goes to the families; the families apply for a program and Epic issues a purchase order to obtain the needed class or equipment and pays the vendor directly. Epic follows the law on disbursement of money.  One parent commented that he asked if he could take his kids to his local gym but was told no, that they weren't an approved vendor and that rules had to be followed.

A couple of points makes this witch hunt clear:

1. Public schools also use vendors that are not public school teachers including programs put on that bring in interesting speakers or provide equipment and other items used in education. It doesn't matter if these people are teachers or not nor if any of them have a criminal record, they are just vendors selling stuff.
2. The money for this comes out of the $5000 that the state provides to Epic to educate each kid. That is a fraction of what the other public schools receive and yes, Epic is a public school. If Epic can strip out one fifth of their income to pay for extracurricular activities and needed laptops or internet service then I would say they are very efficient.
3. All schools use a portion of their tax dollars bolstered by fund raising to finance physical education including sports. In fact, schools are required to have one hour per week of physical education including sports, marching band, or cheerleading. Generally schools give one credit toward graduation from attending these sort of PE classes and how many cheerleading squads are taught by parents or former cheerleaders that are not teachers? A lot, if not most.

Keep in mind that Epic is regulated by the Department of Education and the State Virtual Charter School Agency Board. They aren't allowed to fart without some bureaucrat there to smell what they had for breakfast. No one can claim with a straight face that these two regulators weren't aware of Epic's Learning Fund nor how the money was disbursed and no one can claim that the OSBI wasn't aware of all of this in 2013 when the OSBI was first used against Epic.

The real crimes of Epic are:

A. Giving back 20% to the families to cover costs that other public schools already cover

B. Working with a homeschool athletic league.

C.  Educating students that the other pubic schools discard and even drive off for a fraction of what the local public schools charge the taxpayers.

For these “crimes” Epic and OKC Storm Athletics have their businesses raided, their records, computers, and documents seized regardless of the need to have those records on hand for other legal and tax reasons not to mention just to pay bills and run the businesses.

For these “crimes” the board members and employees are harassed and forced to hire lawyers.

We need to remember that shortly after the story broke alleging “ghost” students at Epic we learned that the legislature allows millions of dollars to be spent each year on “ghost” students at all public schools. Schools can continue to be paid for students up to three years after they have left to go to other schools or even moved out of state.

Much has been made of the FBI and fed educational departments looking at Epic without mentioning they were looking at Tulsa Public schools as well over their treatment of special needs students.

Even Governor Stitt called for calm and asked that the investigation be completed before casting doubt, he even asked that the State Auditor look into the claims and go back three years, something that Epic not only applauded, they offered to pay the audit costs!

The real reasons for this witch hunt is two fold:

1. to force homeschool kids to be reported to the state. Shortly after the manufactured crisis was shoved into the media spotlight we heard bleating from the school superintendents about the lack of a law forcing parents to disclose to the state how their kids are educated. All that is required is a parent telling the local school that they are arranging an education for their kid.
2. To damage Epic and the other charter schools as much as possible, to create doubt in the parents and kid's minds during the crucial enrollment period. Once October 1^st hits the charter schools won't receive any funding for kids that sign up after that date. If a kid transfers to Epic after October 1^st Epic will fund the education without compensation from the state until after the first of the year. Other charter schools refuse to accept students in mid term, only Epic will accept a bullied student or a student that was thrown out of school for acting up.

Most likely the investigation will simply evaporate after October 1^st only to be trotted out next summer to slow down the exodus of students from the local public schools. OSBI's Tommy Johnson will get something from his shakedown of Epic and the home school sports association. Just like he and others attempted to shake down businesses so they could go on expensive cruises.