Chief of state’s charter school division stepping down
At the last State Board of Education meeting, Richard Zeiger, the Department of Education’s chief deputy superintendent, announced that tens of millions of dollars in state and federal funds have been lost by start-up charter schools that either never opened or closed within a year or two of opening. At that meeting, Hunkapiller told the board that oversight procedures, especially of federal grants as high as $575,00 to beginning charter schools, should be stronger.
Hunkapiller said yesterday that now-closed charter schools have defaulted on $5.5 million from the state’s Charter School Revolving Loan Fund, which gives loans of up to $250,000 mainly to start-up charter schools. She said the defaults occurred primarily in the early years of the program, but have increased again ”in the last year or two.”
State law requires charters to pay off their loans over five years, but if a school closes before that time, collecting on the loan has turned out to be exceedingly difficult if not impossible.
