ALPHARETTA, Ga. — Lawyers for an Alpharetta charter school are demanding Fulton County School officials retract a scathing audit that questioned how the school spent public tax dollars and protected its children.
Earlier this month, the school district released the audit into the practices of Fulton Science Academy Middle School, one of the county's top-performing schools.
School officials called it the "most egregious" behavior they'd ever seen and leveled accusations the school was doling out lucrative contacts to people with ties to the school, failing to perform background checks on chaperones accompanying students on field trips to Turkey, and inappropriately spending taxpayer dollars to provide immigration services to teachers and their families.
"It defamed the school and the school board and it was inappropriate to use it to justify audits of other charter schools," FSA board member Angela Lassetter told Channel 2's Mike Petchenik.
Thursday, FSA released a blow-by-blow response to the school district's audit. The hired firm, Glass Ratner, concluded "many of the alleged findings in the IAG report are flawed, unsupported and inaccurate and the IAG report failed to make factual findings based on actual data and evidence."
Among the auditor's findings:
IAG, the company hired by Fulton County Schools' legal counsel, failed to hold an exit interview with the school to ensure accuracy of its findings and deviated from commonly accepted forensic auditing practices.
Superintendent Robert Avossa's statements to the school board on June 4th that the school had "poor book-keeping" were contradicted by the audit's actual findings.
IAG "combined incomplete information with uninformed flawed assumptions" to make inaccurate conclusions about security issues related to school field trips.
IAG excluded some information from its report that would have shown FSAMS policies for handling immigrant faculty members are similar to the policies of the school system.
FSAMS auditors could find no conflicts of interest when it came to school contracts.
FSAMS auditors could find no direct link between the school and a controversial movement espoused by a Turkish Imam, Fethullah Gulen
Earlier this month, the school district released the audit into the practices of Fulton Science Academy Middle School, one of the county's top-performing schools.
School officials called it the "most egregious" behavior they'd ever seen and leveled accusations the school was doling out lucrative contacts to people with ties to the school, failing to perform background checks on chaperones accompanying students on field trips to Turkey, and inappropriately spending taxpayer dollars to provide immigration services to teachers and their families.
"It defamed the school and the school board and it was inappropriate to use it to justify audits of other charter schools," FSA board member Angela Lassetter told Channel 2's Mike Petchenik.
Thursday, FSA released a blow-by-blow response to the school district's audit. The hired firm, Glass Ratner, concluded "many of the alleged findings in the IAG report are flawed, unsupported and inaccurate and the IAG report failed to make factual findings based on actual data and evidence."
Among the auditor's findings:
IAG, the company hired by Fulton County Schools' legal counsel, failed to hold an exit interview with the school to ensure accuracy of its findings and deviated from commonly accepted forensic auditing practices.
Superintendent Robert Avossa's statements to the school board on June 4th that the school had "poor book-keeping" were contradicted by the audit's actual findings.
IAG "combined incomplete information with uninformed flawed assumptions" to make inaccurate conclusions about security issues related to school field trips.
IAG excluded some information from its report that would have shown FSAMS policies for handling immigrant faculty members are similar to the policies of the school system.
FSAMS auditors could find no conflicts of interest when it came to school contracts.
FSAMS auditors could find no direct link between the school and a controversial movement espoused by a Turkish Imam, Fethullah Gulen
You people make me sick. Xenophobia to an extreme !
ReplyDeleteAnonymous
ReplyDeleteWe agree that Xenophobia is bad, that is why we are curious to the reasoning that the Gulen operated charter schools are teaching to a Turkocentric brand of education. Emphasizing only their culture, pushing the importance of the Turkish Olympiad, etc.,
Trying to flip the focus away from your group is not working. Try a little honesty insteading of derailment of focus off of your lies, money scandals and ties to Imam Fethullah Muhammed Gulen.
Interesting that your Turkocentric movement has not taken root in other Islamic countries. Mainly for the same reasons you state.
Gulen needs to leave the USA and lead his flock in Turkey.
One more thing, we just published the news. Why is publishing the news in Georgia being "Xenophobic"
ReplyDeleteYour logic is so twisted, please get some help.