Charter to repay $3 million

State found errors in school's records

Nancy Mitchell, Rocky Mountain News

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

A charter school will repay the state nearly $3 million for errors in tracking students, under an agreement announced Monday by the Colorado Department of Education.

Hope Online Learning Academy Co-Op, which serves 3,500 students in 70 learning centers across the state, also has agreed to pay a monitor for at least one year to review its operations.

Under the agreement, the monitor, whose salary is not to exceed $60,000, will report to Education Commissioner Dwight Jones and must have "unfettered access" to Hope records and its learning centers.

The agreement comes after the CDE completed an audit of Hope and the tiny Vilas School District in southeastern Colorado, which holds Hope's charter, on July 31.

It also follows a blistering report by the state auditor's office, released in December, of online education programs in general and of Hope in particular.

Hope director Heather O'Mara said the school continues "to improve operations and we're excited about all the improvements we've made."

Hope is unique in Colorado in that it is set up as a single school chartered out of Vilas, in Baca County, but operates learning centers across Colorado, many in the metro area. Students go to the learning centers much as they do to traditional schools and work on computers there.

Rapid growth of the school - from 1,500 students in fall 2005, its initial year, to 3,700 in fall 2006 - drew attention and sparked a number of questions, including concerns about whether public dollars were supporting religious programs. A number of learning centers are housed at private schools with religious ties.

O'Mara said the school is repaying $2.875 million because of confusion over whether passing periods - those minutes in between classes - count as instructional time. Hope mistakenly believed that the Vilas school board had passed a resolution indicating those periods do count, she said. State school funding in Colorado is based on hours of instructional time.

She also said the crash of the Vilas computer server meant Hope was unable to verify the online participation of all students.

For more information: Go to http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdefinance/auditunit.htm to read the memorandum of understanding between the Colorado Department of Education, Hope Online Learning Academy Co-Op and Vilas School District. It also links to the Colorado Department of Education audit of Vilas completed July 31.

mitchelln@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5245