State auditors said that, FCI Academy, a large north Columbus school which suddenly closed in the year 2015 still owes to the state hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The company which ran the FCI Academy said that it ordered the shut down in the month of August, 2015 because the charter school was being mismanaged. The State Auditor Dave Yost said the biggest victims of the closure were about 300 students who were just left without a school before the start of their academic year.
“To be told that you’re school just isn’t going to open…they were scrambling at the last minute and it just wasn’t fair to them. It also wasn’t fair that they were running a school with lousy management,” said Yost.
The documents from the Ohio Department of Education said that the school leaders stayed open by the deferring debt, borrowing money, and also not paying some federal taxes.
Yost also said a newly-released audit from his office showed that FCI still owes a substantial amount of money to the Ohio Department of Education. But he is not optimistic about getting that money paid back.
“We’re talking about $340,000 that went right down the tubes and not likely that much of that money is going to come back," Yost said.
Yost said the state might be able to recover about 30 cents on the dollar.
Mrudula Duddempudi.
