What’s the ‘Mater’?
A Morality Play in Which Our Craven School Board Humbly Washes the Feet of One Fernando Zulueta, Charter School Magnate

“Mater’s landlord will have earned $33.5 million in after-tax profits, which could have been used for educating the children.”

By Rebecca Wakefield

I try never to listen to Miami-Dade County School Board meetings. Whenever I do, I invariably end up punching the air and cursing the failings of one or more of the esteemed public servants. Alas, I was suckered into catching the broadcast of the Feb. 14 meeting, confirming my horror once again.

The part I caught had to do with why the School Board, in a 7-2 vote, decided to ignore the advice of its superintendent, its auditor and its own lawyers by approving a new charter school whose executives were under a cloud of suspicion about the manner in which they made money off another of their taxpayer-funded schools.

Actually the vote was a little more complex than that, as the board voted to deny the denial of the superintendent, which means, as dissenting board member Evelyn Greer noted with dry humor, that the matter is “apparently going to be much more complicated than it would have been before” — to the glee of “all the various lawyers who are going to go off and make money on this.”

According to an audit presented by chief auditor Allen Vann, the principals who control Academica Corp. and one of its schools, the Mater Academy, have set things up in such a way that they personally benefit from how the company and school handle money. Specifically, the audit said that Academica CEO Fernando Zulueta and his brother Ignacio had used another company in which they are principals to buy land the school sits on, then lease it back to the school at a handsome profit. The audit also decried the fact that the same auditors handle all 21 schools Academica runs, and some of the schools share the same board members.

Charter schools are supposed to be set up so that a board, similar to the public school board, sets policy and oversees the school. This board can then hire an executive director, a principal or a management company to handle day to day operations. It’s a good check and balance because if management does something wrong, the entire board can be liable.

But sometimes what happens is that a company creates a school, then stacks the board with allies, who then approve anything the principals want done, either out of loyalty or ignorance. It’s certainly an efficient method, but not at all correct.

Auditor Vann, who with his dark suits, silver hair and jowly New York gruffness has a certain Raymond Burr meets Billy Joel quality, took umbrage at the way several board members raked his integrity over the coals.

It was crystal clear to anyone watching the proceedings (I went back and reviewed a tape of the meeting) that Zulueta had bought or intimidated at least a few board members with his traveling circus, which consisted of the very impressive and aggressive former U.S. Attorney Marcos Jimenez, a room full of Academica employees and students who performed with the precision of a game show audience, and the memory of the thousands of dollars recently paid into the campaign coffers of at least two members. I guess the charter school business must be pretty good these days.

The issue was not whether Mater Academy is a good school from an educational standpoint. I’ll just go ahead and believe all the people who said it’s a great school. But why should the public taxes that fund the charter school unreasonably compensate a handful of individuals?

Board member Ana Rivas-Logan, a pretty woman with honey-blond highlights that may have seeped into her brain, attempted to make the argument that Vann wasn’t qualified to offer his professional opinion because he works for Superintendent Rudy Crew. “The auditor’s bread and butter comes from the superintendent,” she said, arguing that the board should go ahead and approve the school’s application, pending the hiring of an independent inspector general, who would presumably then tell the board whether its auditor was full of baloney or not.

Never discussed was what possible motivation Rudy Crew would have for stirring up a hornet’s nest by sending his auditor out to get such a politically connected businessman. Makes no sense.

Vann responded by noting that his appointment predated Crew and that the board itself had directed his office to oversee the IG’s duties. Logan herself had previously praised Vann for eight years as the IG of the South Florida Water Management District, among other qualifications. He added that his audit was the result of a whistleblower’s complaint that his team investigated in consultation with the board’s attorneys and the State Attorney’s Office.

In November, Vann presented his findings to the board-appointed audit committee, which took a couple of months to review it, plus the reams of counter-information submitted by Academica and Mater Academy officials. Meanwhile the State Attorney’s Office opened an investigation to determine whether anything criminal had occurred.  

The audit committee in January sustained Vann’s findings of impropriety regarding the land deal and the shady way it was concealed, and various other “conflicts of interest and unethical behavior on the part of people managing and overseeing the school,” Vann said.

He added that one of the volunteer members of the audit board did his own analysis of the lease deal and concluded, “At the end of the 20-year lease, Mater’s landlord, who is sitting in front of you, will have earned $33.5 million in after-tax profits, which otherwise could have been used for educating the children that attend these schools.”

Vann advised his superiors that it would be imprudent to allow Academica to open more schools under these circumstances, an opinion the board’s appointed ethics committee supported unanimously. Later on in the meeting, Jane Moscowitz, chairwoman of the ethics committee, stood at the podium and said she brought the matter to the committee because after reading all the material from both sides, “I was appalled. There’s no question that … this board should not be approving those schools.”

School Board Chairman Agustin Barrera, who read his lines a little better than Rivas-Logan if no more logically, proceeded to argue that there was nothing illegal in what the charter school and its parent company had done and tried to give the impression that both the audit findings and the superintendent’s recommendation to deny the application were based on inconclusive evidence. He actually argued that the board shouldn’t penalize the school for any flaws in its behavior because the school district itself was so bad with money it had to have a state board appointed to oversee it for a few years. Right.

Solomon Stinson took issue with the title of the audit report, suggesting that the board would be endorsing unproven allegations if it accepted the report without changing the title.

It was all bull, of course, just a bit of repayment for the $4,000 Zulueta and his associates had contributed to his 2006 campaign (that’s a minimum, as I only scanned the campaign reports briefly, so it’s more than possible I missed a few connections).

For that matter, Barrera also received at least $4,000 from Zulueta and Co. in his last campaign. Renier Diaz de la Portilla, who ran unopposed, didn’t need the cash, but he well might in his next race. Former board member Frank Bolaños, who vacated that seat last year in his unsuccessful bid for the state Senate, has filed to run against him in 2008.

Robert Ingram made the astounding analogy that if he was a cop and the charter school was a known drug dealer, he couldn’t use that history in court unless the basis of his current arrest was sound. Complete gibberish. Marta Perez, usually one to vote her conscience despite the political consequences, stammered her way through an argument that the board should approve the application, then write a letter to the State Attorney’s Office requesting that it expedite its investigation so the board could yank the approval if necessary. Christ!

Evelyn Greer and board member Perla Hantman were the heroes of the day. Both women, who are wealthy and secure enough in their districts not to be intimidated by the likes of the goon squad in front of them, voted the right way, to deny the school’s application.

Greer, utilizing her deadly dry humor to maximum effect, exposed the cravenness of the proceedings. She exploded the idea that the board should wait for an inspector general to be hired. “What are we telling a new IG by what we’re saying today?” she asked. “We’re telling them we received an allegation … conducted an investigation … and that since we don’t like the conclusion, we’re going to throw all that out and approve these schools because we like these people.”

She continued: “The question becomes, what is the purpose of process? What’s the point of having investigations? … This board can obviously declare the world flat if it wants to. We are sending a serious message that talk is cheap.”

Cheap — and very, very stupid.

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com.