State education officials want to know what happened to more than $600,000 in public education funding a Kinston charter school spent this school year despite only holding classes for 10 days.Two-thirds of a million state tax dollars to provide almost no education, while throwing numerous students back onto the local school systems at the last minute.
Kinston Charter Academy, which opened in 2004 with the goal of educating low-income children in and around Lenoir County, voluntarily shut its door on Sept. 6, a few days into the new school year. The state Board of Education had been poised to try and close the charter school after hearing numerous complaints about financial instabilities at the school.
The sudden closure, two weeks into the school year, left the families of the 230 students in the K-8 school only a few days to enroll in nearby public schools in Lenoir and Pitt counties.
But it also brought up questions about what the school did with the $666,818 state education funding it received in July that was supposed to last through October. The school was also overfunded, receiving money to educate 366 students when only 230 students enrolled.
Where's the accountability?
