Pa. Charter-School Operator Charged With $6.5-Million Fraud

The 75-year-old founder of a network of Philadelphia charter schools and several executives at the academies have been charged with defrauding the schools of millions of taxpayer dollars, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

According to an FBI statement, Dorothy June Hairston Brown allegedly steered some $6.5-million from the Laboratory and Planet Abacus charter schools and an online academy, Agora Cyber Charter School, mostly via phony contracts with management companies she controlled. Ms. Brown also founded a third brick-and-mortar school, Ad Prima.

Ms. Brown denied the charges through her attorney, Gregory P. Miller, who called the former public-school principal as “a nationally recognized educator with a long and outstanding history or service to Philadelphia’s school children.”

While her schools won accolades for high test scores, Ms. Brown also gained notoriety for collecting multiple six-figure salaries from them and filing a slander suit against a parents’ group that raised questions about Agora Cyber’s management.

Four longtime administrators at the nonprofit institutions, one of them Ms. Brown’s grand-nephew, were also indicted following a four-year investigation of the schools’ finances.