WOODLAND HILLS >> More than 50 teachers and parents protested outside El Camino Real Charter High School before classes Wednesday, demanding top administrators be held accountable for a credit-card spending controversy in an effort to “save our charter” while nearly two dozen other staff members gathered to express their support for the school’s leadership.
Demonstrators held up signs at the “silent protest” that read “Step down” and “Our students, not steaks.” They also chanted “Release the report” — referencing a $20,000 investigation into the school’s financial statements — and “What do we want? Transparency!” on parallel sidewalks on Valley Circle Boulevard at Mariano Street.
• VIDEO: Parents and teachers chant during ‘silent’ protest at El Camino Real Charter High School
English teacher Cameron Maury, who has worked at the school for 15 years, said he wants the school’s executive director, David Fehte, who has come under fire for seemingly liberal credit- card spending, and Chief Business Officer Marshall Mayotte to resign in light of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s recent allegations of fiscal mismanagement.
“They played fast and loose with the finances and the accounting for years, and the district has said so in their ‘notice of violations,’ ” Maury said Wednesday.
• PHOTOS: El Camino Real teachers and parents stage protest outside Woodland Hills school
Fehte did not return requests for comment and Mayotte, who was out of the office, could not be reached Wednesday. The protest was held a day after El Camino Real Alliance board member Scott Silverstein said he believes Fehte lacks “the proper judgement to continue his role.”
But Shelly Marshall, a physical education teacher for 31 years, argued that Fehte always acts for “the betterment of the school” and “any mistakes that (he) made were mistakes.”
“Maybe if we had better policies and regulations in place when we became a charter, these problems wouldn’t have happened,” Marshall said at an informal midday meeting of pro-administration staff at the campus’s Grieb Theatre.
The Woodland Hills charter school formally told L.A. Unified on Friday that it “strongly believes it has cured” all violations alleged in the district’s “notice of violations,” though the school also refuted many of its claims. The LAUSD’s Board of Education last month approved the notice — the first of three steps in potentially revoking the school’s charter — that accused school administrators of fiscal mismanagement and its governing board of inadequate oversight, among other issues.
The district’s Charter Schools Division is reviewing the school’s response before it makes a recommendation to the Board of Education about whether to proceed with the three-step revocation process.
The district has alleged “numerous seemingly exorbitant personal and/or improper expenses” were charged by school administrators and processed without scrutiny from November 2013 to December 2015. Officials at El Camino, which converted to an independent charter in 2011, contend the “notice of violations” contains dozens of errors and argue that the vast majority of the credit- card charges were for business purposes. Fehte has reimbursed the school for between $6,000 and $7,000 in personal charges made in the past three years, said Melanie Horton, the school’s director of business.
Some staffers cautioned that no one should rush to judgement concerning the district’s process.
“I’m not going to jump to conclusions and assume that an allegation is fact,” Lori Chandler, a physical education teacher, said. If LAUSD’s report comes back and confirms fiscal mismanagement, “I’m going to have to live with that.”
Others, however, demanded that the El Camino board release the independent report by Oracle Investigations Group to better understand the facts.
“I want to know what happened: Is this just a simple mistake, or is this a purposeful abuse of public funds?” said James DeLarme, a social studies teacher, as the protest wound down.
