Kathleen Hermsmeyer, the superintendent, is no stranger to controversy. She was fired from her last job, as Executive Director for a different charter school, for “misappropriation of money and conflicts of interest”, then she went to this new charter school.
Three back-to-back articles about it:
http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/2011/05/eagles-peak-charter-school-4000.html
Other reasons cited for Hermsmeyer’s firing included her alleged decisions to:
- Allow a top administrator to earn $64,500 on loans the school took out without board approval.
- Lease a $43,000 sport utility vehicle, albeit partly for school use, an action the board called needlessly excessive.
- Lease a beachfront condominium in Oceanside for two top administrators to supposedly attract quality employees, an action the board called “tantamount to a gift of public funds.”
- Give a “substantial pay raise” to employees last year without board approval and despite the school’s negative operating balance at the time of $655,000, raises the coastal board contends benefited Hermsmeyer as well as her husband and sister, who were also employees.
- Work as a teacher while also working as executive director, and collecting two salaries, “constituting a self-dealing transaction and a violation of the Political Reform Act.”
I am sure she is an ardent Obama supporter as we’ll. What a pig.