How REAL Prep charter school spent $450,000 before problems were detected
View full sizeDays before it was supposed to open, the campus of REAL Prep Charter Academy was still a construction zone. The school opted to leave financial oversight to its own nonprofit board, which has had changing membership. Juan McGruder, shown at the school, was named board president sometime this year.Erica Jayasuriya, a Portland mom withvisions of opening a recording arts-based high school that would transform education for disengaged teens, presided as the team she assembled spent the money on planning, promotion and curriculum design -- without ever mustering enough curriculum, materials, students or equipment to open a school.
No one at Portland Public Schools,