What happened to McGrory's Miami Herald story on Feds' charter investigation? I asked...
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| Fernando Zulueta, president of Academica, gets a drink at the bar in Cain at The Cove, an exclusive beach club in the Bahamas' Atlantis resort. Academica held a leadership retreat for principals of several charter schools there. MIAMI HERALD PHOTO |
Last month I wrote about Florida's great charter school profiteers, Rep. Erik Fresen, his sister Maggie, and brother-in-law, Fernando Zulueta who runs Academica Charter Schools, one of the largest charter chains in the country.
Today, Bob Sikes at Scathing Purple Musings re-posts a story which he incorrectly credits to columnist Mary McGrory from the Miami Herald, "Academica Charter Schools Under Federal Investigation." Actually, Sikes got it wrong. The great Washington Post Reporter Mary McGrory has been dead for 10 years. The piece on Academica was written by Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald staff writer Kathleen McGrory. Regardless, it's a good, solid news piece about the Education Department’s Inspector General Office audit of the South Miami-based Academica Corp. as part of a broader examination of school management companies nationwide. The story implicates the powerful Zulueta family as well as Fresen.
McGrory writes:
The auditors found that three of the schools in the network — Mater Academy, Mater High and Mater East — entered into leases with development companies tied to the Zulueta family. Two of the leases were executed while Zulueta sat on the Mater board. In addition, Schooling in the Ownership Society: What happened to McGrory's Miami Herald story on Feds' charter investigation? I asked...: