As the controversy at The Pinnacle charter school perhaps dies down with the departure of its embattled executive director, there is the matter of the bill.
The school, the third-largest charter in the state, paid out at least $102,000 from the beginning of February to the end of April to defend itself against accusations of mismanagement from its parent district, according to Pinnacle records. This defense comes even as the school is complying, under threat of losing its charter, with district mandates to reform.
And the bill is likely to climb higher, with the district just recently leveling more accusations against the school.
Many parents have been skeptical of the rising costs for legal fees, audits and public relations.
“That’s for three months; that’s just crazy to me,” said parent Janet Jubenville, who has been a longtime critic of The Pinnacle’s administration, even while she praises its classroom instruction. “We can’t pay our teachers a decent salary. … But we spend exorbitant amounts on things like this. Rather than just doing what the district said, they spend so much more time and effort just trying to get out of it.”
The Pinnacle, a 1,300-student K-12 charter school in Federal Heights, has been bombarded with accusations and stinging investigations from its parent district – Adams 12 Five Star Schools – for much of this year. The district accused the school of having shoddy accounting and an unethical governance structure, of falsifying bus transportation records and of mishandling sexual harassment complaints.
The Pinnacle leaders, while admitting some mistakes, say that the district’s reports are overly critical and, in several cases, inaccurate. But The Pinnacle has agreed to comply with the terms of a district “corrective action plan.”
On Wednesday, The Pinnacle’s board voted not to retain the school’s executive director.
Some of the spending has come by district mandate. The corrective action plan required The Pinnacle to pay the tab for an accounting firm the district had audit the school, as well as some of the district’s legal fees. That total bill was just shy of $24,000.
The Pinnacle also hired its own accounting firm to investigate its finances and to respond to the district’s audit. In February, March and April, that tab totalled almost $25,000.
Pinnacle board member Dean DePaolo questioned whether some of the other costs – for attorney and public-relations fees – were too high.
The school spent $5,500 on a public-relations firm during the three months. Attorney fees made up the bulk of the total during that time, nearly $73,000.
“In the past, I think there’s been too much time spent vilifying the district,” said DePaolo, who was elected to the board in April. “But I think had we spent more time trying to work more closely with the district, some of those legal fees wouldn’t be needed.”
The Pinnacle has a $7.4 million annual operating budget, said school spokeswoman Lisa Cutter. The money for the school’s defense came from the general fund, where the school currently has a $2.8 million balance.
“That’s just something they use for extraordinary costs that are not budgeted for,” Cutter said of the general fund.
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
