State auditors say a large north Columbus school that suddenly closed in 2015 still owes the state hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The company that ran FCI Academy said it ordered the shut down in August 2015 because the charter school was mismanaged. State Auditor Dave Yost says the biggest victims were about 300 students who were left without a school just before the start of the academic year.
“To be told that you’re school just isn’t going to open…they were scrambling at the last minute and it just wasn’t fair to them,” Yost says. “It also wasn’t fair that they were running a school with lousy management.”
Documents from the Ohio Department of Education say school leaders stayed open by deferring debt, borrowing money, and not paying some federal taxes.
Yost says a newly-released audit from his office shows FCI still owes a substantial amount of money to the Ohio Department of Education. But he’s not optimistic about getting paid back.
“We’re talking about $340,000 that went right down the tubes and not likely that much of that money is going to come back," Yost says.
Yost says the state might be able to recover 30 cents on the dollar.
