NEW ORLEANS — A public charter school board says it’s hiring an outside investigator to look into allegations of grade-fixing and falsifying of public board records.
New Beginnings Schools Foundation’s attorney, Michelle Craig, also said the board is holding an emergency meeting about the allegations Monday.
The charter school organization is already under fire for how it handled allegations of grade-fixing at one of its three schools, Kennedy High School. At a contentious public board meeting Thursday night, the board heard from the whistleblower who said he was fired for reporting manual grade changes lifting F’s to D’s for some students and not others in classes for a teacher who was no longer at Kennedy.
The Orleans Parish School Board said it was reopening its own investigation into the matter.
And Friday, WWL-TV is reporting on new allegations from a former New Beginnings employee that public records were falsified related to a contract worth more than $1 million.
“The New Beginnings Board takes the recent allegations very seriously,” Craig said. “From the very beginning, the Board has stayed abreast of the ongoing concerns as they have arisen. We have worked with our CEO to ensure that there was no wrongdoing taking place in the organization. However, given the totality of the circumstances, the Board has decided to solicit and hire an outside independent investigator to investigate the claims that have arisen in the past few weeks. In addition, the Board has scheduled an emergency Board meeting for Monday.”