Just how bad is the problem at Pencader Carter High School?

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Apparently, even worse than the front page stellar article by Nichole Dobo detailing theschool leader’s acquisition of a fake Ph.D. Yes, that’s bad. This may be worse:

There is a company called EDUCATIONAL CONSULTING that appears in the PCHS checkbook. Here there information from the Delaware state website Business Search:

Delaware Business Search
Search results
Delaware business licenses as of 6/29/12
Business license number = 2011605873
Business name
Business categoryCurrent or most recent license validLicense number
EDUCATIONAL CONSULTING
27 TREMONT CT
NEWARK, DE  19711-1903  		 PROFESSIONAL AND/OR PERSONAL SERVICES
1/1/12 – 12/31/12
2011605873

1 matching licensesSend tax questions to BusTax@state.de.us.

Then you go over to the Delaware Online Checkbook and you see this:

EDUCATIONAL CONSULTING 8 payments $29,189.59
Department Division Category Check Date Amount
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PENCADER BUSINESS AND FINANCE OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 12/2/2011 $6,450.32
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PENCADER BUSINESS AND FINANCE OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 2/8/2012 $6,450.32
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PENCADER BUSINESS AND FINANCE OFFICE SUPPLIES 2/24/2012 $173.55
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PENCADER BUSINESS AND FINANCE OFFICE SUPPLIES 1/3/2012 $1,000.00
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PENCADER BUSINESS AND FINANCE ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPLIES 11/21/2011 $41.78
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PENCADER BUSINESS AND FINANCE ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPLIES 11/21/2011 $2,172.98
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PENCADER BUSINESS AND FINANCE OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 11/28/2011 $6,450.32
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION PENCADER BUSINESS AND FINANCE OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICE 1/3/2012 $6,450.32

So, to recap thus far, PCHS has spent 29,189.59 with this company this school year on supplies (office and administrative)and other professional services. This company is located at 27 Tremont Court in Newark. Let’s head over to New Castle County Parcel Search, shall we?

Property Address: 27 TREMONT CT
NEWARK, DE 19711-
Subdivision: COTSWOLD HILLS
Owner: LEWIS ROBERT A & ANN E
Owner Address: 27 TREMONT CTNEWARK, DE 19711
Municipal Info: Unincorporated
Lot #: 46
Location:
Map Grid: 06403600
Block: C
Census Tract: 135.06
Street Type:
Water: PUBLIC
Microfilm #: 009663
Property Class: RESIDENTIAL
Lot Size: 0.50
Lot Depth: 245
Lot Frontage: 95.10
Street Finish:

Sales History

Owner Deed Current Owner? Multi? Sale Date Sale Amount
FERGUSON & FLYNN ENTERPRISES 663 233 N Y 2/18/1988 $1.00
CAPSON INC TRUSTEE 1479 47 N Y 2/25/1993 $4,000,000.00
CORROZI HOMES INC 1661 167 N Y 1/14/1994 $541,000.00
LEWIS ROBERT A & ANN E 1741 43 Y N 5/26/1994 $225,595.00

It appears that Pencader is using a vendor located at a property of the school leader owned for the last 18 years.

So, I have a few questions:

Was the contract bid?

Who selected the company?

What services were performed?

That should do for now. I think Tom Wagner’s office should be notified, ASAP.

The funny thing about this, people are being actively told that this company is Harrie Ellen Minnehan’s. I’ll let you guess who’s doing the telling. So now you know the truth, another wild Pencader caper and misdirect. Sad.

23 thoughts on “Just how bad is the problem at Pencader Carter High School?”

  1. Pingback: Delaware’s Governor Markell caught $$$$ masturbating « Kilroy's delaware

  2. hmmmmmmmmm, good reporting. I noticed that Dobo included that one of the three people yesterday to support Ann Lewis had a kid who graduated from the school recently and was also a vendor to Pencader.

    How screwed up can one school be? Is this Educational Consulting perhaps her son who is supposedly in charge of the IT? An Aunt, Uncle, Cousin?

    • I do have a secret research assistant. Someday I will reveal my source. That day is not upon us as the school is not being held accountable by the DOE as required as I see it.

      Pencader is destroying the good name of DE charters.

  3. Hmm wonder if they pay the son almost 30,000 to keep the website up to date?? Crazy an surely a misappropriation of funds. As the school leader she shouldn’t be billing out separately for providing educational consulting, professional development, etc. that is part of your job and responsibility as a leader. If the school wanted to pay her or her husband for additional duties wouldn’t they do that in their traditional check? If not it looks suspicious! I agree the State Auditor needs to check the school’s independent audit (you know the one now required by law for all charters) and provide some guidance to the charter office.
    I’m very concerned about the parent that commented that Mrs. Lewis is a “person of character” scary!!!! I would bet that Mrs. Lewis actually bought that degree after questions started being asked and she was afraid she was going to get caught about lying about her Ph.D from Phoenix, which she never finished. Most of these diploma mill sites allow you to pick the date you want on your degree so it could be that she ordered after Dobo started asking questions in early June.
    For the sake of the students at the school I hope the board wakes up and hires a leader that kids can look to for leadership and view as a model of what they can aspire to with hard work and education. That person is clearly not Mrs. Lewis!

  4. Lewis has continued to say that her son volunteers doing the website work. Has she been caught in yet another big fat lie?

    • The two speakers identified in Nichole Dobo’s piece are both vendors rather than teachers on the payroll. To the best of my knowledge Mrs. Lewis’s son who controls the website for the school is a volunteer. Having said that I’ll probably find out now that he’s an officer in Educational Consulting!! Somehow nothing is what it seems at Pencader. Much like Alice in Wonderland!

  5. Harrie Ellen – as the board president until 6/1 wouldn’t you have known if her son was on they payroll? How could the school leader kept something like that from you?

    • I am absolutely confident that Mrs. Lewis’s son was not on the payroll, not as an employee and not as a vendor. If the consulting firm, Educational Consulting, was paying him for services rendered that was not part of Pencader’s finances and we had no reason to be aware of that. We were always told he was a volunteer. We (the School Leader and me) did not attend CBOC meetings. That group was designed to be totally independent of the Board. I believe however that Mrs. Lewis did attend on occasion but I never did.
      What can complicate the situation is that if the School Leader has information that should be shared with the Board she has to initiate the sharing. It is possible that the Board would not be aware of it. An example would be vendor contracts. After I resigned I saw online an RFP from Pencader School for a 3 year contract for Back Office Support. The Board was never made aware of that RFP. Decisions surrounding spending of school dollars are Board decisions not School Leader decisions. Therein lies much of Pencader’s problem. If the Board was advised last night about that RFP it is the first time they would have heard about it.
      So much of this can and does happen because Pencader has really poor By Laws and no Policy Manual. If you have individuals in place who take advantage of that you compound the problem. Those documents MUST be the two key issues for the new Board beginning on Day One and the duties and responsibilities of various key individuals must be spelled out clearly so that you don’t have a monarchy on your hands! “Dr.” could become “Your Majesty.”

      • Do you know if the DPAS information ever got to DOE or is Ann still making up some flim flam excuse for not having it available?

      • Mrs. Lewis told me that she took care of it all. Right now I am way far out of the loop so I don’t know.

  6. According to the meeting notes on the Pencader website, it doesn’t look like the CBOC met very often. The only information on the website says they met from September to November. A lot can happen after November. Was the implementation of the CBOC one of the requirements for Pencader to stay open? It doesn’t look like there has been any activity with it in over six months. That is not keeping on top of the finances of the school.

    • The CBOC committee met the fourth Wednesday of each month, of that I’m quite sure. Their minutes should be posted on the website each month. That is the responsibility of that committee.

      • I don’t see anything other than Sept-Nov on the website. I wonder with this was a breakdown in the CBOC committee or if Ann and her son decided not to post the information.

  8. This just gets worse and worse. How do we go about getting this information to the parents and general public? Those that do not read the blogs. This is horrible!

  9. I have considerable experience with auditing charter school checkbooks. At first glance- it appears there was a contractual sum of money that was the same amount paid – even though it was not paid on or around the same time each month- the amount was the same. That indicates a contract for services. The coding next to the amount says professional services. The amount was $6,450.32. There absolutely must be an invoice in the Pencader Office that details what those services are. Additionally- there should be some minutes at a Board Meeting where it is documented that the school is outsourcing some services. There is no excuse whats so ever for Ann to enter into a contract for services without sharing with the Board and the information being recorded in the minutes.

    The other amounts look like reimbursements for the same vendor that bought some “stuff” in the form of supplies and was reimbursed. Probably the phantom vendor produced a credit card receipt for some supplies and it was easier to reimbuse than wait for the long process of getting Staples orders approved off the state contract.

    If this company is truly located at Anne’s home address.. then it would seem that she has committed a crime. There is no provision for a school principal to conduct business out of their home. This ruling is part of the charter approval process and is/was clearly stated at various charter meetings. This provison is part of the standard template charter by laws and was clearly in the news when Anthony White was trying to do this kind of funny business.

    IF the company that was paid this dollar amount is located in Ann’s home there is absolutely positively no excuse -none. She should contact the State Audtior immediately, refund the money in exchange for his agreement not to prosecute. Anything else is fishy. There is no excuse for her husband or son to receive a penny of compensation for any services for any purpose at any time in any amount that is ethical or in some cases legal. There is no gray area here other than the remote possibility the Educational Consulting is a generic name and refers to some other company located somewhere else than in her home in Newark.. which I pray is the case.

    • It’s not a generic name, it’s the name of the company, certified by Delaware business incorporation website.

      This whole affair is tragically sad.

      • Did anyone check to see if this was the way her husband was compensated- as a consultant – since he was officially retired and collecting his pension. The regular amounts looked like fixed compensation- however she kept it under fifty thousand to avoid the requirement for a bid. Was he paid an amount on the payroll that was allowed under pension law and the balance as a consultant. Has anyone at Pencader looked for an invoice to determine who was paid for what services?

        I saw it on the Delaware Business website but I could find any information on the incorporation looking online- but it may be worth a visit to the basement of the Townsend Building to look up the incorporation details.

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