How a couple worked California charter school regulations to make millions

LOS ANGELES - The warning signs appeared soon after Denise Kawamoto accepted a job at Today's Fresh Start Charter School in South Los Angeles.

Though she was fresh out of college, she was pretty sure it wasn't normal for the school to churn so quickly through teachers or to mount surveillance cameras in each classroom. Old computers were lying around, but the campus had no internet access. Pay was low and supplies scarce - she wasn't given books for her students.

She struggled to reconcile the school's conditions with what little she knew about its wealthy founders, Clark and Jeanette Parker of Beverly Hills.

When Kawamoto saw their late-model Mercedes-Benz outside the school, she would think: "Look at your school, then look at what you drive."

"That didn't sit well with us teachers," she said.

The Parkers have cast themselves as selfless philanthropists, telling the California Board of Education that they have "devoted all of our lives to the education of other people's children, committed many millions of our own dollars directly to that particular purpose, with no gain directly to us."

But the couple have, in fact, made millions from their charter schools. Financial records show the Parkers' schools have paid more than $800,000 annually to rent buildings the couple own. The charters have contracted out services to the Parkers' nonprofits and companies and paid Clark Parker generous consulting fees, all with taxpayer money, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.

Presented with The Times' findings, the Parkers did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

How the Parkers have stayed in business, surviving years of allegations of financial and academic wrongdoing, illustrates glaring flaws in the way California oversees its growing number of charter schools.

Many of the people responsible for regulating the couple's schools, including school board members and state elected officials, had accepted thousands of dollars from the Parkers in campaign contributions.

Like other charter operators who have run into trouble, the Parkers were able to appeal to the state Board of Education when they faced the threat of being shut down; the panel is known for overturning local regulators' decisions. A Times analysis of the state board's decisions has found that, over the last five years, it has sided with charters over local school districts or county offices of education in about 70% of appeals.

California law also enables troubled charter operators to escape sanction or scrutiny by moving to school districts more willing to accept them. The Parkers have used this to their advantage,