When School Superintendent Malcolm Thomas recommended that Escambia County School Board terminate the contracts for Newpoint Pensacola High and Newpoint Academy, his staff pointed out the poor record keeping for attendance as one issue among the litany of their problems.
Newpoint Education Partners has a sister company, Cambridge Education Group, that runs charter schools in Ohio. One of those schools, Invictus High in Cleveland, is lauded on NEP’s website as “12-month Turn-around” success.
NEP fails to mention that the Ohio’s state auditor this past fall found that the Invictus had overstated its attendance. Invictus High School had reported to that state enrolling 171 full-time equivalent students. However, the auditor’s staff found only 113 students signed in and signed out on the day of their visit last October 1.
The School Director said the discrepancy waslow due to a recent change in the school hours of operation and some students were boycotting the change. Also the school had a satellite location that may have not been included in the auditors’ count the week of October 1.
The Director provided sign in/out sheets for October 1, 2014 for both the main and satellite buildings. Based on these sheets, the Main building attendance was 54 and the satellite building attendance was 59 for a total of 113.
The state auditors of State’s office made an unannounced follow up visit on Wednesday, October 15, 2014. They performed head counts in both the morning and afternoon at the satellite location. The student count for both sessions totaled 54 students, five less students than sheets provided two weeks earlier.
For the record, the leadership team for Cambridge is the same for Newpoint:
John Stack
Cambridge, Executive Director; Newpoint, Vice President of Ohio Operations
David Stiles
Cambridge, Operations & Development; Newpoint, Vice President of Operations and Development
Carla Lovett
Cambridge, Curriculum & Instruction; Newpoint, Vice President of Curriculum and Instruction