Crooked Principal Does Consulting Work For Imagine Me Leadership Charter School

The nice thing about charter schools is that no matter what kind of crime you do, they'll hire you.

Case in point, the charter support network that hired a financial officer who was still on probation for bank theft who then stole over two hundred grand from them

Or the former DOE principal fired for fraudulent activity and theft who does consulting work with the Imagine Me Leadership Charter School:

NEW YORK CITY — The executive of an educational consulting firm who was banned from working for the Department of Education in 2009 has been working at a charter school in East New York since winter.

George Leonard, who runs an nonprofit consulting firm called Friends of Bedford, has been contracted at the Imagine Me Leadership Charter School in Brooklyn even though he was barred from working for the city school system four years ago for misuse of funds while principal of Bedford Academy High School.

Leonard had been declared ineligible to work for the DOE following a 2009 investigation that found he used thousands of dollars to pay the salaries of employees who were not qualified to be regular DOE employees.

In 2011, Leonard's Friends of Bedford billed the DOE for $59,000 for professional development and tutoring services it provided Brownsvile’s Mott Hall Bridges Academy, which drew criticism from city investigators who claimed the DOE was not doing enough to prevent blacklisted firms from obtaining contracts.

Sources at the school said its new director, Katherine Corbett, took over during the winter and hired Leonard's firm. They said Corbett essentially started her own LLC, which the charter school pays, then she pays Leonard's firm. The teachers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, shared documents relating to the school with the Friends of Bedford logo on it, in addition to memos from school officials where Leonard is CC'd.

Teachers at the school have been disgruntled since receiving letters in April saying they were being fired at the end of the year and they would have to reapply for their jobs.

The Department of Education had no comment when asked whether contractors on its banned list were eligible to work for charter schools.

So teachers who have done nothing wrong are being indiscriminately fired from the Imagine Me Leadership Charter School while the crooked former principal, barred from working with regular DOE schools, and the crooked leader of the charter school have some kind of quid pro quo going on there.

That's the wonder of the charter school industry in a nutshell - corruption, theft, fraud, arrogance and teacher attrition all tied up in one neat little bundle.