N.C. Charter Network Has Deep Ties With Founder’s Businesses

A nonprofit charter school group in southeastern North Carolina is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to lease buildings, furniture, and equipment from for-profit companies led by its founder, according to the Star News of Wilmington, N.C.

Documents provided to the newspaper by Charter Day School show it rents almost all its property and materials from education-management company Roger Bacon Academy and Coastal Habitat Conservancy, a school-supply firm. The businesses were incorporated by Baker Mitchell in 1999, four months before he founded the first of three Charter Day schools.

Mr. Mitchell serves as secretary of the board of trustees of the charter network, which is set to open a fourth school this fall. For the current school year, Charter Day institutions paid Roger Bacon Academy $1.5-million to lease buildings, and since at least late 2003 the school group has rented equipment, furniture, and computers from Coastal Habitat Conservancy under a series of two-year leases.

“It appears to be a closed loop of circulating money that all ends up in the management company Mr. Mitchell owns,” said Edward Pruden, the superintendent of schools in Brunswick County, N.C. The article does not include comments from Mr. Mitchell, his companies, or the charter network.