School's Out for Latest Foreclosure Victim
Florida charter school is evicted from its campus with luxe car in parking lot.
April 15, 2009— <br/> North Lauderdale, Fla. -- The cobalt blue Rolls Royce had been carefully nosed into a parking space at a strip mall converted into an elementary school called the Charter School Institute.
A private lender had evicted the school from its Hallandale, Fla., campus Monday, changing the locks on the doors. Joseph Valbrun, the school's founder and proud owner of the Rolls he says he bought for a song from retired NBA player Alonzo Mourning, was $300,000 behind on the school's mortgage payments. So Tuesday, the school's depleted student body of 13 students -- down from 40 at its peak -- either didn't show up or were bused to its sister campus 18 miles away in North Lauderdale.
"There's no excuse to be behind on those payments ... the [Charter School Institute] board did not fulfill their responsibility," said Luwando Wright-Hines, director of charter school support for Broward County.
The town of Hallandale had also placed a $1.5 million lien on the school for dozens of unpaid fines that included fire and safety violations, dating to 2006. "They never paid any of them," Mayor Joy Cooper said of the school whose enrollment has waned.
Of the U.S. schools hit with such a foreclosure in the past decade, most have been charters, according to one education consultant.
In Hallandale, the town had been interested in the school's property and when it heard the school might land in foreclosure, it investigated. But the obstacles began mounting. The school couldn't validate ownership, and the buildings were crumbling. "The stack of documents outlining the violations is literally 12 inches high," Cooper said.
They include fines for exposed electrical outlets, a roof in chronic disrepair and the construction of various driveways, patios and rooms without permits.
"I was aghast because we tried everything possible to keep the school," she said. But [Valbrun] kept business as usual, never paying those fines."
The oddest thing, she noted, is that "not a single parent called us to complain that the school closed."
Valbrun declined to be interviewed, instead referring ABC News to Donna Thornton, an energetic principal at another charter school, working as an ombudsman of sorts, tasked with streamlining school expenditures.
