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Failed Goodyear school loses charter after owner vanishes

A Goodyear charter school went belly up late last month, leaving more than 100 students without a school and teachers without jobs in the middle of the school year.

GOODYEAR, Ariz. - A Goodyear charter school that shut down suddenly two weeks ago formally had its state charter revoked Monday by the Arizona Board for Charter Schools, just eight months after the same board renewed the charter for 20 years despite the school's severe financial and academic problems.

The Discovery Creemos School went belly up late last month, leaving more than 100 students without a school and teachers without jobs in the middle of the school year.

EARLIER: Charter school's shutdown a warning to parents

School owner Daniel Hughes has vanished after businesses he controls pocketed almost $900,000 for school supplies in the most recent fiscal year, according to an audit and IRS tax filings.

Board President Kathy Senseman told 12 News Monday that the board's hands were tied last year when it approved the Discovery Creemos renewal application.

"We were in the process of reviewing that," Senseman said of an auditor's warning in January 2017 that the school could go out of business. "The charter is a contract ... so we can't just simply revoke that."

An audio recording of the board meeting last June showed just one member, Jim Swanson, chief executive officer of Phoenix-based builder Kitchell, raised questions about the school's financial failings.

"It seems like you have a very financially tenuous situation at your school," Swanson told Hughes at the meeting.

"What I see here is downward trends in a lot of categories."

Swanson cast a "reluctant yes" vote at that meeting to renew the school's charter.

The vote to revoke the charter Monday was a unanimous "yes."

Board member Erik Twist, chief innovation officer and senior vice president of Great Hearts Academies, recused himself from the discussion and left the meeting room.

Twist later told 12 News that his company has a financial interest in the Discovery Creemos' property.

Several jobless Discovery Creemos teachers who attended the meeting weren't impressed by Senseman's claim that the board tried to help them.

"Saying they're sorry today, it's a little too late," said Michelle Miller, who got a job at Creemos last summer, after the charter was renewed.

"We don't have jobs ... I can't get unemployment (because) I haven't worked here long enough ... It's impossible to get a teacher job right now."

The charter board said it handed information on Discovery Creemos to the Arizona attorney general's office. An AG's spokesperson declined to comment.

A representative of Arizona School Superintendent Diane Douglas said information had been referred to the U.S. Department of Education, because Discovery Creemos received federal dollars for low-income students.

Senseman said a bill before the Legislature could allow the board to speed up future investigations of failing schools.

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