Why this case is important and why I care:

Buried in the A section in last week's paper.

This case was supposed to be the showcase in the government's pursuit of bad charter operators. There are so many loopholes in charter operating law in PA that it's basically a license to steal if you are the "opportunistic" sort. The intent of this show trial was to nail her ass and bring all the other bad operators to the table for plea bargains. Hers was the biggest, most egregious instance of fraud. $6.3M of taxpayer funds channeled by falsified documents and shell companies into her own pocket. She created a sort of charter mafia, complete with dummy and puppet boards to do her bidding.

A string of cases was supposed to follow. Well, it didn't work out the way the US prosecutors hoped. They presented a clear line of forensic audits and established enough probably cause to convince 9 jurors of her guilt. Sorry, but it takes 12. Jury nullification along racial lines. But the government was undeterred and is seeking to retry the case. This is when this smooth operator supposedly began to develop dementia. Now 77 is an age where one is surely at risk for dementia, but I have to say that it was damned good timing.

The question I have Martha​, is that if she is declared incompetent, does she get to keep all the money? How much, if any, can the taxpayers of PA expect to get back? I've said it before, "Crazy like a fox."

After a long grassroots battle by parents to acquire a voice and find leadership not connected to her, the school's board of trustees hired as CEO, an insider, a man who was tried, but found innocent of fraud. I believe that educational leaders should be held to a higher standard, but I guess I was in the minority. I consider this a failure and a net loss of all I and some other "unaligned" parents worked so hard for. But my boy has moved on and so have I.

The school itself is an island of education excellence. My son did well there. He's moved on to another school and that is where our focus lies. Increasingly, I've learned that even a quality education looks like sausage. You don't want to see how it's made.