Letter: Antioch Unified School District Should Investigate East Bay Tech Academy Charter Schools

The following Letter to the Editor was submitted by Kipp Penovich

Dear Editor:

It has come to light that the conditions under which the East Bay Tech Academy charter school petitions were submitted to the Antioch Unified Board of Education were fraudulent. In response to this, the Board of Education has issued a Notice of Violation to EBTA. They should continue to look into this matter to find the truth regarding the submission of these petitions.

One of the points that concerned the Board of Education was the idea that these schools were not truly local initiatives, but that they were initiated by Clayton Valley Charter High School. During board discussion, it was stated by the petitioners and their supporters that there was no connection to CVCHS in what they were proposing with their petitions. That has turned out to be untrue.

1. The petitioners for the East Bay Tech Academy schools, Megan Moilanen and Bill Morones, are Clayton Valley Charter High School administrators. According to comments that were made at the last Board of Education meeting, they are no longer associated with the schools. So, within 5 months, the two people who led the charge to establish these schools no longer are part of them. They both are still employed at CVCHS. Were they ever serious about leaving CVCHS to be part of EBTA?
2. In the charter petitions, the charter management organization named to operate the EBTA schools is East Bay Tech Academies- Antioch. This corporation was formed by Megan Moilanen on 12/28/2017. This corporation is still active. Ms. Moilanen is still its primary agent. This is similar to what Mr. Linzey did when he tried to create a Clayton Valley Charter Tech Academy through the county Office of Education in the fall of 2016. He created his own charter management company, Bay Area Charter Schools, to try and mask his involvement in all of it.
3. In a letter from Mr. Linzey to Jeff Belle, it shows that these charter petitions were initiated and developed by CVCHS, and it was subsequently shown by an investigation carried out by the county Office of Education that CVCHS funds were spent for legal fees related to the EBTA schools.

The Board of Education and the residents of Antioch deserve to know the truth about the EBTA petitions and where they came from. The Antioch area was targeted by people who are not Antioch residents to try and pull public funds away from the Antioch Unified School District.

Here are some questions that I think should be answered:

What was the motivation for Ms. Moilanen to establish her corporation? Or, at whose suggestion did she do that?

The charter petitions total almost 1,000 pages. When did Ms. Moilanen and Mr. Morones find time to put all this together while they were both full time administrators at CVCHS? If they didn’t put the petitions together, who did?

What is the present status/intention of Ms. Moilanen’s corporation? Does she plan to continue with it? Who are its board of directors that are mentioned in the articles of incorporation?

Is she still operating the EBTA schools? If not, who has taken her place as the operator of the EBTA schools?

Kipp Penovich