}

Total Pageviews

Thursday, May 29, 2014

ANOTHER "SCOOP"! Just How Much Did Steven Ingersoll and Grand Traverse Academy's Kaye Mentley Make As "Consultants" To California's Great Valley Academy?

Take a guess, because it's probably more than the average Grand Traverse Academy teacher made in the last three years--combined!

Get out your waffle cones, because here comes another tale of "double-dipping".

In a post "National Bank of Steve?" that appeared May 6 on this blog, Miss Fortune exclusively that during the year Steven Ingersoll racked up nearly $29,000 in delinquent Bay City property taxes (2102), he was flush enough to loan $300,000 to a California charter school that had retained him and Grand Traverse Academy Superintendent Kaye Mentley as "development consultants".  

Although I'd expected that detailed financial disclosure information regarding Great Valley Academy's "consulting" expenditures for Ingersoll and Mentley could only be teased out of the Academy's audit reports, I was wrong.  

And while my request to the California Department of Education for copies of the GVA's financial audit reports has been processed and approved, I was able to locate the amount paid to Smart Schools Management, Inc. by the Great Valley Academy in a Form 990 filing.

And here it is! 

Shown below is an excerpt from GVA's June 2009 Board meeting minutes, with parent Jordan Visola's comment. She inquires about the "$110,000 fee for Smart Schools of Michigan", which turns out only to be a partial payment to Steven Ingersoll and Kaye Mentley.

During its fiscal year 2009 (from July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2009), the Great Valley Academy paid $147,427.00 to Ingersoll and Mentley via an entity described in the report as "Smart Schools of Michigan, Inc.".


A search of Michigan's official business entity/corporation database does not show an entity with that exact name, so it's likely to be an abbreviation.

After all, Ingersoll has plenty of "smart" names to chose from here in Michigan:

*Smart Schools Education, Inc.

*Smart Schools Foundation


*Smart Schools Management Of Bay City, LLC

*Smart Schools Management, Inc.

*Smart Schools North, LLC

*Smart Schools, Inc.
 

In addition, the GVA's founder Eldon Rosenow (like Ingersoll, an optometrist) was paid a whopping $335,163 in "consulting" fees.

A wise New Yorker once told me the definition of a "consultant": someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time...and then keeps the watch! 

Maybe "consultant" Steve Ingersoll can tell Miss Fortune why he filed paperwork with the State of Michigan on April 23--after he was federally indicted--to keep his "GTAS, LLC" shell corporation current.

You remember GTAS, LLC don't you?   

It was paid nearly $250,000 taxpayer dollars during the 2012/2013 school year to provide "janitorial services" for the Grand Traverse Academy.

Somebody get me a broom!




No comments:

Post a Comment