Starting tomorrow, an exclusive, three-part examination of the Bay City Academy's continuing relationship with convicted felon, Steven Ingersoll, debuts on this blog.
However, a look-back is a necessary foundation to understand what happened before and after Ingersoll was convicted in federal court on March 10, 2015.
BAY CITY ACADEMY 2013/2014 SCHOOL YEAR
Brian Lynch was hired by the Bay City Academy at the beginning of the 2013/2014 school year as an Education Consultant by its founder, Steven J. Ingersoll.
Lynch formerly taught at the Grand Traverse Academy between 2005-2012, also managed by Ingersoll, leaving to run a Farm Bureau Insurance office in Traverse City for roughly a year.
During the Academy's March 23, 2014 Board of Education meeting, the board members voted to remove Ingersoll as its President of Educational Services and appoint Lynch as the charter school's new "Superintendent and President of Instructional Services".
On April 11, 2014, Ingersoll, his wife Deborah Ingersoll, his brother Gayle Ingersoll, Roy Bradley, and Roy Bradley's wife, Tammy, were indicted for various crimes related to their alleged participation in a conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to commit tax evasion, wire fraud and tax evasion. The indictment alleged that Ingersoll and the four others named, diverted about $934,000 from the Bay City Academy's Madison Arts building construction/renovation project, converting it into personal income for Steven and Deborah Ingersoll.
A federal jury found Ingersoll guilty of three of the six criminal counts (two counts of attempting to evade or defeat tax and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States) on March 10, 2015; Roy Bradley was found guilty of the sole count he faced--conspiracy to defraud the United States.
BAY CITY ACADEMY 2014/2015 SCHOOL YEAR
Six weeks after Ingersoll's conviction, on April 29, 2015, the Bay City Academy announced in a news release that Mitten Educational Management, LLC, incorporated by Lynch and accountant Michael Randel on April 10, 2015, had been hired as the Academy's new management company.
With Lynch now running the management company, the Academy Board stated publicly it was considering Patrick Cleland as Interim Superintendent. Cleland had served as principal at the North Central Academy, the Bay City Academy's Mancelona campus, for three years.
Cleland's pending appointment was considered by Lynch a shoo-in (telling MLive, "It's his job to lose.").
However, Cleland spun out of contention after he was arrested on May 25, 2015 and charged with one count each of stalking and attempted possession of a controlled substance analogue. Cleland struck a plea deal, pleading guilty to the stalking charge in return for the drug possession charge being dismissed.
Kurt Grangood, Principal of the North Central Academy, served as Superintendent of the Bay City Academy for a single school year (2015/2016), earning a total compensation package of $39,820.
After dismissing Grangood, Brian Lynch (while simultaneously running the Bay City Academy's management company, and despite his failure to hold a valid Michigan School Administrator certificate as required by the Michigan School Code) appointed himself the Bay City charter school's new Superintendent.
However, Lynch had already been presenting himself as the "BCA School District Superintendent" as far back as January 27, 2016 (during Grangood's tenure in the job), when he signed a "Petition for Waiver of FCC Form 472 Filing Deadline for Funding Year 2014" sent to the Federal Communications Commission.
BAY CITY ACADEMY 2016/2017 SCHOOL YEAR
According to documents previously made public on the Bay City Academy's website (and subsequently replaced by misleading documents that claimed "Mr. Lynch does not receive a salary from the Bay City Academy") , Lynch paid himself the following annual compensation packages between 2016-2010:
2016/2017: $98,986.67
2017/2018: $102,444.00
2018/2019: $82,050
2019/2020: $82,050
Although prior disclosures, posted as required on the Bay City Academy's "Budget and Salary/Transparency Compensation Reporting" page previously included the actual figures shown above, the 2020/2021 school year report stated Lynch's annual Superintendent compensation as "$0".
Subsequent to my original downloads of Lynch's historic salary data, all previous versions of his salary disclosures have been scrubbed from the Bay City Academy's website, and replaced with the misleading "Compensation Package" disclosures showing Lynch's compensation as "$0".
The Bay City Academy's motto, "Actions over words, and service over self.", is a catchy slogan that has nothing in common with the self-dealing and suspect financial transactions I'll reveal, beginning tomorrow, Friday, August 27, exclusively on this blog.
Thank you Miss Fortune for showing again the true colors of all things Ingersoll, Noss and Lynch. It is really "SELF Over Service." No question about it. More people should know so that the whole empire collapses.
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