BAY CITY ACADEMY'S MANAGEMENT COMPANY PARTNER & SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT BRIAN LYNCH COMPLETED HIS MASTERS DEGREE IN 2016...SO WHY DID HE WAIT UNTIL HE WAS CAUGHT IN 2021 TO APPLY FOR HIS SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR CERTIFICATION? (Here's A Hint: Avoiding The REP To Continue The Double-Dip)

So why did Brian Lynch, who'd completed his Grand Valley State University Masters degree in 2016, wait until he was under investigation by the Michigan Department of Education's Certification Compliance team to apply for School Administrator certification?

Lynch, lacking the required certification, became Superintendent of the Bay City Academy at the beginning of the 2016/2017 school year.

According to disclosure documents previously posted on the Academy's website, Lynch earned an annual salary/benefits package ranging from $82,550 to $102,440 for the years between 2016-2019.

And while Lynch's annual compensation packages were subsequently scrubbed from the Academy's "transparency reporting" tab and replaced with this blatantly misleading statement (AKA "lie"), using the previously-disclosed actual financials, Lynch likely averaged upwards of $90,000 per year in salary/benefits compensation during the five years in question.

In addition to a management contract paying Lynch and his Mitten Educational Management business partner, Michael Randel, nine percent of the Bay City Academy's annual revenue, Brian Lynch (in my opinion) fraudulently extracted an additional $450,000 between the 2016-2020 school years from the charter school founded by convicted felon Steven Ingersoll.

A clue that could answer the "why did he wait" question can be found in this MDE email response, generated by my August 9, 2021 inquiry initiating the Lynch investigation:

Lynch may have avoided obtaining the required School Administrator Certificate, and a listing in the Michigan Department of Education's Registry of Personnel (and a pesky audit), simply to continue the grift.

And even though the Bay City Academy is under supervision by the Michigan Treasury, Lynch still managed to drain a mid-six figure amount from a school that was experiencing "rapidly deteriorating financial circumstances".

Previously undetected by anyone responsible for oversight, the cash is now out of the bag .

Although "Superintendent" Lynch was the longtime "face" of the Bay City Academy's Facebook page, (shown above from August 14, 2021) in mid-August his image was replaced with one featuring the Academy's first graduating class and the slogan "Actions over words, service over self".

I'm guessing Lynch would have crafted a much different slogan...maybe recognizing the near-daily glut of fundraising.