A new $25 million grant paid for by criminal fines from the landmark A3 charter school fraud case will benefit San Diego County’s K-12 students, the district attorney announced Friday, nearly four years after the case was resolved. The leaders of the A3 network of mostly online charter schools wer e charged in 2019 with a scheme that prosecutors said relied on faking student enrollment and attendance to defraud the state of hundreds of millions of dollars. They pleaded guilty and paid restitution by 2022.  “The funds will strengthen and expand access to mental health, the safety of our kids, their wellness, their educational supports that they need for K-12 students and to support those most vulnerable kids — who are in our foster care system, or also kids who are living out of cars, in encampments on our streets that are homeless,” said District Attorney Summer Stephan. The judge overseeing the A3 case had previously ordered a portion of funds to be paid to the county and put in a trust fund for K-12 students. The Board of Supervisors approved the $25 million for the County Office of Education and its program. Previously, $6 million was disbursed in smaller amounts to 47 different providers, Stephan said. Those initial grants informed consideration of opportunities for a coordinated and regional approach, which led to the planned initiative by the County Office of Education. “So far, a lot has been done with these monies, but this is the biggest investment that’s being made,” Stephan said. Gloria Ciriza, the county’s superintendent of schools, said her office’s initiative has three goals: expand its community schools approach, with priority given to the county’s high-needs and high-priority schools; strengthen partnerships with schools, county agencies and community groups; and develop an evaluation framework to assess the work’s impact. The result would be “integrated services that make a real difference for our students and families,” she said. Progress will be monitored using student well-being scores, state survey data, academic achievement and more — including tools “we haven’t yet designed,” Ciriza added. “But aside from that is also some soft data that we look at, which is: How well do our families and students feel comfortable, feel seen, feel valued?” she said.  Logan Mabe, a foster parent who spoke at Friday’s press conference, said the proposal begins with asking people in school communities what they need, and that the program will help equip educators to help students. “So many of our kids need that trauma-informed care, support and understanding,” he said.  Former A3 charter school leader Jason Schrock (middle) sits with his defense team while being sentenced in court for his part in a fraud scheme at San Diego Superior Court on Friday, Sept. 10, 2021, in San Diego. (Jarrod Valliere / The San Diego Union-Tribune) The yearslong A3 case remains one of California largest charter school fraud cases and is still prompting oversight reform efforts, seven years after the network’s leaders were indicted. According to prosecutors, Sean McManus and Jason Schrock led a statewide scheme from 2016 to 2019 to defraud the state of $400 million, spending $50 million in public money for personal use. Prosecutors said they falsely enrolled students and manipulated attendance and enrollment to get more money per student than they were supposed to. The defendants pleaded guilty in the case, which took three years to prosecute, and were ordered to pay the county $37.5 million in fines and restitution. McManus was sentenced to four years in prison in 2021. Schrock was given credit for more than two years under house arrest. A third defendant, Steven Van Zant — who provided back-office services for A3 and was the former superintendent of Mountain Empire Unified School District — was sentenced in 2022 to home confinement. Since then, San Diego County prosecutors have been among those calling most loudly for stronger state oversight, pointing out to lawmakers and education leaders how A3’s operators exploited gaps in state law and policy. Deputy District Attorney Leon Schorr, who led the A3 prosecution, was among them. “My frustration is that we just really haven’t seen many changes at all,” Schorr told The San Diego Union-Tribune two years ago. A task force ordered by a judge in the A3 case — which Schorr helped lead — urged similar reforms, zeroing in on shortcomings in the state’s requirements for charter-school audits. Among the issues San Diego County prosecutors have said the case raised: Schools are allowed to hire their own auditors — in A3’s case, school leaders fired one that raised concerns about its financial practices, then chose a new one that found its operations were compliant. But efforts to enact tougher oversight have stalled in Sacramento. On Friday, Stephan said that, as a result of the A3 case, her office is working with the state to make structural changes but has been frustrated by auditors’ failures. “They’re not actually auditing,” she said. “They’re just looking at whatever fake information is being given to them.” ...read more read less