Charter school director to work for contractor

BOISE — The director of Idaho’s first computer-based public charter school has resigned to work for the contractor she helped select to supply the school’s multimillion-dollar curriculum.

Janet Aikele’s move to director for Families and Children with K12 Inc. was announced Monday by the Idaho Virtual Academy’s board chairman David Gencarella in a statement. She told the school’s board of trustees in mid-May that she accepted the job with the company run by former U.S. Education Secretary Bill Bennett, according to the resignation letter provided by K12 spokesman Jeff Kwitowski.

“The question becomes whether people are acting in the interest of the people of the state of Idaho or acting in their own self-interest,” Senate Education Chairman Gary Schroeder of Moscow, Idaho, said Tuesday.

Aikele two months ago persuaded state lawmakers to pay an extra $3.2 million to K12 to cover additional curriculum charges imposed for the 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 school years.

That is on top of the more than $4 million a year the academy was already obligated to pay the company, which finances the salaries of the director and some other administrators.

Aikele did not return telephone calls for comment, but Gencarella rejected any suggestion of impropriety.

She will be replaced as academy director by Cody Claver, who has been an administrator in the Idaho Falls School District.

Kwitowski declined to disclose Aikele’s salary in her new job promoting the K12 curriculum nationally. He said only that it was comparable to the $84,500 she was being paid to run the academy.

Schroeder promised legislation next winter to stop what he called a revolving door of state employees to more lucrative jobs with companies they previously oversaw. Aikele is the state’s second education official to take a job with a contractor.

Randy Thompson, the State Board of Education’s chief academic officer and promoter of a plan to certify public school teachers solely on the basis of a computer test, resigned in May to become an executive with the company marketing the tests.

Senate President Pro Tem Robert Geddes of Soda Springs conceded the timing may look bad, but he said Aikele had confided to him last winter that she may have become so controversial in the charter school debate that she should step aside.

“So this may have been in the works for a long time,” Geddes said.

The Legislature last winter required charter school officials to abide by the same ethics and accountability standards governing board members for traditional public schools.

Support came after loopholes in the original charter school law were exposed through several incidents, including one where charter school board members in Pingree approved contracts between themselves and the school and another where a charter school manager in Moscow paid her husband to do work for the school.