Protect District Integrity and Taxpayer Funds: Demand Full Transparency in Foreign Partnerships

An audit into California’s Val Verde Unified School District has uncovered “serious concerns” about “fraud, misappropriation of funds, or other illegal fiscal practices” regarding its partnership with the Pegasus California School in China, Politico reports.
“Pegasus was seen as a way for Chinese students to access California’s public education system; the report noted that it guaranteed students acceptance to a top-100 American university or their money back,” writes Nicole Einbinder in a March 23 article.
The district, which has San Bernardino to its north and San Diego to its south, chose Pegasus in 2016 to be a “sister school” and began issuing diplomas to their graduates through a pilot program.
“The audit found that Val Verde improperly issued those diplomas and concluded there was no evidence that Pegasus students had satisfied course requirements and proficiency standards,” Einbinder explains.
Meanwhile, district teachers could come teach at the Chinese boarding school while “living in furnished apartments with benefits and the promise they could return to their U.S. jobs, the report said.”
Upon returning from these trips, these teachers had their salaries “improperly increased,” according to the audit.