I forget how that saying goes, and it looks like Marva Dennard, the owner of local charter school Bishop Academy II, did too. I’m sure it was totally just a mistake in bookkeeping, but unfortunately the flattering photo at right seems to indicate she might have been recently arrested for grand theft in excess of $100,000. Oops! Time to find a new accountant!

Wait a second, there are a few more details in the story here… oh no. No no no. Marva, you didn’t! You stole $256,897 in scholarship money intended for low income and disabled students? Marva!

It looks like she defrauded the Department of Education out of the $256,897 by inflating student numbers, submitting scholarship applications with false tuition prices and submitting inflated fee schedules. Creative, I must admit, but also pretty clearly illegal. As it seems to be the case with every story we cover here, this requires a “but wait, there’s more!” Marva was smart enough to publicly appear as a well known community activist here in the ‘burg. Hell, she ran for city council! That certainly makes it hard for people to accuse you of any wrongdoing. But dammit, people, check the facts.

Rewind back to 2004 when Marva was arrested on charges of child abuse. Take note of the line about her stepping down at the end of that year, wonder how that worked out for her. Rewind a bit more to 2002 and this story examining both Bishop Academy II and Bethel Metropolitan Christian Academy and their sort of shady practice of being church-affiliated schools paid for by taxpayer money. Hmm… odd, sounds a lot like the source of the crime in question. Rewind a tad more to 1998 and this Time Magazine story about Rev. Henry Lyons, minister of St. Petersburg’s Bethel Metropolitan Baptist Church (yup, the folks that started the Christian Academy) and the 82-page arrest affidavit full of charges of racketeering and grand theft. Of particular interest is the quote from one Marva Dennard, “a Bethelite and Lyons supporter.” Gee, where in the world could she have gotten that idea of starting a charter school to swipe state money with?