Charter founder's pension benefits cut

Eighteen months after Pennsylvania's retirement system began investigating Dorothy June Brown for collecting full-time salaries from two charter schools, Brown's pension benefits have been slashed.

The state Public School Employees' Retirement System (PSERS) has informed Brown that her monthly benefit is being cut from $14,150 to $3,254 - a 77 percent drop.

Ruling that Brown had provided incomplete and conflicting information, the system wiped out all employment credit she had claimed since July 2004.

The information was contained in an Oct. 14 letter to Brown, who founded three traditional charter schools in Philadelphia and the Agora Cyber Charter School in Devon. The Inquirer obtained a copy after filing a request under the state Right-to-Know Law.

Brown, 72, has appealed. She disputes the findings and says she is entitled to the pension, which is partly based on her 19.3 years of service as a Philadelphia School District administrator.

"They are going to end up paying me my money," she said recently. "PSERS owes me money."

Evelyn Tatkovski, a spokeswoman for the retirement system, could not say how often the state takes such actions. She said the agency must follow the retirement law and cut benefits "if a benefit was improperly paid to a member."

Employees at most of the 127 publicly funded charter schools statewide participate in PSERS.

Brown founded three traditional charter schools in Philadelphia: Laboratory in Northern Liberties and Overbrook, which opened in 1998; Ad Prima in Kensington, which opened in 2004; and Planet Abacus in Tacony, which opened in 2007. She also founded the Agora Cyber Charter School in Devon, which opened in 2005.

Previously, she established Main Line Academy, a private school for students with learning disabilities.

Both Laboratory and Ad Prima have been named "blue ribbon" schools by the U.S. Department of Education for superior student achievement.

Brown retired from the school district on June 30, 1993, and began collecting pension benefits, Tatkovski said.

After obtaining the charter for Laboratory, Brown returned to active employment June 1, 1998, records show.

Brown retired from Laboratory and Ad Prima on Oct. 1, 2008, and began receiving a monthly benefit of $14,150, PSERS records show. Since then, she has collected $169,801.

In response to inquiries from the retirement system, Brown documented that starting with the 2004-05 school year she worked a total of 53 hours a week as CEO of Laboratory and Ad Prima with a final average salary of $322,093 for both schools.

But the state found that Brown also was employed by, or consulted with, "a number of other entities."

As The Inquirer has reported, Brown was paid $158,692 in 2004-05 and $217,390 in 2007-08 to run Main Line Academy, federal tax records show. The state alleges she also received compensation from Cynwyd Group L.L.C., a management firm she owns that had a contract to help operate the Agora Cyber Charter.

As part of its ruling, the pension system computed that Brown had been overpaid by $127,850. The new, $3,254 rate reflects a monthly deduction of $942 to repay those funds.