$1.6 Million Paid To Hutchings' Private Company
$1.6 Million Paid To Hutchings' Private Company
St. Johns Classical Academy Pays Company 10 Percent of All Funds Received
Updated 7:45 p.m. to make corrections regarding who recruited whom to the founding board and some timeline issues.
Tax Collector Diane Hutchings has made a career of being a public official. In 2016, she swooped into the charter school scene, getting involved in creating St Johns Classical Academy. Her involvement has led to a private company that she managed being paid $1.6 million from the school.
St. Johns Classical Academy (SJCA) is a (public) Charter School in Clay County. Founded in 2017, it was formed amid the sentiment that conventional public schools were not meeting the needs of all students.
The complicated series of events that brought the school into being involved some well-known names in Clay County. Hutchings is one of the most prominent. She volunteered to be a founding member of SJCA’s board but stepped down to create a consulting company called Ancora Management. Ancora quickly won a contract with the school.
Alan Stevenson, a retired Navy and commercial pilot, was instrumental in developing the school's original concept and writing the application for charter to the School Board. Stevenson had dreamed of starting a classical charter school in the county to provide a more comprehensive learning environment for county children.
Diane Hutchings had asked Stevenson and two others to join the founding board. Hutchings resigned from the board prior to the School Board vote to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, Stevenson said. Clay County School Board member Ashley Gilhousen is Hutching’s daughter. The charter was approved, 3-2.
Soon afterward, Hutchings was restored to the SJCA board, and she lead board in its ouster of Stevenson. “I just can’t work with you,” Stevenson quoted Hutchings as saying. The issue of outside management was never raised while Stevenson was on the board. His opinion is that the board had forced him out because he would not have supported outside management, Stevenson said.
SJCA uses the Hillsdale curriculum, and it is rare for any Hillsdale school to employ an outside management company to manage operations and administration. The Hillsdale model calls for a governing board and “strong headmaster” and does not typically support management from consultants.
Details surrounding Ancora Management are scarce, but according to the company’s Sunbiz.org filings, Diane Hutchings and Amy Miller are registered contacts for the business and are listed as managers.
Hutchings was elected to the full-time job of Tax Collector in 2020 and was re-elected this year after running unopposed. It is unclear how much time, if any, Hutchings spends away from the responsibilities of her elected office to co-manage Ancora.
Clay News & Views contacted Miller and Hutchings in June regarding Ancora and its contract with St. Johns Classical Academy. As of the time this story was published, neither have responded to our emails.
Ancora’s contract with the school outlines that Ancora will manage the following:
Hiring and development of staff
Building maintenance
Grounds maintenance
Records management and retention
Student recruitment
Ancora is entitled to 10 percent of the school's revenue for these duties and those listed in the contract. SJCA also provides office space to Ancora.
Since Ancora is a private, for-profit LLC, its tax and financial disclosures to the state are not public records. It is unclear how much of the money given to Ancora is used to fulfill their contractual obligations and how much is left over. It is also unclear how much Miller and Hutchings are paid, though Hutchings Form 6 filings report that she has received $5,000 annually from Ancora.
Charter Schools in Florida have been a hot-button issue since their inception, and one of the main arguments against them was the opportunity for public tax dollars to be funneled into the pockets of private corporations such as Ancora.
The more I read the article on St. Johns Classical Academy the more disturbing it becomes.
Hutchings got off the board because she knew Janice Kerekes and Tina Bullock would vote against the school. If her daughter had abstained from voting due to a conflict of interest, the vote would have been 2 to 2. The result—no charter school. Instead, it was 3-2. What a joke of a vote.
So, she got off and got back on after the vote. She set her daughter up to ensure the” yea” vote. In my opinion, what they did was dishonest. They both should be ashamed. Cheating is cheating. So, where else might Hutchings be cheating?????
The irony is that these are excerpts from the school’s Mission and Vision. Virtues are discussed everywhere on the site.
Mission - “We are building intelligent, virtuous American citizens”.
Vision – “. . . taught the benefits of virtuous character”.
Good character and virtues must be important and apply to everyone but Hutchings. She is not a good role model to be touting virtues. Maybe she doesn't believe in practicing what you preach.
Ancora Management LLC was designed to be Diane Hutchings's cash cow.
The real question is, how much did consultant Hutchings make personally? Why would the school spend $1.6 million on a consultant to perform tasks such as hiring and developing staff, building maintenance, grounds maintenance, records management and retention, and student recruitment, when these functions could and should have been handled by either paid employees or external contractors directly? This expenditure paid to Ancora is absurd.
Every invoice received from Ancora Management LLC should include an itemized statement of every expenditure—who was paid, the date, how much, and for what service. Anything less than this is bad financial accounting.
Lastly, the state of Florida governs public records management and retention. Why would any public entity give that task to an outsider? The rules are clear in the State of Florida GENERAL RECORDS SCHEDULE GS1-SL FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES EFFECTIVE: August 2020 Rule 1B-24.003(1)(a), Florida Administrative Code Florida Department of State Division of Library and Information Services Tallahassee, Florida 850.245.6750 recmgt@dos.myflorida.com info.florida.gov/records-management.
Once your record management system is in place, it doesn’t require much afterward. A competent college student could have set them up.
Have you seen the buildings that are part of the schools parcel on Kingsley Ave? Disgusting. And to think prior to the new school just starting it’s 2nd year here in the town of orange park, the government in control NEVER did anything to make sure our visual life was fed. Our little town that has been allowed to become old and worn by the few that control our towns money. OUR TAX DOLLARS. That school never had a traffic study prior to the first year of opening. It is still a mess. No sidewalks were ready for the kids to walk home. No proper crosswalks…. And the excuse is always placed on others…. Kingsley is a state road, we don’t have control….. All sorts of excuses. Never accountable for anything. It seems to me clay countys government knows just how far they can go to push the rules, and they do. It is not for the people. It is for the few. Perfect example with this story. So so so sad. Thank you Mr Allen for more awareness.