Small Houston charter school pays top dollar to leader, owns luxury condo

Jacob Carpenter:

For more than a decade, the leaders of Accelerated Intermediate Academy have run their small Houston charter school on a lean budget, paying teachers below-average salaries and educating kids in modest facilities resembling portable trailers.

At the same time, the school’s superintendent, Kevin Hicks, has drawn an annual salary of about $250,000 – a seemingly outsized sum given its roughly 275 students and 20 employees. The school is also sitting on a condo appraised at $450,000 and recently reported $12.5 million in cash reserves, records show.

“Wow. He definitely could have put more into the school,” Kennessa Johnson, a former teacher at the charter, said of Hicks. “It was extremely basic in the school. There weren’t even any windows.”

The school’s spending has raised questions about the management of the southwest Houston charter, which has received more than $55 million in taxpayer dollars since opening in 2001, a Houston Chronicle investigation has found.