Felon works as chief of D.C. charter school

The principal of the District’s oldest charter school is a convicted felon with a lengthy record of arrests and was on probation in June when he took charge of the school, according to court records reviewed by The Washington Times.

Clarence Edward Dixon, principal of Options Public Charter School on Capitol Hill, was rejected by D.C. public schools as an applicant for a school administrator position in 2000 because of an extensive criminal record, a school official said.

Instead, Mr. Dixon ended up at Options two years after he was released from federal prison in Kentucky for committing almost $40,000 in credit-card fraud, an amount he continues to pay off as part of a court-ordered restitution, federal court documents show. His probation on that conviction ended in July last year.

Before being hired to head Options, Mr. Dixon worked as a special education teacher for Prince George’s County public schools and as the principal at Raymond A. Rogers Jr. School, also known as Edgemeade, a nonprofit private school in Upper Marlboro for troubled boys.

Staff members at Options said they had been suspicious of the principal since he joined the school last summer.

“I saw the [court-ordered monitoring] bracelet, but he just said it was from an old DWI [driving while intoxicated] charge that caught up with him,” one former staff member said. “Obviously, [Options management company] Chancellor Beacon didn’t check.” Criminal-record checks conducted by The Times turned up no drunken-driving arrests or convictions.

Chancellor Beacon Academies Inc. is a private company based in Coconut Grove, Fla., that manages 81 public charter and private day schools in eight states. The company operates two public charter schools in the District. Chancellor hired Mr. Dixon and pays him about $75,000 annually, school officials estimated, to run the school, which was chartered in 1996 and has 148 students in grades five to eight.

“If this is true, my issue is, how in the world could this happen?” Vickie Frazier-Williams, vice president of communications at Chancellor, said after being told of the criminal charges. “We don’t hire people without checking their background thoroughly. And we don’t hire people with [criminal] records.”

Ms. Frazier-Williams contacted The Times later to say that the company had decided to put Mr. Dixon on administrative leave pending an internal investigation of the principal’s background.

The Washington Times first reported last week that school staffers at Options had complained that Mr. Dixon improperly instructed them to continue coaching students on test-taking during a period of standardized testing three weeks ago. The matter is being investigated by the D.C. Board of Education’s charter school oversight agency.

Mr. Dixon and Charles Vincent, president of Option’s board of directors, denied any cheating on the tests.

“There was no wrongdoing,” Mr. Dixon said during a board meeting Monday night. “That issue has been resolved.”

Mr. Dixon, reached by telephone Tuesday, declined to speak to The Times about his criminal record, directing inquiries to Greenbelt lawyer David Alexander, “a friend of the family.”

Mr. Alexander also declined to comment. “I never talk about my clients in the media,” he said. “My statement is no statement.”

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