OKLAHOMA CITY — An investigation of Epic Charter School’s finances determined inexplicably poor budget management, misguided enrollment projections, a lack of transparency and too few questions asked all contributed to a fiscal crisis last school year.
The Statewide Charter School Board heard the investigation results on Monday after calling for the probe in July. The board ordered the forensic audit after Epic carried out two rounds of mass layoffs and other major cuts to avoid insolvency during the 2025 fiscal year.
Investigators from the accounting firm Carr, Riggs & Ingram LLC said they found no evidence of embezzlement.
Rather, the audit found Epic administrators placed too much faith in a flawed enrollment projection model and overestimated their 2024-25 school year student count. A public school’s enrollment is typically the top factor that determines its annual funding.
Epic then hired far too many employees and aggressively added facilities that its revenues couldn’t support, said Ben Kincaid, a financial forensics expert from Carr, Riggs & Ingram.
Epic’s former superintendent, Bart Banfield, didn’t carry out a cost-benefit analysis of the extra expenses, and the school’s governing board didn’t ask enough questions, Kincaid said when presenting the investigation’s findings to the statewide board on Monday.
Instead, he said too much independent control of the budgeting process rested with Jeanise Wynn, Epic’s former assistant superintendent of finance. Investigators were unable to explain some of Wynn’s budget projections, particularly her expectation of a $60.4 million carryover balance from Fiscal Year 2024 into Fiscal Year 2025.
“So, we have the CFO winging it, and then a superintendent who really wasn’t as engaged as he should have been,” statewide board Chairperson Brian Shellem said during the meeting.
Investigators interviewed Wynn and learned she kept a private budget that Epic’s school board and several fellow administrators had not seen, according to Kincaid’s report. Investigators were unable to schedule an interview with Banfield, Kincaid said.
Both Banfield and Wynn resigned last year. Oklahoma Voice was unable to reach either for comment.
Epic recently hired a new superintendent, Shaun Ross, from Oklahoma City Public Schools, and revamped its financial department.
“I don’t know a lot of the answers to these questions that came up,” Ross told the statewide board. “What I can assure you, on behalf of the board of Epic, on behalf of the staff of Epic, on behalf of myself, we are going to make corrective actions.”
With 28,500 students, Epic is the state’s largest virtual charter school and the third-largest public school district in Oklahoma.
The school eliminated 144 jobs and implemented pay cuts in October 2024 after enrollment came in 4,000 students below administrators’ projections. Those cuts weren’t enough to account for all the new employees hired for the 2024-25 school year, Kincaid said.
Epic then laid off another 357 administrators and teachers in June, slashed several programs and closed multiple in-person learning centers to avoid a budget shortfall. It also had to take out a $30 million line of credit to ensure it could cover its financial obligations over the summer when public schools receive no state funding.
The most urgent issues still facing Epic, the audit found, are a lack of budget oversight and documentation to explain budget changes. The school also should have an internal auditor on staff, investigators found.
“Our team will be actively involved in ensuring Epic fully addresses all findings and the risks that still exist,” said Rebecca Wilkinson, executive director of the Statewide Charter School Board.
Republished in partnership with Oklahoma Voice under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Oklahoma Voice is a part of States Newsroom which is a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on Facebook and Twitter.
Nuria Martinez-Keel covers education for Oklahoma Voice and can be found at @NuriaMKeel on X (Twitter). She worked in newspapers for six years, more than four of which she spent at The Oklahoman covering education and courts. Nuria is an Oklahoma State University graduate.
