Laara Allbrett, former director of Halau Lokahi Public Charter School, has been charged with four counts of second-degree theft, Attorney General Douglas Chin said Tuesday.

Authorities have spent years investigating possible misuse of public funds at the small Hawaiian-focused school, which was founded by Allbrett and her family members in 2001. The Public Charter School Commission revoked its charter in March 2015 because of recurring financial problems and closed the Kalihi campus two months later.

Allbrett, 64, was charged Monday. The charging document alleges that during her tenure as principal she obtained property worth more than $300 through deception on four occasions in 2013 and 2014. It does not offer further details of the alleged offenses, except to say they were not discovered by the state of Hawaii until 2016.

Second-degree theft is a Class C felony punishable by up to five years in jail and/or a $10,000 fine.

Allbrett was forced out as Halau Lokahi’s director in July 2014 after the school ran out of money and stopped paying rent and teachers’ salaries before the end of the academic year. She was arrested in February 2015 and released pending investigation.

A search warrant affidavit filed in court in November 2014 for a raid on the school by the attorney general listed an array of questionable spending by school personnel. The affidavit said it appeared that Allbrett used Halau Lokahi “as a mechanism to appropriate State of Hawaii monies so that her friends, family members and herself could benefit from these proceeds, which appears to be theft of public funds.”

At that point five of Allbrett’s family members were on the payroll at the school, including her daughter, the business manager, among a staff of 23. It served students in grades kindergarten through 12, including online students.

Halau Lokahi was one of Hawaii’s first charter schools, launched when there was little monitoring of the campuses. Its curriculum focused on Hawaiian values and project-based learning.

An overhaul of the charter law tightened oversight in 2012 and required the schools to meet academic, financial and operational goals.

Charter schools are primarily funded with taxpayer dollars through per-pupil allotments but are independently run under contracts, or charters, with the state. They are supposed to bring innovation to public education, and report to their own governing boards, with oversight by the commission.