In our justice system, punishment should fit the crime. Yet that wasn’t the case when former charter school principal Jeffrey Piontek received a paltry four years probation after pleading no contest to charges of stealing more than $136,000 in public school funds to pay for personal expenses — from $5,642 at a Las Vegas strip club to $16,971 to fix up his apartment.
Even more appalling is the mere $200 monthly installments Piontek must make to repay the stolen money, which would take decades to pay in full. It’s a shameful slap on the wrist handed by Circuit Judge Glenn Kim in the state’s case against Piontek, whose spending spree took place while he led the Waipahu-based Hawaii Technology Academy from 2010 through 2011.
The sentence was nowhere near what state Deputy Attorney General Albert Cook had recommended — a 10-year prison term and a $25,000 fine for what he described as an “egregious and sustained pattern of theft” — and Piontek’s scant penalty is inexplicable.
Using the school’s credit and debit cards, Piontek spent $5,642 at Club Paradise Gentlemen’s Club, $4,515 for stays at the Venetian and the Marriott Marquis hotels, $2,230 for first-class tickets to Australia, among other expenses.
His light punishment rightly outraged community members, including state Senate Vice President Will Espero, who wrote in an email that it was a “terrible sentence” that “sends the wrong message to the community.”
Defendants in cases less severe were dealt harsher sentences:
>> In September 2014, a former Molokai charter school clerk was sentenced to 90 days in prison and five years of probation for embezzling more than $12,000 from Kualapuu Public Charter School during a five-month period from 2012-2013.
>> In July 2014, a clerk at Ka Waihona O Ka Na‘auao Public Charter School drew a year imprisonment and five years probation for stealing $19,750 between 2010 and 2012. She was ordered to pay full restitution, a $2,000 fine and do 150 hours of community service.
>> And in June 2014, a Kailua woman was sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay back the $50,574.41 she stole when she was former president of the Lanikai Elementary Public Charter Schools’ parent teacher student association.
Piontek’s egregious case — plus the ones outlined above — underscore serious questions of oversight over public funds, and provides some crucial rationale for current attempts at more accountability from the state’s 30-plus charters, public schools that are managed by independent governing boards.
The state in 2012 passed reform legislation to hold charter schools more accountable for their use of public funds and academic performance; a new Public Charter School Commission was formed.
The process now underway has been a contentious one for some schools that have enjoyed relative autonomy — and it has spurred the recent resignation of the commission’s executive director — but it is a critical one that should elevate operations.
Cook, the deputy attorney general in Piontek’s case, was right in saying the former educator’s light sentence undermines the seriousness of the crime. Piontek spent only about a month in jail before being released on his own recognizance in Honolulu. To add to his good fortune, he has been working as a consultant in the Los Angeles area and intends to return there.
“I don’t support elected judges,” Espero wrote, “but this case makes me wonder who is holding judges accountable for highly questionable decisions.”
It’s reprehensible that the repercussions of Piontek’s actions are still being felt by Hawaii Technology Academy’s current students, faculty and administrators. They, and those before them at the school from 2010 to 2012, have been cheated out of $136,000 in educational materials, resources and activities.
