MILWAUKEE -- Teachers at Agape School in Milwaukee said they haven’t been paid in months and students may be suffering as a result. The school blames the state.

“We have 18 members that attend Agape,” said Lena Adams, a local resident who jokingly said the enrollment from her family alone keeps Agape School running.

Parents, Teachers Claim Mismanaged Funds, Disrupted Education At Local School

Adams also said that what her grandchildren, nieces and nephews experienced there this year was no joke and feels they were not getting a proper education.

Adams spent a lot of time in the school. She was a parent volunteer and said teachers stopped showing up toward the end of the year, leading to a chaotic, uncontrolled situation.

“You might have two or three teachers not there; then one teacher might end up with 40 students,” Adams said.

Tares Mickey, a seventh-grader, said he spent most days with the fifth- and sixth- graders also.

Students would go to one class and sit in the park for the rest of the day and work out of workbooks.

Tares's dad, Steve Batten, said his son stopped getting homework.

“When I asked about it, they told me they didn't have to release that information,” Batten said.

Batten believes his inquiries caused his son to be singled out for disciplinary action at school. He got so angry he pulled Tares out of class three weeks early.

“I'm not sending him there to be baby-sat. I'm sending him there to get an education,” Batten said.

So, what was going on?

Four teachers gave us their take, choosing to hide their identities to protect their careers.

“It was anything she could do to keep us working, thinking maybe this Friday was the Friday we would be paid,” one teacher said.

The teachers said paychecks were sporadic from December on, with some checks bouncing. They said the checks stopped altogether in May.

“I was giving them to the bank teller and almost getting laughed at, you know, for bringing the checks,” a teacher said.

The teachers go on to describe a deteriorating situation. They claim they never got promised insurance that money had been taken out of their checks for student loans and child support but none of those things were ever paid.

Court records show claims against Agape for unpaid bills totaling thousands of dollars. The bank has filed for foreclosure on the school building. These teachers said they just couldn't stick around.

“If you haven't had a paycheck in over a month and you're a teacher and you live paycheck to paycheck, you may not be able to come to work every day,” said another teacher.

Agape Executive Director Yvonne Ali paints a different picture as she shows off students' work and brags about their test scores.

“That was not true, that was not true,” Ali said.

She doesn't deny the paychecks stopped. But she said it is because she didn't receive money from the Department of Public Instruction. Agape is part of the school choice program. It's a private school, but parents can opt to send their children there with the money that would normally go to a public school instead going to Agape. Ali, the school's principal, a nurse and two teachers sat down with us, countering many of the claims we heard.

The group also denies what the teachers, parents and students told us about how the school days were conducted at the end of the year. They said substitutes were brought in and work was being done.

Some teachers claim that as long as the children came to school expecting an education, they felt it was their duty to be there to provide them with one.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction withheld the last funding check to Agape pending a hearing regarding the school's financial status. Also, the school had overstated enrollment, meaning DPI overpaid at one point.

With all these allegations, who is checking to see what's going on in the school?

DPI said it "has no oversight authority in their educational accountability... the schools do have to be accredited by an organization.” But DPI goes on to say, "while accreditation agencies will provide some overall oversight, the day-to-day educational oversight is the responsibility of the schools."

While Agape's status in the choice program is uncertain with the upcoming hearing, Ali vows the school will be open in the fall.

“The choice funding is only one avenue of funding, there are many avenues of funding that are available; this is not the only source of our supply,” Ali said.