Metro

Dirty job: charter teachers janitors

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Read it and sweep.

A Brooklyn charter school’s finances are in such disarray that it axed 20 staffers mid-year and teachers have been left to sweep hallways and vacuum classrooms because of a custodian shortage, teachers told The Post.

The Department of Education has also ordered the school — the Williamsburg Charter HS — to sever ties with its management company because of fiscal concerns raised in an audit last year.

That independent audit found significant deficiencies in grants-fund management, student invoicing and oversight of financial controls.

It also questioned the intermingling of funds between the charter and the Believe High Schools Network — whose CEO, Eddie Calderon-Melendez, founded both the school and the management group.

“These findings raise serious concerns about the financial viability and fiscal accountability of the school,” DOE officials wrote to the school’s board of trustees this winter.

In 2009-10, the charter paid the network $2.3 million for staffing, payroll and other support services — among the highest support fees paid by a charter school in the city.

Public records show the school paid an additional $767,000 in taxpayer funds for consultants.

This year, the school entered into a pricey lease agreement for space in a new building on Varet Street in Williamsburg that calls for $79 million in payments over a 30-year term — including a payment of $2.3 million for 2010-11.

Despite the city’s directive, the school has refused to end an affiliation with the Believe Network, which teachers claim has diverted money away from instruction.

“We don’t have enough textbooks for all the students in the classroom. We don’t have enough paper to make copies,” said one teacher, who requested anonymity. “If we want our rooms cleaned, we can borrow the vacuum cleaner.”

She added that teachers were running after-school programs “pro-bono” because of a lack of funds.

“I feel that we’re so poorly fiscally managed — on purpose or not on purpose, I don’t know,” she said.

Approached outside the school, an enraged Calderon-Melendez charged at a Post photographer — but later answered questions via e-mail.

He said the network’s fee of 18 percent of per-pupil revenue was comparable to other charter-management fees — although it’s more than twice the average for nonprofit charter managers in the city.

City Department of Education officials said they were planning to visit the school later this month to examine its expenditures.

yoav.gonen@nypost.com