US News

FUROR OVER ‘CLASS’ TRIP – TO BAHAMAS

Forget the three R’s, staffers at a high-performing Bronx charter school spent nearly $70,000 on the three S’s – sun, sand and surf.

A state audit yesterday slapped the KIPP Academy for failing to explain how it paid for staff retreats to the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas that apparently had no educational purpose.

Although officials at the charter school told auditors the trips in 2005 and 2006 were funded by surplus funds from private and not public sources, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said documentation was lacking to support those claims.

“Having surplus funds is no excuse to spend taxpayer dollars on trips to the Caribbean,” DiNapoli said. “Money intended for education should be spent on education.”

Charter schools are publicly funded but face less oversight from local school districts in exchange for meeting strict academic markers set out in five-year contracts.

KIPP, one of 52 schools nationwide run by the Knowledge Is Power Program, sent 49 staffers on a five-day trip to the Dominican Republic in June 2005 and 21 staffers on a five-day trip to the Bahamas in June 2006.

The school serves about 250 kids in the fifth through eighth grades.

The all-inclusive trips – covering airfare, hotel, food and booze – ran as high as $1,119 per person, the report said.

KIPP founder Dave Levin, who as superintendent of the academy attended the Bahamas retreat, called the trips essential to motivating teachers to work the extra Saturdays and extended hours demanded by the school.

He said brainstorming sessions led to substantive changes in teaching, and reiterated that the summer getaways were paid for with private, unrestricted funds.

“We view every minute [of the trips] as educational because we’re building interpersonal relationships that are essential to the type of effort we require of teachers,” he told The Post.

Math teacher Frank Corcoran, who attended a foray this year to the Dominican Republic, said formal meetings made up about 40 percent of the trip, but informal school-related chats dominated the spare time.

“So it feels like work even though people are walking around in swim trunks,” he said. “Everyone comes out feeling motivated and pumped up, whereas at the end of the school year you’re just burned out.”

yoav.gonen@nypost.com