Charter schools lack state oversight

Dozens of parents had filled the auditorium of the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts.

The majority of parents attending were upset about a meme posted by board chair Cheryl Bean, the AI-generated cartoon of the WNBA Indiana Fever crossing the Delaware River, re-enacting the famous painting by Emanuel Leutze. This version depicted the Black athletes wearing floaties.

After critics, including some parents, called it racist, Bean removed the post. That night, Bean told the crowd that "some" people "can accept an apology," which she noted Webster's Dictionary defines as "a statement of regret."

Some parents laughed. Alycia Bennett, whose children attend FWAFA's sister school, Texas School of the Arts, had enough.

"You never apologized!" she shouted from the audience,

"Okay," Bean said. "This lady needs to be removed, please."

Earlier that night, Bean had explained the meeting's rules: a warning first, then removal. Bennett said she never got a warning. She gathered her things and walked out.

For many families at the two tuition-free arts charter schools run by Texas Center for Arts + Academics, the moment summed up years of frustration.

Although TCAA receives much of its $11.2 million budget — $9.2 million — from the Texas Education Agency, its actions face little scrutiny from the state.

“The board holds itself accountable,” said Jeffrey Koch, a charter school portfolio coordinator at TEA.

TEA can replace a charter’s board or revoke its charter, but only if the charter holder violates the charter, fails basic financial standards, breaks the law or fails the state’s performance standards.

On paper, the schools pass. In 2025, TEA renewed FWAFA’s charter for 10 years without a site visit “because of our financial standing and academic standing,” the board was told, according to the minutes of the meeting.

Records and interviews show that over the past three years, the board has barred transgender students from the choir that fits them, filled open seats with friends of its leaders and raised the rent it charged the schools by about 10% for TeSA and almost 50% for FWAFA. Parents say the board doesn't listen to them. The board isn't elected and it appoints its own members. At times, it has changed its bylaws so that its actions are in accord.

Bean, who is the Republican nominee for Texas House District 94, did not respond to multiple interview requests.

Board leaders say the schools are financially stronger than ever and that critics have spread false information.

Empty auditorium with seating and stage lighting.

FWAFA and TeSA, which have a combined enrollment of about 1,000 students, are tuition-free public charter schools. TEA funding is tied to daily attendance numbers.

Students audition to get in. They take dance, music, theater or visual art every day alongside their regular classes.

For many families, that combination is hard to find anywhere else.

One parent, whose daughter transferred to FWAFA in eighth grade after being bullied at her previous school, said the school "really saved" her daughter. Some families drive an hour and a half each way.

That loyalty is part of why parents say they've kept fighting rather than leaving, though some say they're now reconsidering.

FWAFA students perform in a school production.(Courtesy of FWAFA Instagram)

Landlord and tenant

TCAA and financial transparency

Behind those complaints is an arrangement most parents never see. The charter holder, TCAA, owns the buildings. The two schools rent them from TCAA.

In August 2025, the board renewed both leases with no changes: $47,000 a month for TeSA and $67,000 a month for FWAFA, about $1.37 million a year paid by the schools.

That was already a steep increase. In 2023-24, the two schools paid TCAA about $1 million in rent, according to TCAA’s audited financial statements.

Draft leases prepared in August 2024 set the rent at $516,000 annually for TeSA and $540,000 for FWAFA. A month later, the board approved leases at $564,000 and $804,000. The difference was about $306,000 a year.

That year, FWAFA lost about $402,000 and TeSA about $263,000, according to the audit. TeSA had finished the year before with a surplus of about $182,000. TCAA, the landlord, cleared about $584,000. It spent about $145,000 on facilities maintenance.

The rent wasn’t TeSA’s only problem. An error in its 2023-24 state attendance report cut its TEA funding by about $1 million, according to TCAA’s audit. The audit lists the error as corrected.

The audit’s schedules of “related party transactions” for both schools list “None.” The rent appears only in a note that calls it “intercompany.”

On its most recent Form 990, the annual return nonprofits file with the IRS, TCAA also told the IRS it is not related to any other organization, though its leases describe each school as a separate nonprofit corporation.

In June 2025, the board voted to sell $325,000 of TeSA’s investments and $275,000 of FWAFA’s to cover the gaps. At the same meeting, it chose to sell none of TCAA’s, according to the minutes of the meeting.

One board member questioned the rent. In February 2026, to qualify for a state facilities grant, the board was asked to certify that its real estate deals were made at fair market value. Board member Wes Poole hesitated.

“I don’t think that number is true at fair market value,” he said.

The board approved the certification on the condition that it get comparable rents. Two weeks later, it approved a revised version. As read aloud, it no longer said anything about fair market value, according to the minutes of the meeting.

The state awarded FWAFA the grant in June.

On March 23, the board moved $15,615 out of facilities maintenance at both schools and into general administration. The reason, according to the written amendments, was “to cover the merit increase of the CEO/president and superintendent that was approved in January 2026.”

Anika Perkins, who serves as both the CEO and superintendent, was paid $193,950 in 2024-25, according to the filing, up from $174,447 the year before.

“Very interesting, considering the AC units all need to be replaced in both of the schools,” Bennett said when asked about the Perkins’s raise. “Very interesting, considering all the flooding issues.”

The IRS form asks whether a nonprofit sets its top executive’s pay with independent review and comparisons to similar salaries. TCAA answered no. It said Perkins’s pay was set by her contract and was approved by the board.

Under every lease, it is the landlord’s responsibility to “repair and maintain heating and air conditioning systems.” TCAA budgeted $69,141 for facilities maintenance in 2025-2026.

FWAFA budgeted all $79,933 of its new state facilities grant for “replacing and repairing dysfunctional HVAC systems.”

The average FWAFA teacher made $58,115 in 2024-25, below the state average of $63,751.

When the auditor presented the 2023-24 audit in January 2025, a board member asked to remove a footnote describing TeSA’s attendance error. “If we could eliminate it or put some other softer word around it, that would be my request,” the board member said, according to the minutes of the meeting.

TEA had approved a correction that afternoon. The board approved the audit with the footnote deleted.

Board members say the picture is better than parents think. Poole has pointed out that TCAA’s budget does not count depreciation on the buildings it owns. TCAA’s debt has fallen to about $754,000, all of it on TeSA’s building, which is due to be paid off in March 2027, according to its latest audit. In September, a board member announced that FWAFA, TeSA and TCAA all “finished in the black” for the 2025-26 year.

In April 2026, the board declared “financial hardship” so it would not have to install seat belts on its buses.

“That is in direct conflict with what people were thinking was the case,” a board member said, according to the minutes of the meeting.

At the start of the current school year, TeSA had already shut down as its own district and became a charter under FWAFA’s district. This means TeSA no longer receives its own state funding. The board’s resolution to close it cited “consecutive deficit budgets due to limited state funding.”

Five months earlier, a legislative estimate had projected that the state’s new school-funding law would raise TeSA’s funding by about $199,000.

Enrollment was also slipping. For 2026-27, TeSA had 114 open seats and received 110 applications, Perkins told the board in February, according to the minutes of the meeting.

It did not mention rent.

TCAA’s audit, completed five weeks after the vote, didn’t mention the closure either. It reported no “subsequent events requiring recognition or disclosure.”

The night TeSA’s district closed, the board renewed its lease at the same $47,000 a month.

Students in front of the main entrance to FWAFA. (Courtesy of FWAFA Instagram)

Who gets a seat at the table?

When Alycia Bennett looks at the board that runs her children’s school, she sees people who don’t sit in its audiences.

“Show up to one performance ever,” she said. “Ask any of the board members how many of the performances they’ve shown up to.”

The TCAA board is made up of six volunteers who aren’t elected or nominated by parents. New members are nominated and approved by the board itself. Since 2024, at least two new members joined after writing on their applications that they were friends with sitting members.

The board used to be bigger. Under the bylaws in place as recently as 2017, the board’s “optimum size” was between 18 to 24 directors, and members were expected to rebuild it if it dropped below 15. In August 2024, the board rewrote its bylaws and set the optimum at seven. The rewrite also removed a line allowing nominations “from the floor.” New members now come through a three-member nominating committee or the board’s executive committee.

State law sets few rules on who sits on a charter board. How members are chosen and whether parents get a seat is “typically part of the charter contract,” Koch said.

TCAA’s own tax filing describes the same setup. TCAA reported that no members or outside group has the power to elect its board. It also reported that it has a written conflict-of-interest policy, but does not require board members to disclose their interests each year and does not regularly monitor or enforce the policy.

It also reported having no whistleblower policy. The board adopted one in February.

The August filing lists all board members as unpaid and independent and reports no business dealings with them or their families.

The TCAA board members accept a thank-you card. (Courtesy of FWAFA Facebook)

The TCAA board members accept a thank-you card. (Courtesy of FWAFA Facebook)

John Bolser listed his connections to the board on his application: “Cheryl Bean and Dan Bates are personal longtime friends.” Bean nominated him in 2025. Her nomination form described Bolser’s volunteer work for “various politicians’ campaigns” but does not note the friendship, though the form asks the nominating director to describe all relationships with the candidate. The board approved him 5-0 that October.

Wes Poole, a retired Ernst & Young tax partner, wrote that Bates “is a close friend and has asked me for years to consider serving.”

Being friends with a board member isn’t against the rules. But parents say it explains what happened to one candidate who wasn’t.

Richard Allen applied to serve on the board in 2024.

Allen is a retired TCU film and television professor, two-time Daytime Emmy winner, playwright and the parent of a FWAFA graduate.

"As the parent of an alumnus," he wrote in his application, "I feel a strong connection to the institution and a debt of gratitude for its existence."

Professor Richard Allen teaching his Theory & Practice: Film Acting class. (Courtesy of the Bob Schieffer College of Communication)

Professor Richard Allen teaching his Theory & Practice: Film Acting class. (Courtesy of the Bob Schieffer College of Communication)

On Sept. 24, 2024, his name came before the board alongside Poole's. Four directors were present. They approved Poole, Bates's longtime friend. Allen's vote was tabled until every board member could meet him.

Over the next month, Allen met with board members, including Bean.

"Relieved to report that I thought the lunch with Cheryl went well," Allen wrote then-board chair Leslie Scott.

On Oct. 29, 2024, the board discussed his application behind closed doors. Back in open session, no one made a motion to approve him.

Allen withdrew his application. "I think the result only hurts those kids," he said.

“We’ve been asking for more diverse roles to be on the board,” Bennett said. Parents have asked for a parent seat, even a nonvoting one, or a representative from a parent group.

“They only have each other’s perspectives,” she said. “They don’t have anybody challenging them.”

Parents can file complaints with the school or through TEA’s complaints process, Koch said.

Not every board member is without ties to the schools.

Myong Chong is a former TeSA parent, and in 2023 board members said Bean had a grandchild at one of the campuses. In a May 2026 statement, the board said its members include accountants, former educators and people with experience on other school boards. Chair-elect and secretary Steven Jones founded Lyric Stage, a Dallas musical theater company, and ran it for 27 years.

The board said it is running the schools the way they should have been run all along.

In a May statement to families, the board said staffing is “the largest single item in our budget, so ensuring we are right-sized ensures we are fiscally responsible with taxpayer funds.” The decisions were hard, members wrote, “however, they are necessary” so the schools could compete “without disruptions caused by fiscal irresponsibility.”

By some measures, the numbers back them up. In September, a board member said FWAFA, TeSA and TCAA had all finished the 2025-2026 year in the black. TEA renewed FWAFA’s charter for 10 years in 2025. FWAFA kept its B rating in 2026, and TeSA rose from a C to a B in its final year as a separate district. FWAFA’s teacher turnover fell from 28.8% to 21.7% in 2024-2025, though it was still above the state average of 18.8%. At the Aug. 31 meeting, Perkins reported 1,060 students across the two campuses.

In April, the board also approved $188,582 to repair FWAFA’s roof and hired a new HVAC contractor.

“We always ran deficit budgets,” Bates told the board in August, praising Perkins. “Do not be distracted by any of this nonsense.”

Some decisions parents point to were driven by state law. Perkins has said the Ten Commandments posters are required under Senate Bill 10. The board’s DEI policy follows state requirements and was written by a law firm. And in March, the board chose not to adopt Senate Bill 11’s optional daily period of prayer and Bible reading, saying religious activity “must remain voluntary.”

On the Facebook post with the AI-generated image of the Indiana Fever crossing the Delaware River, Bean has said that she has already apologized. Closing public comment on Aug. 31, she spoke “as the chairman and speaking on behalf of the entire board.” The board, she said, had been “watching and listening” through “significant growing pains.”

“Some missteps are inevitable,” she said, “but the good news is that we think we’re past the toughest part.”

Perkins declined to comment. Scott, who resigned from the board in July 2026, did not respond to requests for comment. Poole did not respond to a request for comment.

Cheryl Bean holds two Ten Commandments posters. (Courtesy of Cheryl Bean for Texas on Facebook)

Cheryl Bean with Tony Tinderholt, who currently holds Texas House District 94, the seat Bean is currently running for. (Courtesy of Cheryl Bean for Texas on Facebook)

A group picture of the Singing Girls of Texas, one of the most prestigious youth choirs in the state. (Courtesy of FWAFA Facebook)

An image posted by Texas Values with the caption, “Victory! Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts just approved boys and girls choirs continuing to be boys & girls respectively based on gender as established on birth certificate!” (Texas Values on Facebook)

TeSA alumni and FWAFA graduates from the Class of 2025. (Courtesy of FWAFA Instagram)

A choir, a birth certificate and a new board member

Margo and Marie Moe, the pseudonyms used in their Title IX complaint against FWAFA and TCAA, have accused the board of changing policies in direct response to Margo's plans to audition for the Singing Girls of Texas.

Margo does not identify with the word male. Families at FWAFA and TeSA said the schools are a rare place where young artists, including LGBTQ+ students, can be themselves.

In the spring of 2023, Margo had already made it past the first round of auditions for the Singing Girls of Texas, one of the school's elite touring choirs. She said the Singing Girls of Texas would be a better fit for her gender identity, according to the Title IX complaint.

Margo’s voice lies in the treble range, the range the Singing Girls of Texas is built around.

The choir's director had told the family she wanted Margo in the group.

Then an email arrived. Auditions were on hold.

"I just knew," said Margo's mother, Marie.

Within 10 minutes of receiving the email, she said, the CEO's office called and asked to meet. That's when the family learned what the board was planning.

The Singing Girls of Texas handbook had never used the word “girl,” Marie said. “It said singer.”

The board planned to change that, rewriting the handbook to describe members as girls. Families would have to submit a birth certificate, and singers could audition only for the choir matching their sex assigned at birth.

Over the next several months, the board’s executive committee drafted the new choir handbooks, according to board minutes. In June 2023, the board met to vote on them.

Outside the meeting, members of Texas Values, a conservative Christian advocacy group, rallied with signs saying “Biology not ideology” and “Boys ≠ Girls,” according to the Title IX complaint.

Also in attendance were two Texas legislators who “further inflamed the anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment of the meeting,” according to the Title IX complaint.

The director of the Singing Girls of Texas at the time, Kerra Simmons, spoke in favor of Margo joining the choir.

“I believe empowering our young women is important, as is empowering our young non-binary and transgender friends,” Simmons said at the meeting, according to the Title IX complaint. “There are children in my ensemble who don’t identify with the word female and that’s OK because they can sing beautifully and healthily in the treble register, and that’s what really matters.”

Todd Prickett, the director of the Texas Boys Choir, said the restrictions in question did not align with the school’s identity.

“Imposing gender roles onto a student based on their sex assigned at birth seems more fitting for a private, parochial school than a public charter school,” he said, according to the Title IX complaint. “In my opinion, such an imposition is discriminatory and lacks basic compassion.”

Despite these comments, the board voted 4-2 to change the handbooks to define who counted as a boy or a girl for the choirs. Marie said families were required to submit a birth certificate, and singers could audition only for the choir matching their sex assigned at birth.

Two board members, Leslie Scott and Charles Reid, voted no. Neither of them sit on the board today.

One of the four votes in favor came from Cheryl Bean, who had joined the board four months earlier.

The board kept rewriting the rules. In March 2025, it removed a section of its discrimination policy that protected students from “gender-based harassment.”

A board member said the change would bring the policy “in line with all the current administration executive orders.”

In February, the board replaced “gender” with “sex” in its nondiscrimination policy.

In August 2025, on its lawyer’s advice, the board also deleted a section of the choir handbook on the federal Equal Access Act, which protects student clubs, saying it conflicted with Senate Bill 12.

“This is where Cheryl Bean’s political career blossomed,” Marie said. “It felt like they were using us as a catalyst for their agenda.”

Then Marie and her partner had to tell their daughter.

They gave her two options. She could let it go and “live out your high school years as average as you want,” or she could fight it.

“It’s up to you,” they told her.

Marie remembers Margo’s answer. “I am gonna be fine. I have always been fine. I am who I am, and I will always be this person, but there are gonna be kids who aren’t as supported and aren’t as confident, and they’re gonna need this.”

Three years later, telling the story, Marie voice broke. She paused.

“Sorry,” she said. “Wow.”

“So it was not for her,” she said. “It was for every other kid.”

Margo’s family reported a Title IX complaint against FWAFA with the American Civil Liberties Union in August 2023.

Marie said the Office of Civil Rights determined that there was a violation, but since President Donald Trump was elected, budget cuts have placed the Office of Civil Rights and its cases “on hold.”

The vote that kept Margo out of the choir was one of Cheryl Bean’s first as a board member. Three years later, she serves as the chair.

“I don’t think that a lot of the families understand how much their school is going to continue to be impacted by this,” Marie said. “When [Bean] decided she was going to run for office, we knew exactly why it all happened and what was coming next.”

A year earlier, the board rarely had to worry about a crowd. For most of the board’s 2025 meetings, no one signed up to speak at all. That changed in October 2025, after former high school football coach Joe Kennedy, whose prayers on the field led to a U.S. Supreme Court case, spoke to FWAFA students. That evening, he appeared at Bean’s campaign event, where the school’s Texas Boys Choir had been invited to sing.

The Texas Boys Choir performs at an event. (Courtesy of TCAA Instagram)

The Texas Boys Choir performs at an event. (Courtesy of TCAA Instagram)

At the Oct. 20, 2025 meeting, Bean said she’d offered Kennedy because he was in town for her event and available “for absolutely no cost.” When asked why the choir performed at her political event, she said, “I don’t think currently there are any specific guidelines,” on where the choir could perform. She invited the boys, she said, because “very influential people” and people “financially able to afford the Boys Choir” would be there. The boys sang first and left before the event began.

State ethics law treats charter schools differently from school districts. In a February opinion, the Texas Ethics Commission said the state’s ban on officials spending public money on political advertising doesn’t apply to charter schools, which it said are not “political subdivisions.”

But the same opinion warned that a candidate’s use of a charter school’s resources for a campaign “appears to constitute an illegal corporate contribution” from the nonprofit that runs the schools. Asked about the Boys Choir’s performance, Margaret Sula, an attorney at the Texas Ethics Commission, referred TCU 360 to that opinion.

A week after the Oct. 20, 2025 meeting, Bean tightened the rules, saying public comments could only be made toward a specific item on the agenda.

By summer 2026, parents had more concerns to raise. In May, the school didn’t renew contracts for a number of teachers and staff. In a statement sent to families, the board said those decisions were made with “standardized criteria for all” and that staffing would be reviewed every year. That same month, Bennett and a group of parents submitted 29 written questions about the budget.

Then Bean posted the AI-generated image of the Indiana Fever crossing the Delaware River.

On Aug. 31, both sides came to the microphone.

Some came to defend Bean. “I’ve known Cheryl Bean for 30 years,” said Daniel Bates, who served on the board from 2018 through the 2024-2025 school year. “To accuse you of being a racist is simply absurd.” He praised the board’s budget and told its members to “stay the course.”

Perkins described what she had faced since the post. She said members of the school community had sent her comments targeting her “as a black woman,” and that someone had anonymously signed her up for swim lessons with several local providers, flooding her personal phone and email.

“No one should be targeted, harassed or intimidated simply for doing their job,” she said. She said some parents told her they were afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation from other families.

Several parents who spoke against Bean began by addressing Perkins. “I am so sorry that you experienced what you did,” one parent said. “I don’t condone it.”

Then they turned to the board.

One parent said that because the board limits comments to specific agenda items, parents can reach the board only in writing, and their emails go unanswered.

“Please stop the falses. Speak truthfully to us,” the parent said. “The kids you say you care about deserve that.”

A month later, the crowd was smaller. Only one parent spoke at the Sept. 28 meeting. When that parent addressed Bean as a candidate, Bean cut in: “Excuse me, what does that have to do with anything?”

A TCAA post advertising North Texas Giving Day. (Courtesy of FWAFA Instagram)

A TCAA post advertising North Texas Giving Day. (Courtesy of FWAFA Instagram)

At the same meeting, Perkins reported that North Texas Giving Day had brought in $2,835. The year before, it raised $10,172. Giving had been falling before the post, too. The school’s annual fund raised $48,500 in 2023 and $25,973 in 2025.

Marie Moe still has a child at FWAFA. She said the families who aren’t at the microphone haven’t stopped caring.

“We are quiet right now,” she said. “Out of fear.”

Bean later gave a public statement, which read, “The post of the basketball team crossing the Delaware River has been removed. The original intent was to show female athletes standing strong against unsportsmanlike conduct in a humorous way... nothing more. My team and I did not see the floaties in the picture and would never have posted it if we had. I believe racism in any form has no place in our society and regret our unintentional oversight.”

That cartoon wasn’t the first post of Bean’s that parents had questioned.

When New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was elected, Bean posted an AI-generated cartoon of a plane labeled “Mamdami” flying directly into what appears to be one of the Twin Towers.

Another post features a cartoon of Melania Trump holding a sign that reads, “Jasmine Crockett I speak five languages, while you struggle with English.”

At the Aug. 31 meeting, one parent read directly from the student handbook.

It bars “ethnic, racial or gender slurs,” bullying and cyberbullying and tells students to respect others “in-person and online.”

“If either of my children engaged in comparable conduct to the chair’s, I would discipline them appropriately at home, and I would expect the school to take it extremely seriously.”

“If that standard is good enough for our children from kindergarten through 12th grade,” the parent said to the board, “surely it’s enough for the adults governing them.”

A Facebook post by Cheryl Bean was criticized for being racist and discriminatory. Bean said she and her team regretted their “unintentional oversight.” (Courtesy of Alycia Bennett)

_{Charter schools lack state oversight}

Records show the board for Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts

turned down lower rent, filled seats with friends and used operating funds for salaries