CANTON — Kristen Williams was excited to co-lead Mississippi’s first charter school geared toward the sciences.
When SR1 College Preparatory and STEM Academy opened in 2023, she became the inaugural provost. She told Chief Executive Officer and Founder Tamu Green she wanted to create something like the ACME Academy in Vicksburg, a public school where students take classes in architecture and engineering. She pictured Canton students competing nationwide in robotics competitions and engaging classroom experiments such as troubleshooting a circuit board or chemical reaction.
But as the months passed, more and more employee proposals to bring interactive whiteboards and virtual reality workshops into classrooms went ignored.
Despite SR1 CPSA being a STEM school — focused on science, technology, engineering and math — its leaders hadn’t hired a STEM teacher as of February 2026, according to an email a former administrator provided to Mississippi Today. According to a former employee who assisted in staff training and resigned in September, the school still hasn’t hired one.
Green would sometimes have STEM experts visit the school, Williams told Mississippi Today, but no full-time instructor. “The vision was there, but it was not clear,” she said.
Williams was discouraged to see students share old laptops and old iPads for state-mandated testing. She was also not provided a school budget or given the opportunity to weigh in on it, she said.
Green also ignored requests to pay for staff professional development, she said.
Williams left the school at the end of the academic year in 2024.
Tamu Green, CEO of SR1, confers with Dorlisa Hutton, chief operations officer and vice president for SR1 College Preparatory and STEM Academy, during a hearing about SR1 on Thursday, May 14, 2026, in Jackson. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today“I just really believed in their vision,” Williams said about Green and his wife, Dorlisa Hutton, a school administrator who served as the school’s chief operating officer. “I believed in what they were trying to do before I stepped into the role.”
Now, the school may lose its charter. In October 2023, the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board sanctioned Green for requesting money to serve 150 students but only enrolling 12. School leadership spent about $816,725 that year, or about $68,060 per student, which is more than five times what the average Mississippi school district spends.
Green did not answer questions sent through multiple emails and messages left with receptionists about the financial health of his school and whether he operated outside the laws on child nutrition services and accounting. Hutton didn’t respond to questions in multiple calls, text messages, voice messages, emails as well as in-person.
Mississippi Today reviewed more than 500 pages of memos, financial and academic records, and more than 10 hours of recorded meetings with state regulators, employees and parents to better understand the school’s financial trouble.
Mississippi Today also talked to 13 former employees of the charter school and SR1 (Scientific Research), Green’s Ridgeland-based nonprofit organization, about business concerns at the school and with Green’s leadership. Four of them spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear that speaking publicly would affect their current or future employment.
Heavy oversight is needed when spending tax dollars
Some of Green’s spending remains a mystery due to a lack of documentation. Green has failed to provide financial documents and information for some school vendors. The authorizer board has been waiting since Dec. 22 for statements of economic interest from every board member and school official.
Green and other charter school operators are not required to provide regulators the same financial information as traditional public school leaders. Charter schools are publicly funded but independently managed, and they aren’t subjected to the same scrutiny as traditional public schools.
In Mississippi, charter schools are given license to operate and be monitored by the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board, which is composed of political appointees and managed by an executive director the board appoints.
Students head to waiting vehicles and school buses after classes end for the day at SR1 College Preparatory and Stem Academy, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026, in Canton. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi TodayReports and disclosures from regulators at the authorizer board helped tell the story of the school’s organizational dysfunction and money woes. They show that Green hasn’t been forthcoming with information on school spending. He denied the charter authorizer board’s requests for records last year and claimed the financial documents belong to his nonprofit organization, SR1 (Scientific Research), according to Dillon Pitts, the board’s attorney. Green argued the organization’s financial documents are not under the board’s purview.
Even if regulators are granted access to financial records for SR1 (Scientific Research), it could be difficult to parse the nonprofit’s information from the school’s. SR1 has not submitted financial audits to the federal audit clearinghouse for three of the last six years, which contributed to SR1 losing a federal grant administered by the Mississippi Department of Human Services in May.
Read More: Board presses for a recommendation on Canton charter school’s fate
The relationship between SR1 and the charter school is more entwined than Green has acknowledged in authorizer board meetings. A 2025 audit shows SR1 (Scientific Research) provides vital funding to the charter school, paying 21% of its operating costs through in-kind donations and supplying transportation, rent, utilities and telecommunication services.
Nonprofit organizations such as SR1 serve the primary function of signing the contract with the authorizer board, which allows for the charter school to open. That makes the organization’s role as a vendor for SR1 CPSA for some services unusual when compared to the relationship other Mississippi charters have with their nonprofits that authorize them.
Without a clear picture of spending at either institution, compliance with federal grant requirements remains a mystery, making it difficult to ensure that taxpayer money makes it to the classroom.
But in an unsigned statement, which Mississippi Today received by email, SR1 (Scientific Research) referred to a request for comment as part of a disruptive pattern of “third party information gathering,” which distracts from its mission of educating children. The response also included a summary of the nonprofit’s grant activity, including an after-school program and the charter school.
The statement denied any impropriety in their funding structure, and denied claims that SR1 and the charter school are organizationally connected. However, past audits for the charter school indicate that SR1 CPSA received significant support from SR1.
Regulators in Mississippi struggle to get information on some charter schools’ purchases, which traditional public schools must disclose to the public. But they are not alone: Charter school executives around the country have been allowed to operate in secrecy while mismanaging public dollars meant to subsidize an alternative to traditional public schools.
Financial and academic challenges have festered into crises in these charter schools around the U.S., leaving regulators, parents and local leaders in the dark. In recent years, charter schools have been forced to close due to long concealed money woes and, in an example in Texas, attempts to hide a school executive’s exorbitant salary. Others have operated with lower academic standards than public schools.
“You really need a heavy level of oversight to ensure that, essentially, the public dollar is not being used to subsidize private profit,” said Frank Adamson, an education professor at San Francisco State University who has published peer-reviewed research on charter school finance.
A lack of consistent support
Former SR1 CPSA employees said they didn’t have the resources or support staff needed to ensure student success.
At a February 2026 meeting, staff complained about the school’s lack of STEM instruction, former kindergarten teacher Niccori Thomas recalled. Three former employees said the only STEM instruction at the school occurred when Vickie Liou, a STEM teacher who works for the SR1 nonprofit, visited three times in April and May.
“The STEM room has tons of STEM resources in it, but there’s no STEM teacher at all,” Thomas said.
Tamu Green, CEO of SR1, listens as Letitia Johnson, finance director for the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board, answers questions during a hearing about SR1 on Thursday, May 14, 2026, in Jackson. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayOne former administrator, who did not want to be identified publicly because he fears jeopardizing his job search, said Green misled him about his job title and responsibilities. He was an office manager, according to his first contract, but subsequent contracts and documentation referred to his role as operation manager. The role became more custodial than clerical, he said.
He said Green and other staff in the Ridgeland office retaliated against him when he brought incorrectly filled out paperwork to their attention or when safety procedures weren’t followed. He was threatened with more responsibilities.
That former administrator, who had experience managing shifts and paperwork for a hospital, said he had to clean toilets and bathroom floors as well as handle student files and paperwork that state and federal regulators required. Later, he had to track school bus routes.
“I didn’t sit down from when I got there at 6:30 a.m. until I left at 4 p.m.,” he told Mississippi Today. “I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. I thought maybe they are overloaded and they are still learning. But as time moved on, I realized that’s not it.”
The inspectors are coming
Former employees said they were left alone to answer inspectors’ questions about missing purchases and paperwork. Government agencies such as the secretary of state’s office and the Mississippi Department of Education inspected the school and SR1 headquarters in the past year. Meanwhile, the charter authorizer board investigated financial mismanagement and the child nutrition department.
Another former administrator, who fears jeopardizing his job search, said Green never showed up to hear the authorizer board inspector’s findings from its child nutrition department inspection. Regulators found that portion sizes, food temperatures and nutritional composition did not comply with federal guidelines, Pitts, the attorney for the authorizer board, said during a May 14 hearing.
School employees, including an administrator, were preparing food brought to the school from the Ridgeland headquarters, according to a September 2026 inspection by authorizer board Executive Director Lisa Karmacharya. The Mississippi Department of Education expressed similar concerns about the child nutrition program, she told the board on Sept. 21.
Lisa Karmacharya, executive director of the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board, listens during a hearing about SR1 on Thursday, May 14, 2026, in Jackson. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayThe same former administrator, who fears jeopardizing his current job, described a mad dash after charter board inspectors arrived to inventory technology and furniture at the school in March. He said there was a push to make it look as if purchased supplies were for the charter school.
Employees from the SR1 Ridgeland headquarters arrived the next day with tablets, chairs and desks and stuck SR1 CPSA stickers on some items. Something similar happened twice before, two other former employees said.
Questions about spending at the charter school came up during an authorizer board hearing in May. Pitts questioned Green about previously undisclosed credit cards, noting several Amazon purchases that lacked backup documentation like invoices and receipts.
Williams, the former provost, told Mississippi Today the school lacked documentation for school supplies, which were ordered from Amazon and dropped off by SR1 employees. Green and other executive staff did not provide invoices or receipts for those purchases despite requests to do so, she said.
“In my old districts, we’d have to do a requisition. You had to put everything on there, and that way you can document what line item it needs to come from as far as how you’re paying for it.”
‘My integrity is too important’
Missing financial documents and turnover in its business office were the reasons for inaccurate accounting, according to the school’s 2025 audit. Three former business office employees said they were forced to sift through disorganized piles of receipts and invoices left on their desks. They said Green provided little to no context on purchases.
A photo submitted to Mississippi Today shows a security camera in a workspace at SR1 College Preparatory and STEM Academy. Former employees who were on the charter school’s finance team described being under constant surveillance by either Chief Executive Officer and Founder Tamu Green or Dorlisa Hutton, Green’s wife and a school administrator who served as the chief operating officer.A former SR1 employee gave Mississippi Today a recording of a May 2024 staff meeting where Green compared the charter school’s accounting paperwork to a student who procrastinates on a paper until the day before it is due. Green called members of the charter authorizer board “Karens,” a disparaging slang term used to describe certain aggressive white women, for asking for the source of the money for school supplies.
One lead accountant, who fears retalliation at her current job, began looking for another job as a business manager within a month of working at SR1. She and another finance team member described being under constant surveillance by either Green or Hutton. A security camera was pointed at their desks.
The former lead accountant said Green and Hutton told her to pay bills without any explanation. She saw deposits from federal agencies, but never got answers as to whether they were tied to a specific grant.
“I mean my unwritten rule was we just spent, but we didn’t know you were supposed to make everything look really good (in June 2025),” Green said during the charter board hearing. He then explained he was looking to show regulators the best possible financial snapshot of his organization. (The charter school’s audit was 29 days late in 2025 and 126 days late in 2024, according to the authorizer board.)
Tamu Green, chief executive officer and founder of SR1 College Preparatory and STEM Academy in Canton, told a hearing officer in May that the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board’s expectations around the school’s finances and recordkeeping were “a guessing game.”Mississippi Today confirmed through bank documents and payroll records provided by former employees that money allocated to SR1, the parent organization, for an antipoverty grant initiative in Scott County, which has since been discontinued, partially paid the salary of at least three school employees, including an administrator.
“I’m a stickler when it comes to accounting work done correctly because that could cost me my livelihood. I don’t understand why they didn’t have the same fear,” a former finance team member said of Green and Hutton.
School leadership painted ‘pretty picture’ to mask issues
As the authorizer board moved closer to deciding whether to revoke the school’s charter, parents and staff pressed Green for answers about the school’s fate. Thomas, who was a charter school teacher and parent, struggled for months to get in contact with Green about whether the state would close the school. She wanted to know if she had to find a different school for her child and another job.
She emailed Green in December, and he responded in April. He offered no clear answer.
Students attending SR1 College Preparatory and Stem Academy board a school bus at the end of classes, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026, in Canton. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi TodayShe also has concerns about the charter school building. The school, housed in a daycare facility, now enrolls students in grades K-4. The students’ toilets are sized for toddlers.
Thomas said her child received fewer services at the charter school than he would at the local public school. She said she had to call the Madison County Library System for a mobile library unit because the school lacked one. She said there were no extracurriculars or electives except recess and music.
Past administrators, many of whom worked in traditional public schools, said they’re concerned about Green’s apparent disregard for state and federal guidelines. Some removed the charter school from their resumes, fearing it would hurt employment chances at other schools.
Leadership changes continue to fuel dysfunction on campus. A provost hired in August tendered plans to resign at the end of September. The school has cycled through at least four school leaders since it opened in August 2023. There have been at least two business managers in the past year.
“They paint this pretty picture,” a former administrator who left in July said of his time at the charter school. “That’s how they get people. They paint this pretty picture. They go all out in left field. If you ask them a question, they’re not going to answer it directly.”
“And then once you come on board, you’re going to see it for yourself. You’re going to see the issues.”
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