Amid financial woes, Sequoia fires its president, CEO and CFO

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Edkey Inc., the Mesa nonprofit that administers Sequoia Pathway Academy in Maricopa, has fired two of its top executives with cause as the charter operator reshuffles its leadership in an effort to redress its financial woes.

The Edkey corporate board last month voted unanimously to terminate Mark Plitzuweit, the president and chief executive officer, and Juan Beltran, the chief financial officer, according to two other executives and two disclosures filed with the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board.

There were money troubles

The executive director of human resources Laurie Ainge in a Nov. 20 email told more than 900 employees that “Edkey was unable to upload payroll in sufficient time,” according to an employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity. InMaricopa has reviewed the email.

“There was intentional misrepresentation to staff regarding the ‘disruption’ in payroll when, in fact, the organization was facing significant financial challenges,” the employee claimed.

The administrator had failed to pay obligations to the Arizona State Retirement System and several of its vendors, and it implemented a hiring freeze as it fired and laid off several other employees, according to two people with knowledge of the Edkey financials who allowed InMaricopa to review documentation of their claims.

Plitzuweit had been terminated for approving “factoring loans,” a type of financing that gives a corporation a cash advance from unpaid invoices, the sources alleged.

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Mary Gifford, the corporate board president, told InMaricopa that Edkey had “addressed the factoring loans … regarding the termination of Mark Plitzuweit.”

Early this year, Plitzuweit was named to the 2024 Phoenix Titan 100 for his exceptional work at Edkey. Today, every mention of him has been scrubbed from the Sequoia Pathway and Edkey websites, including from staff directories, articles, blog posts and biographies.

Retirement payables were addressed

Reasons for Beltran’s firing were more nebulous, but still financial in nature, according to the corporate board in filings and interviews.

“There were discoveries made about payables, generally, upon termination of the CFO,” Gifford said.

She said that Becki Krueger, an independent consultant, “has endeavored to put all the pieces together and work diligently to make sure the payables are addressed timely.” Krueger is completing an audit for the fiscal year ending in mid-2024.

Gifford said the state retirement system was “one of those payables that we did address very timely after the termination of the CFO.”

Dr. Yovhane L. Metcalfe, the chief academics and operations officer, told InMaricopa she “would have to check with our CFO about where we are with ASRS,” but promised that “we have been making payments to the state retirement system. I know that for a fact.”

Is there a conflict of interest?

Edkey in a Nov. 20 securities filing said that it “has been negotiating with Accel, Inc., to take over management and operations of the business affairs and operation of the schools.”

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Gifford is an executive vice president for Pansophic Learning, the for-profit charter management organization that owns Accel Schools.

“This situation raises serious questions about conflicts of interest,” one employee said of the woman who heads Edkey’s corporate board and its would-be management company.

The employee said there was a “potential merger” in the works with Accel, but Gifford said such a merger was “not possible,” and she played down the company’s potential new management role for Edkey, which had been slated to begin Dec. 13.

Gifford noted that two other management companies are also being considered, and no action was taken as planned during the Dec. 13 earnings call.

“We are not working with anyone to be acquired by [Pansophic] or any other organization,” Gifford said. “Edkey is and will remain a nonprofit. There is zero desire from the Edkey corporate board to be anything other than a nonprofit.”

The board chairperson said she anticipated a more prosperous future for Maricopa’s Sequoia Pathway family.

“We take our obligations very seriously as a board,” she said. “We have been diligent … as changes are going on.”

Correction: A previous version of this story identified Mary Gifford as the interim CEO.