Firms belonging to wife of Rep. Donalds grabbed millions in charter school contracts
By Will Bredderman, FloridaBulldog.org
For years, Erika Donalds has used her perch atop the nonprofit Optima Foundation—not to mention her marriage to U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Naples), now a top contender for governor—to make herself a force in Florida’s charter school movement. But materials filed with Florida’s Auditor General show how in recent years the foundation lost multiple contracts with its signature “classical academies” over what the schools allege were faulty accounting practices, and still more contracts that switched over to for-profit companies Donalds owns herself.
Further, state and federal financial disclosures reveal a long-running, yet previously unreported, financial relationship between the congressman’s wife and State Rep. John Snyder (R-Stuart), an aggressive advocate of charter schools and the owner of a firm that provided payroll services to Optima-affiliated academies and an extra salary to Erika Donalds.
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