Myles Thomas picked up the phone from a hotel in Thailand. It was 4 o’clock in the morning and he was answering a call from InMaricopa. 

“This needs to be told,” he said.  

The Maricopa educator has to travel to other countries to raise enough money to keep his house in Glennwilde and his family fed. One of his employees had a car repossessed. Thomas says he and other contractors were cut off without warning from the embattled charter school system.  

Thomas was a contractor with Sequoia Pathway Academy. He had been hired by ex-Edkey CEO Mark Plitzuweit to bring more students to the charter school system and run a college prep program. 

Thomas moved his wife and son to Maricopa from Inglewood, Calif., for the headhunter job. 

“The agreement was that Sequoia Pathway was doing bad when it came to enrollment. They were losing kids. There was no culture,” said Thomas. “They brought me in to change the dynamic of the school.”  

Thomas was a recruiter who says he brought dozens of students to the school. He recruited from Los Angeles, Las Vegas and other metros, bringing students and their families to Maricopa.  

According to the contract, in exchange for 60 enrolled students, Edkey pays $29,000 per month to Thomas and his team. Thomas is one of at least four such contractors working with Edkey schools. InMaricopa has reviewed an original copy of the contract. 

It all came to an end when Plitzuweit was fired by Edkey in November. Payments to Thomas stopped at the same time without warning nor explanation, he said. 

“Since November, the new EdKey leadership, in collaboration with the board and support of our bondholders, reviewed all contracts and vendor payments. During this exercise, our team became aware of payments to some vendors that did not have an executed contract with Edkey,” said Edkey COO Dr. Yovhane Metcalfe in a statement to InMaricopa Monday. 

“As a result, those payments were immediately stopped, and the dollars were redirected to classroom learning. As a steward of taxpayers’ dollars, it is important that any dollars spent by our organization be focused on supporting our teachers and students, not subsidizing private businesses.”

Put plainly, Edkey had been making payments since July but now says it can’t find signed contracts with Thomas or other similar vendors.  

Thomas provided InMaricopa unsigned copies of a seven-page contract between his company and Edkey. That contract corroborates his claims. 

He also claims Plitzuweit signed the contract but never provided a countersigned copy to him. It was signed via a digital signature tool called Docusign.  

InMaricopa has reviewed paystubs confirming Edkey had been compensating Thomas per the contract terms before Plitzuweit’s firing. 

“December, January, February, we haven’t gotten paid,” said Thomas. “This was supposed to go through May.” 

Thomas says he met with Metcalfe via Facetime and Edkey had the contract in front of them. Edkey leaders later said they couldn’t find a signed contract with Thomas.  

Thomas says the charter school system is stiffing not just him, but at least four other contractors, owing more than $100,000 in unpaid fees.  

“They’re telling you they’re fixing [Edkey] but they’re not,” said Thomas.