Most of last year, the school operated without a principal. Brown, who has no background in education, was chairman of the board and chief executive officer. Periodic phone calls and visits to New Millennium by Fresno State journalism students throughout the school year found Cal Johnson at the school only one time.

Johnson said recently he is at the school five hours a day on average, unless he has school board meetings or visits other schools in his trustee area. He said he doesn't log his hours, and there are no official records of his time on the job.

"There aren't any benchmarks at New Millennium," said Sanchez, who worked at the school for nearly a decade, rising up the ranks to lead teacher. "The teachers are winging it. They have no way to assess students.

"Fresno Unified has let the school off the hook. It hasn't done its oversight."

In an interview last week, Brown says the school is doing its job, and that Smith, Sanchez and Biedermann simply are nursing a grudge.

"There is nobody bringing up issues except these three disgruntled former employees," he said. "All of their statements are not factual."

Jamilah Fraser, chief information officer for Fresno Unified, said the school district has fulfilled its oversight role of New Millennium, stepping up its monitoring in the past few years after the state demanded a payback of ADA funds.

Fraser produced a three-page timeline detailing actions taken by the school district to scrutinize the school, including site visits and meetings.

"New Millennium remains on monthly monitoring. This is something the district only does with charter schools where the district believes a close eye must be kept on the charter's fiscal viability and responsibility," she said.

Fraser said Fresno Unified's hands are tied by state education laws that limit how much the chartering district can intervene: "We're oversight, we're not in charge of that charter school. Everyone wants to think that Fresno Unified can just go in there and change everything around. That's not how it works."

But Smith and other critics say the charter school, whose enrollment has fluctuated from 200 to 500 students, should have been shut down years ago.

In a confidential report to the Fresno Unified School Board in July 2009, the district's charter review team found that the school was failing to provide students with an adequate education. The report noted that the school was continuing to violate numerous terms of its operating agreement with Fresno Unified -- clear grounds for revocation under state education law.

The charter review team then recommended to Superintendent Michael Hanson that the charter be revoked, records show.

But Hanson never acted on the "notice of intent to revoke," records show. Had he pursued it, a public hearing would have been required by law. Instead, the superintendent decided not to place the item on the school board agenda, even though his administration and the trustees had pledged to shut down New Millennium if the violations continued.

Thus, New Millennium was allowed to continue operating despite its failings.

Critics suggest politics stopped the revocation process. Johnson is one of Hanson's staunchest supporters on the school board, they point out. Brown is not only a close friend of Johnson, but he also served as his campaign manager during his 2010 re-election to the school board.

"The whole thing is smelly," said Bob Harris, a former superintendent at New Millennium. "You've got Cal Johnson, a member of the school board and a 'yes' vote for Hanson, getting a salary at New Millennium. It raises the question whether Hanson and the school board are looking the other way and keeping open a troubled school as a political favor to Cal Johnson."