{"id":41567,"date":"2024-02-01T11:44:54","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T16:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=41567"},"modified":"2024-02-01T11:44:59","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T16:44:59","slug":"lakeland-private-school-faces-financial-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/02\/01\/lakeland-private-school-faces-financial-trouble\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeland Private School faces financial trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The owner of a Lakeland cleaning company is turning to media. Michael Lozada said he hasn\u2019t been paid for a job completed at a private school more than five months ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The director of Higher Learning Advantage Academy in Lakeland admits her school is struggling. She said invoices are stacking up and teachers are leaving, but when we asked why, the director pointed the finger at a program they count on to help keep the school running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lozada takes pride in keeping things clean. So, when Lozada got the call to clean the floors at Higher Learning Advantage Academy he was happy to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cWe started first time in 2022 of August,\u201d said Lozada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lozada said he was paid for that job. Then the school reached out to his company again last summer for an even bigger job to strip and wax the floors at the K-8 private school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s only a couple of guys in our crew, I had to pay for them upfront, I paid for our chemicals upfront,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than five months later, Lozada said he\u2019s still waiting for payment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey let me know that they were waiting for government funding,\u201d he said. \u201cThey told me essentially I\u2019ll get paid whenever they get paid and that\u2019s the end of that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an invoice provided by Lozada, Higher Learning owes him $8,595. Nancy Seymore is the school\u2019s director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a rough, rough, rough couple of months for us because our funding system is a dead end,\u201d said Seymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seymore and her husband have been in private education for 15 years. Three years ago, they opened higher learning in Polk County.

\u201cWe\u2019re 100% funded by a government-backed program called Step Up for Students,\u201d said Seymore.

Seymore admits Lozada hasn\u2019t been paid as other invoices also stack up. She said Step Up for Students, a nonprofit scholarship funding organization, sent the school a partial payment in November leaving them tens of thousands of dollars short.

\u201cWhen we finally did get a payment, we didn\u2019t get paid for all of our students,\u201d said Seymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seymore said she received $30,000 when she was supposed to get over $100,000.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seymore said late payments from Step Up are not only affecting contractors, but teachers and students, some of whom are now leaving the school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was servicing 120,\u201d she said. \u201cNow we\u2019re down to 80.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seymore said she had to let go of some teacher because of the financial trouble. She and her husband are using their own savings to keep the school afloat. She claims she\u2019s waiting on payment, just like Lozada and his cleaning company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cTo face these people and I know that everybody is going through difficult times everybody needs their money, so I don\u2019t blame the people that are calling or coming,\u201d said Seymore.

We reached out to Step Up to ask them about the funding issues and when the school could expect full payment. A spokesperson sent us this statement:

\u201cScholarship funds are sent to schools in four quarterly payments, the most recent of which was made in November. The third quarterly payment is in February, and those payments will occur over the next two to three weeks. According to our records, Step Up For Students has fully funded Higher Learning Advantage Academy for 44 of 50 students over the first two quarters of the 2023-24 school year. One student enrolled too late for payments in the first two quarters. Two students we show withdrew from the school during the second quarter but were funded for the first quarter. We show that there are three additional students who still need funding for either one quarter or both, who should be funded shortly.  We will work with the school to ensure it quickly receives all funding it is entitled to. Step Up For Students has paid 98% of students enrolled in scholarship schools. Within the remaining 2% we have continuing challenges involving data and\/or technology that we are working every day to address.  We are committed to working tirelessly with our partner schools to resolve every issue. When we become aware of missing payments at a school, we determine if there is anything we can do immediately to alleviate their situation, such as paying invoices, funding students, and even advancing funds to the schools with verified student enrollment to ensure they can continue operating. Step Up For Students is a 501c3 nonprofit organization funded by private donations and fees authorized under state law to administer each scholarship. Depending on the program, Florida allows Scholarship Funding Organizations (SFOs) to retain either 2.5% or 3% of what was spent on scholarships to cover administrative expenses. These are among the lowest allowances compared to similar scholarship programs across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s not good enough for Lozada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs a small business and a family man it\u2019s extremely frustrating,\u201d said Lozada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seymore said Higher Learning rents the space for $30,000 a month. The property is owned by Lakeland Town Center. Court records shows Lakeland Town Center filed a complaint for eviction against Higher Learning in July 2023. We reached out to the property owner\u2019s attorney who said the school owes his client hundreds of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The owner of a Lakeland cleaning company is turning to media. Michael Lozada said he hasn\u2019t been paid for a job completed at a private school more than five months… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41568,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[7435],"class_list":["post-41567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-lakeland-private-school-faces-financial-trouble"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}