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CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / LOS ANGELES

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Investigators fanned out amid multiple campuses of Ivy Academia, a high-performing charter school in the San Fernando Valley, and executed search warrants as part of an investigation by the district attorney’s Public Integrity Division, authorities said Wednesday.

It was not clear what the target was or what crimes are being investigated. Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, would say only that a series of warrants were executed Tuesday morning “as part of an ongoing investigation.”

Jerry Thornton, inspector general for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said his office assisted in the investigation. Tatyana Berkovich, founder and president of Ivy Academia, said she didn’t know what the investigators were after. “We are confident that any inquiries that they have will showcase what a superior educational program we have,” she said.

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In 2007, Thornton’s office issued an audit critical of the school’s accounting and payroll practices, and said the not-for-profit charter was commingling funds with other, for-profit ventures. The report said the school promised to change some practices but disagreed that others were problematic.

-- Mitchell Landsberg

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