New Jersey authorities banned educator Steve Gallon III from working in their public schools. Five months later, three South Florida charter schools welcomed him.

The struggling schools gave Gallon’s company $500,000 in taxpayer dollars over two years, allowing him to give jobs and double payments to his cronies, a Sun Sentinel investigation found.

Records obtained by the newspaper reveal questionable decisions at the schools as their finances unraveled, providing a rare look into the perils of Florida’s loosely regulated charter-school industry.

Florida has more than 600 charter schools, which are independently operated but funded with tax dollars. Because they face less regulation, charter schools have more freedom to innovate.

State law gives oversight of these schools to individual volunteer governing boards, rather than the district’s school board. But such boards sometimes fail to monitor public money and control the private companies they hire, the Sun Sentinel found.

The governing boards for three charter schools in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties hired Gallon and his company, Tri-Star Leadership, in June 2011.

The boards were undeterred by Gallon’s troubles as a school superintendent in New Jersey, where back-to-back investigations prompted the governor and police to get involved. Gallon had been accused of hiring unqualified friends and then lying about their residences so their children could attend schools outside their district.

In the next 18 months, documents show, the South Florida charter school boards stood by as Gallon:

• Hired two associates who, along with Gallon, had been arrested and banned from working in New Jersey schools. One became principal of the Palm Beach County school at a salary of $80,000 a year; the other was paid $60,000 a year for consulting work.

• Made payroll decisions without prior authorization from the charter schools’ governing boards, drawing rebukes from the schools’ financial consultants.

• Hired a $40,000-a-year consultant who listed her residence as a Georgia home owned by Gallon.

• Launched a business venture with one of the volunteer board members responsible for overseeing Gallon’s work for the charter schools. The venture was later deemed a conflict of interest by Miami-Dade school district investigators.

At least three consultants contracted by the governing boards warned their bosses of inappropriate actions under Gallon, records show. Yet Gallon stayed on as those who complained quit — or were fired.

“Once we found out there were problems in these schools, we warned the boards of directors of these schools,” said Katrina Lunsford, a Lakeland-based consultant hired by the schools’ governing boards to provide financial and budget management services.

She also said: “How many warnings do you have to give? How much documentation do you have to give?” she said. “We went from one school to the next school to the next school.”

Lunsford resigned from one school and then was fired from two others in late 2012.

Success Leadership Academy in Fort Lauderdale and Excel Leadership Academy in West Palm Beach closed in the summer of 2013. Stellar Leadership Academy in Miami faced financial struggles but rebounded and continues to employ Gallon’s company.

This building at 1310 N. Congress Ave. in West Palm Beach was the site of now-closed Excel Leadership Academy. Photo by Mark Randall/Staff

The Sun Sentinel examined hundreds of documents including payroll, correspondence, and other records attached to complaints filed by Lunsford and an associate with the Florida Attorney General’s Office and other state and local entities.

State ethics officials who investigated the complaints last year found no laws had been broken, but the documents reviewed by the newspaper detailed lax oversight and a host of failings at the three charters.

They also underscore a key weakness in Florida’s law, the newspaper found: State statutes governing the conduct of public officials do not apply to the private operators that often gain power at charter schools, even though public money is at stake.

Both traditional public schools and charter schools receive public dollars based on their enrollment, and don’t charge tuition. Administrators at traditional public schools are accountable for every penny spent. But the private companies hired by many charter school governing boards don’t have to open their books.

The Sun Sentinel left messages with several board members who were at the three schools during Gallon’s tenure, but only one responded. Reggie R. Lewis, president of the board at the Broward school and board vice president at the Miami-Dade charter, attributed the Broward school’s decline to issues beyond the board’s or Gallon’s control.

Gallon, 45, declined to answer questions from the Sun Sentinel, but issued two statements through a Tri-Star spokesperson. The spokesperson wrote that the company supported the “mission of serving and supporting the educational needs of at-risk and underserved students” and ensured “that only qualified, experienced, and credentialed consultants provide support to the Board and school.”

The spokesperson also stated: “Despite accusations and subsequent independent inquiries and investigations, there has been and remains no determination of any wrongdoing or improprieties on the part of any present or former board members or educational professionals that were subjects of your inquiry.”

The three high schools for at-risk students were reeling when their boards hired Gallon. The schools opened in 2005 under a private management company that selected the original board members and handled all school operations, from real estate and payroll to busing and curriculum. That company, White Hat Management of Ohio, operated a number of charter schools throughout Florida and began pulling out of the state in 2011.

While many of the company’s Florida schools folded, the boards of these three charters decided to carry on. They turned to Gallon to help get them on track.