Meet Our Team

Tom.Hutton@calauthorizers.org
916.244.3520

Tom Hutton became CCAP’s executive director in August of 2020. His professional background includes work on behalf of school districts, authorizers, and charter schools.

Tom is a former school attorney who served in-house with the National School Boards Association and its Council of School Attorneys and later in private practice in Seattle. As a law student, he was a co-founder of Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter School, a law-themed high school in the District of Columbia. Tom later served as the first executive director of the Hawaii State Public Charter School Commission, a statewide authorizing agency, and then as an independent consultant to charter authorizers nationally. He also has served on the governing board of Wai‘alae Elementary Public Charter School in Honolulu and was both a participant and a coach in the Leaders Program of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA). During his career, Tom has been a frequent speaker, writer, and news media source, as well as a sometime adjunct professor of education law. Additionally, he served for four years as the Interim Executive Director of the Education Law Association, a professional association of professors, attorneys, administrators, students, teachers, and others interested in the intersection of the law with all parts of our education system.

Tom was educated in public schools in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Colorado. He attended Connecticut College, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and the Georgetown University Law Center.

mandelbaumconsulting@outlook.com
916.244.3520

Barbara leads CCAP’s statewide team of authorizer consultants who provide direct services to local district and county authorizers, which includes training and developing the capacity of internal staff. She also helps develop and update CCAP’s authorizer tools and resources, with a particular focus on assisting smaller entities. Prior to becoming a consultant, Barbara had a career in teaching and school administration before joining the Butte County Office of Education, where her duties including responsibility for charter authorizing. In 2019, Barbara was the recipient of the California Charter Schools Association’s Authorizer of the Year Award.

ddeal@brightlake.com
916.244.3520

Debi Deal is a former school district chief business officer (CBO), a retired Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) fiscal intervention specialist, and a former certified fraud examiner. Debi serves as CCAP’s chief financial manager and fiscal agent, and she leads the fiscal side of the direct consulting services that CCAP provides to some California charter authorizers. She has extensive experience with fiscal oversight of charter schools, including extraordinary audits. As an independent consultant, Debi also periodically serves as a temporary advisor to help client school districts navigate fiscal challenges.

Melissa.brady@calauthorizers.org
916.244.3520

Melissa Brady has more than 20 years of experience in public education in both charter and district schools. Her experience extends from the classroom to district administration. As an administrator, Melissa served as the Director of Charter Schools for Polk County Public Schools (PCPS) in Florida where she oversaw 30 charter schools and more than 15,000 students. Most recently, she served as the Executive Director of the Florida Association of Charter School Authorizers (FACSA) and was a founding board member and former treasurer of the board for the National Network for District Authorizing (NN4DA).

Kimberly.Waitecooper@calauthorizers.org
916.244.3520

Kimberly Waite-Cooper joined CCAP in December 2019. She came to CCAP after a career with the armed forces, starting in the Ohio Army National Guard and then for 21 years in the U.S. Air Force, where she retired as a First Sergeant having served as an Automatic Flight Control Systems Specialist and an Aerospace Physiology Journeyman. Kimberly also worked as a Logistics Flight Chief with the U-2 spy plane program for eight years before resigning to care for her mother. Born in Key West, Florida, she was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where she was thrilled to be among the first graduating class of the Cleveland School of Science. A resident of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Kimberly holds a Master of Arts in Education from William Jessup University, an Educational Specialist degree from Regent University, and is currently a third-year doctoral student in education at Regent University.