Lawyers for an Alpharetta charter school are demanding Fulton County School officials retract a scathing audit that questioned how the school spent public tax dollars and protected its children.

Earlier this month, the school district released the audit into the practices of Fulton Science Academy Middle School, one of the county's top-performing schools.

School officials called it the "most egregious" behavior they'd ever seen and leveled accusations the school was doling out lucrative contacts to people with ties to the school, failing to perform background checks on chaperones accompanying students on field trips to Turkey, and inappropriately spending taxpayer dollars to provide immigration services to teachers and their families.

"It defamed the school and the school board and it was inappropriate to use it to justify audits of other charter schools," FSA board member Angela Lassetter told Channel 2's Mike Petchenik.

Thursday, FSA released a blow-by-blow response to the school district's audit. The hired firm, Glass Ratner, concluded "many of the alleged findings in the IAG report are flawed, unsupported and inaccurate and the IAG report failed to make factual findings based on actual data and evidence."

Among the auditor's findings:

• IAG, the company hired by Fulton County Schools' legal counsel, failed to hold an exit interview with the school to ensure accuracy of its findings and deviated from commonly accepted forensic auditing practices.

• Superintendent Robert Avossa's statements to the school board on June 4th that the school had "poor book-keeping" were contradicted by the audit's actual findings.

• IAG "combined incomplete information with uninformed flawed assumptions" to make inaccurate conclusions about security issues related to school field trips.

• IAG excluded some information from its report that would have shown FSAMS policies for handling immigrant faculty members are similar to the policies of the school system.

• FSAMS auditors could find no conflicts of interest when it came to school contracts.

• FSAMS auditors could find no direct link between the school and a controversial movement espoused by a Turkish Imam, Fethullah Gulen.

Lassetter told Petchenik the school's auditors' findings are further proof to her that the school system had an agenda to rid the district of one of its top-performing schools.

"They're using it to justify not opening charter schools, closing charter schools, basically to get rid of competition," she said. "This is about an entity that's in competition, from their point of view, with charter schools and private schools. They don't want school choice to be out there."

Petchenik reached out to a Fulton County School system spokeswoman Samantha Evans for comment.

Evans sent Petchenik a statement saying, "Unfortunately, FSAMS continues to demonstrate a lack of transparency and cooperation.

"This was also experienced by their bondholder, Wells Fargo, as well as the state Department of Education. There is nothing in the school’s audit response that causes Fulton County Schools to believe the IAG audit is inaccurate or flawed.

"In fact, the audit was prepared from information provided by the school.  Nonetheless, our school system remains focused on supporting students and families."

Both the county and state have denied the school's bid to extend its charter, which expires June 30.

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The school will turn private, while its sister elementary and high school will remain public charter schools. Avossa has ordered similar audits of those schools.

Meantime, Petchenik learned Friday that the investors backing the schools $18.5 million bond issue to pay for a new Alpharetta campus, have recalled the bond.

In May, the school defaulted on the bond because it failed to get approval for a charter renewal, which was a requirement of the bond agreement.

A spokesman for Wells Fargo, which is acting as a trustee for the investors, told Petchenik that's just one step in many to move toward possible foreclosure of the property.

Jay Lawrence told Petchenik the bank has done a site survey on the land and has set aside money to "stabilize" the property to ensure its safe and doesn't succumb to erosion.

Construction on the school halted shortly after the school charter wasn't renewed.

Lassetter told Petchenik the school was still hopeful it can build there.

"I'm hoping an entity takes over the bond and we can continue to make payments so we can make an educational campus for our students," she said.