The board’s vice chair, Cecilia Holloman, said the board has the school’s interests in mind, and described the parents’ campaign as a “witch hunt” aimed at taking over the board. She said she sees no conflict with Alonso-Poch’s multiple roles with the school, and calls his influence “a blessing.”“They have every right to complain,” said Holloman, who also worked with Alonso-Poch at another nonprofit. “At the end of the day, they are parents. They are not decision-makers for that school. Six or twelve parents are not going to run that school.”

Alonso-Poch and the board have said they would consider placing a parent on the board — but only someone “loyal” to the school.

“They’re like babies that want to be on this board,” Alonso-Poch told a parent group after the Sept. 23 meeting. To Hernandez, he said: “Why don’t you go build your own school?”

Alonso-Poch did just that in 2003, when the real-estate lawyer bought a four-story shopping mall in Coconut Grove’s Commodore Plaza and turned it into Arts & Minds, the first performing-arts charter school in Miami-Dade County. The high school has sent several students to prestigious arts schools and the Ivy League.

Arts & Minds received about $2.4 million in tax dollars in the 2009-10 school year, records show. But the school has long depended on money from Alonso-Poch to stay afloat.

Alonso-Poch says he has donated more than $2 million to the school over the past eight years — some in cash, some in forgiven rent — and at times has had to pay the mortgage on the school building from his own pocket.

But Alonso-Poch has profited, too: The school pays more than $77,000 a month in rent to Alonso-Poch’s company, records show, though Alonso-Poch said the mortgage costs about $45,000 a month. All of the property devoted to the school is not taxed.

In addition, the school paid $147,000 in 2009 and 2010 to another Alonso-Poch company to provide student lunches. Alonso-Poch said his food-service company is “not a profit-making enterprise.”

“If there are areas where profits are made, I don’t see what’s wrong with that,” he said.

Alonso-Poch said the school is more expensive to run than a traditional school because it requires a theater, dance studios and other large spaces for performing arts, making it harder to balance the books at a time when public-school revenue is falling statewide.

“If this school doesn’t succeed, the only one who goes under is me. I mean financially,” Alonso-Poch told parents after the Sept. 23 meeting. “I have a personal guarantee on this mortgage.”

Holloman said the school’s board has never considered moving to another, cheaper location. “I think we’re kind of lucky to be here,” she said.

In July, the school’s board agreed to hire a company called EDU Management to run the school — a company Alonso-Poch created in April, state records show. Under the contract, EDU Management will receive $200 for each of the 450 students at the school.

Alonso-Poch now manages the school’s expenses — and makes the lease payments on the school’s behalf to his own real-estate company.

When questioned about the contract at a board meeting, Holloman first told parents that Alonso-Poch had no role with the management company — until Alonso-Poch corrected her. Holloman also told parents the company was hired after a “competitive” bidding process.