PROVIDENCE — A judge yesterday approved a plan that will allow a pair of education leadership programs to continue as an accounting firm sorts through the finances of the Education Partnership, a business-backed advocacy group that went into receivership in June.

Superior Court Judge Michael A. Silverstein said the plan was “clearly in the public interest,” so he authorized the receiver, Allan M. Shine, to serve as a conduit for a federal grant, pay vendors and have another nonprofit group run the leadership programs.

Shine’s law partner Diane Finkle explained that the Education Partnership had run the Principal Residency Network, which prepares teachers to be principals by matching them with mentors, and the Learning Leader Network, which provides seminars for teachers and school administrators.

The programs had been supported each year with grants from the U.S. Department of Education, and in October 2007 Congress approved $191,000 for the programs, according to the receiver’s petition. The Education Partnership began the programs for the 2008-09 academic years on Jan. 1, and completed the first segment of the programs before the organization stopped operating.

On June 20, the receiver ceased all of the Education Partnership’s business operations “because of a shortage of funds and issues concerning the sources and uses of funds on hand,” the receiver’s petition said. By that point, the Education Partnership had paid $31,700 in expenses for the programs, but it had not paid another $40,000 in expenses, the petition said.

The receiver’s petition emphasized that the programs “have been successful in training school principals and providing leadership training to Rhode Island school districts and that there is substantial need in the education community for the leadership programs.”

And it said the Rhode Island Instructional Leadership Academy, a charitable nonprofit organization, is willing to carry out the remainder of the leadership programs.

Finkle told the judge that none of the Education Partnership’s known creditors have objected to the plan to keep the leadership programs going. Assistant Attorney General James R. Lee and Mark B. Morse, a lawyer representing the Feinstein Foundation, said they had no objection. Silverstein then approved the plan.

Finkle also told the judge that the accounting firm of Sullivan & Co. now has 45 boxes of Education Partnership documents that it will need for the forensic audit. She said there are another 95 boxes of documents that probably won’t be needed for the analysis.

“They have the records to do a full review, and they think that by the end of September they will have completed the review, except possibly for one large program,” Finkle said.

So Silverstein set a Sept. 29 court date to get a status report from the accounting firm.

efitzpat@projo.com