'Records outline criminal case against former TPS executive, more accusations'

The Tulsa World has the story.

Talihina Public Schools audit questions superintendent expenses

 NonDoc has the story.

Court documents show hundreds of thousands of dollars taken from TPS

FOX 23 has the story.

Improprieties in Stillwater, Mustang, Grant Goodland, Swink, Dickson

Ray Carter reminds us.

Tishomingo teacher busted for meth

"A Tishomingo Middle School coach was arrested on Thursday after a sheriff’s deputy found meth in his car," KXII reports.

It is just the latest black eye for Tishomingo schools: two basketball coaches were fired three years ago for using a school bus to make a beer run on a road trip, two years ago a former superintendent was audited by OSBI for misusing school funds, and his wife -- formerly a teacher and cheer coach -- is currently serving time for having sex with a student.

Wister teacher arrested for allegedly stealing money from booster club

"An Oklahoma public school teacher has been arrested for allegedly stealing from one of the school's booster clubs," KFSM reports.

Accuser says superintendent paid teachers for sex

Longtime Peckham school district Superintendent Gary Young "is accused of inappropriate sexual conduct with young children as well as current and former students and staff members, including one staffer who said she received poor evaluations when she rejected his sexual advances," The Oklahoman reports. The state Department of Education has received a complaint that Young had an inappropriate relationship with one teacher who, based on her degree and years of experience, should be paid a minimum salary of $47,531 but instead is paid $87,849, plus an additional $9,097 as a support employee.

Illegal votes and coercion claims mar Wilburton school board election

Ray Carter has the story.

Moore school district's actions 'akin to embezzlement'

"Just this past month," Andrew Spiropoulos writes today in The Journal Record, "we read reports describing how one Oklahoma City-area school district is taking money that was appropriated for the specific purpose of funding programs for gifted children and shifting it to programs serving the general student population. This maneuver isn’t just defiance—it’s akin to embezzlement."

School administrators to lobby, play golf in OKC

It's fore the children.

Poteau teacher sold school's goat treadmills, kept the money

40/29 News has the story.

The scourge of school-district fraud

"In recent years, a series of scandals have made it clear that, along with traditional fiscal and labor pressures, school districts around the country face rampant fraud by their own employees," Jonathan Butcher writes. "Given its scope and significance, such fraud should be a much more prominent concern, and the fight against it should be front and center in contract negotiations, school-board elections, and education politics."

Actions in two districts hurt schools’ cause

"Government waste and questionable expenditures are bad in times of budget stability but they're especially vexing when finances are strained," The Oklahoman's editorial board points out.

In Tishomingo, an independent audit indicates former Superintendent Kevin Duncan, who left that job in June, used $78,000 in school funds for personal purchases, according to a report from television station KXII. The audit found Duncan misspent school funds on items like cellphones, an iPad, Beats speakers, a laptop, pool salt, a 55-inch TV, lamp shades and barbed wire, and submitted $1,400 in travel reimbursements for a hotel that didn't appear to be a job-related trip. 

Some misspending came to light earlier this year when Duncan's replacement found documents related to the purchases and Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation officials searched Duncan's home. The reported findings of the audit, however, suggest the misuse of funds was even greater than initially believed. 

While Duncan is responsible for his own actions, $78,000 in misspent funds represents systemic failure that includes the district's school board. Was anybody minding the store? And if school officials failed to keep track of that much money, one wonders how they can claim recent state funding increases will be better spent?

In 2016, Duncan was one of 20 administrators named District Superintendents of the Year by the Oklahoma Association of School Administrators. OASA's executive director described the honorees as people who exhibited “strong leadership skills.” One hopes OASA was mistaken in declaring Duncan one of the leading lights of their profession. ...

At Nathan Hale High School in Tulsa, officials are not in legal trouble but have provided reason to question their priorities and judgment. 

Television station KTUL reports that Hale High spent $22,000 to send 12 employees, including Principal Sheila Riley, to a four-day conference in Las Vegas that overlapped with the statewide teacher strike. Then the school spent another $15,000 in June to send Riley and three other administrators to another conference in Napa, California. Overall, the school spent $37,000 in “Title I” funds on similar professional development trips last school year.

Riley said the federal money was originally intended to pay to hire a teacher and a paraprofessional. But when the school couldn't find qualified candidates, she said officials had to find other ways to spend the money so the district would qualify for a similar amount of federal funds in future years. 

We don't doubt value can come from professional development programs, but the public is justified in doubting that these rushed expenditures were designed to provide real value to the school. 

When it comes to credibility on spending and financial oversight, the actions of officials in these two Oklahoma districts have done little to help education's cause.

Audit details how former Tishomingo superintendent spent school money

"The audit lists over $78,000 worth of purchases former Tishomingo schools superintendent Kevin Duncan made for his own personal use," KXII reports, "from cell phones and tablets to pool salts and barbed wire."

Hofmeister investigation over

The Hofmeister investigation is over, Ben Felder reports today in The Oklahoman.

Any investigation into state schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister for campaign finance violations is "completely over," said Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater. 

"It's dead, it's over, (the charges) will not be revived," Prater told The Oklahoman on Tuesday. "There is nothing there to look at." 

Prater's confirmation that his case into Hofmeister is complete comes a year after he dropped felony charges against her and four others, claiming any of the charges could be refiled. … 

In 2016, Prater charged Hofmeister with felony counts of accepting illegal donations to her 2014 campaign and conspiring to break campaign fundraising laws. … 

While Prater said there would be no further charges against Hofmeister, he did not rule it out for the other four individuals: Fount Holland, Hofmeister's former chief campaign consultant; Stephanie Dawn Milligan, the political consultant for Oklahomans for Public School Excellence; Lela Odom, who in 2014 was the executive director of the Oklahoma Education Association; and Steven Crawford, who was the executive director of the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration. 

"I won't say it's over ... for the others," Prater said. "But (Hofmeister's) part of it is over, completely."

This is obviously welcome news for Hofmeister. "I knew I was innocent and that I had conducted myself appropriately,” she said last year when the charges were dropped. She said the accusations were “unjust and untrue."

In a court of law, the accused is innocent until proven guilty. Joy Hofmeister is innocent, and we can rejoice with her and her family that this dark cloud has been lifted. Though I disagree with her views on parental choice, I actually like Joy. She seems to be a genuinely nice and caring lady, the kind of person you’d want your child to have for a first-grade teacher. I enjoyed our little chats as we toured schools in Indianapolis a few years ago.

At the same time, "innocent until proven guilty is for criminal convictions, not elections," as Mitt Romney remarked last year. Oklahomans still have every right to consider what OCU law professor Andrew Spiropoulos has described as “the damning evidence in the public record.”

Make no mistake, that's the elephant in the classroom. The evidence against the Republican candidate for superintendent is still there in the public record. And for any observer with even half the bewilderment quotient of Ricky Ricardo, it begs explanation. After all, Hofmeister texted to her consultants Fount Holland and Trebor Worthen that a wind lobbyist is "interested in my IE 😁." She joked to Fount Holland, "Obviously, we can't do anything about the IE. 😁" She informed the Jenks superintendent that one strategist recommended "Chad Alexander for the independent campaign which would be where he would put CCOSA. OSSBA, OEA money, plus amounts from corporations as it would all be anonymous. This independent campaign would do negative ads and allow me to take the high road with my own campaign." In short, as Professor Spiropoulos observed last year:

No matter what Prater ultimately decides, there is no doubt that Hofmeister, her campaign consultants, and the operatives of the chief education establishment organizations agreed to run a campaign in which outside groups, funded by the establishment and their corporate toadies, would attack the incumbent, while Hofmeister would pretend her hands were clean. Remember that the public record contains emails from Hofmeister and the other principals confirming the plan. Hofmeister even joked about her skating of the law, never imagining that the rest of us would see her infamous smiley-face emojis.

Oklahomans have every right to weigh that evidence—as well as any explanation that Hofmeister may now provide as to how her conduct was somehow "appropriate" and why the accusations were "untrue." She may very well have a good explanation.

Doubtless the watchdog press will dig into the matter and ask her for one. 😁


UPDATES:

• Despite "a raft of damning evidence of illegal campaign activity," Professor Spiropoulos writes in The Journal Record, "many of us who sharply criticize Hofmeister’s skewed ethical compass do not think that felony prosecution is the proper way to address her alleged breaches of legal and ethical norms—elections, legislative investigations, and impeachment charges should do the job."

The criminalization of politics only exacerbates the tribal warfare that is poisoning our politics and culture. Winning and losing elections shouldn’t be the difference between freedom and facing prison. I do not need or want my local district attorney to act as a censorious guardian of our political hygiene. ...  

But we cannot be distracted from understanding the institutional corruption lying at the core of the Hofmeister imbroglio. We must remember that the principal perpetrators of this attack on both fair elections and the effort to conduct education policy for the benefit of children are the capos of the education establishment interest groups who supplied both the money and the manpower for the coordination scheme.

• In a new development, "a prosecution witness in the 2016 criminal case against state schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister blames her in a lawsuit for the loss of his job," The Oklahoman reports. Hofmeister says the claim is "entirely untrue and unsupported."

Former Tishomingo superintendent under state investigation

"There are new details Friday on former Tishomingo superintendent Kevin Duncan, who we reported this week is under state investigation for possible misuse of school funds," News 12 reports.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation says a search warrant led them to find several of the items that were listed as suspicious purchases inside Kevin Duncan's home. "There was an area rug found, the television, three lampshades and a red and black Liftmaster Solar Residential Linear Actuator," OSBI Public Information Officer Jordan Solorzano said. ... 

Duncan's wife, Shelley, is awaiting retrial for an alleged sexual relationship with a then-14-year-old Tishomingo boy in 2016.

Former Skiatook superintendent pays $207,590 in restitution

The Tulsa World has the story.

Oklahoma mom laments 'the constant barrage of hate spewing forth from adults in my school district'

"I will never be surprised by issues of bullying in our schools after observing the copious amounts of bullying that went on during this strike," one Oklahoma mom observes.

Is Chickasha cheating?

"Nationwide, there have been many high-profile instances where school officials changed grades to mask failure, obtain federal funding, or avoid greater oversight," the state's largest newspaper editorialized today.

Chickasha Public Schools in Oklahoma may be joining that list. The state Department of Education has asked officials with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to assist in an investigation of alleged misconduct including fraud and tampering with student grade and attendance records at Chickasha. Department officials found “unexpectedly high levels of district personnel logins and grade changes” within the online Self-Paced Learning Center (SPLC) system used at the district. Between October 2017 and January 2018, approximately 5,500 student course grades and 18,800 individual assignment grades were overridden. According to state records, there are only around 2,500 students in the district. It's bad enough when adults behave badly, but far worse when adults potentially sacrifice the education of children in the process.

Hofmeister requests OSBI investigate grade-tampering allegations in Chickasha

OSDE's press release is here.