News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

State mulls action on school program

The question of whether Sisters schools will have to pay the state $1.2 million collected through a controversial home schooling program will be asked in the highest reaches of Oregon's education bureaucracy this week.

Representatives from the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) are meeting this week with the Oregon State Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Castillo and attorneys from the Oregon Department of Justice. They hope to plot a road map for the ODE to follow in collecting all or a portion of the $1,200,000 in funds the Oregon Secretary of State's Audits Division found the Sisters School District overbilled the State School Fund (SSF).

An investigation conducted by the secretary of state's audits division found that between 1999 and 2004 the Sisters School District's homeschool program at Sonrise Christian School was "not a legitimate program for which the district was entitled to SSF." (see "State comes down hard on school district," The Nugget, September 20, page 1).

Randy Harnisch, Adviser to the State Superintendent, told The Nugget that after this week's meeting the ODE will "…give the Department of Justice some direction to do some research." Harnisch said that the Department of Justice will then tell the ODE "what we have to do and what our options are as far as how to implement it."

Harnisch said that after their investigation of the Sisters School District's homeschool program at Sonrise Christian School, the secretary of state's auditors made several recommendations to the ODE.

"Recovering funds is the big one," he said.

It's a big deal for Sisters, too. The $1.2 million represents about 15 percent of the budget for Sisters schools; immediate repayment of that amount would plunge the district into a fiscal crisis.

And students would be the ones to ultimately pay the price.

When the Sisters homeschool program started in 1999, the students who today are in kindergarten and first grade were not even born.

Harnisch said that this places the ODE in a difficult position. These children are effectively the ones who will be punished if the ODE recoups funds from the district.

"We have a fairly solid and what appears to be a fairly ironclad report from the secretary of state that says this happened and they suggest that we take this action," Harnish said. "We also realize … that we don't want to directly penalize the truly innocent parties here.

"We are in conversation with the department of education staff, state superintendent of public instruction and her advisers, as well as our legal council to find out what we are required to do, if anything and then what our options are as far as mitigating the impact while still staying true to obligations to be stewards of the state funds.

"I want it to be clear that we take our state level responsibility very seriously, as well, and if those dollars were inappropriately claimed then the whole state was out that chunk of money. We have both a state wide responsibility, but we also cannot ignore our responsibility … to those little kids in kindergarten and first grade in Sisters who didn't gain and have everything to lose. We want to make sure that we do the right thing in the right way."

Harnisch said that the auditors also asked the ODE to clean up some of its internal processes and reevaluate its administrative rules. Harnisch said, "Some of that's already well underway."

In his report the secretary of state not only faulted the Sisters School District for inappropriately collecting funds but also instructed the ODE to: "Develop policies and procedures for reviewing district homeschool programs to ensure they are entitled to SSF. The policies and procedures should include a method for identifying all homeschool programs receiving SSF dollars."

The report also asked the ODE to: "Establish rules concerning whether it is appropriate for districts to use SSF dollars to pay parents to tutor their children."

Sisters is not the only school district that has been scrutinized by the secretary of state. Practices in the Union-Baker ESD in Eastern Oregon are also being examined, and state officials are considering adopting more of a "hands-on" policy to audit districts on a regular basis.

One reason for this need may be that ODE policies and procedures for administering alternative and homeschool programs are undefined.

About the investigation of the Sisters district, Harnisch said that the auditors were looking at the Sisters homeschool program as a whole. The manner in which records were kept was a key issue.

"The bookkeeping question is very complicated," Harnisch said. "The secretary of state seems to have a good handle on what happened."

He said that auditors investigated whether the Sisters School District was making a legitimate claim from the SSF irrespective of any religious issue. Auditors concluded that the Sisters School District inappropriately counted students to determine the district's Average Daily Membership (ADM).

ADM is the count of students that the state uses to allocate dollars to school districts.

When auditors found that the religious nature of Sonrise and the instruction offered did not change during the time teachers were being paid as Sisters district tutors and the time they were paid as Sonrise employees, fuel was added to the fire.

Harnisch said, "Teachers were not distinguishing between their religious portion of the day and the state sponsored portion of the day. That was additional evidence that the secretary of state, I believe, used to conclude that it was an improper use of state funds."

Harnisch said that the state has specific guidelines for districts to follow in administering alternative programs. The ODE provides districts with an accounting manual that Harnisch said, "goes into great detail as to how to count kids."

The Sisters School Board has not made a formal response to the state audit except to state that there was no intentional wrongdoing and that any funds received were used for educational purposes.

 

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