Big Graft on Campus: 10 Shocking School Scandals
According to FBI Special Agent Patrick Bohrer, uncovering public corruption is the FBI’s top criminal investigative priority.
“Corrupt public officials undermine our country’s national security, our overall safety, the public trust, and confidence in the U.S. government, wasting billions of dollars along the way,” Bohrer explained on the FBI website. “This corruption can tarnish virtually every aspect of society.”
Our nation’s public schools are not impervious to scandalous crimes of fraud, bribery, and embezzlement. In response to recent corruption cases involving education employees, U.S. Attorney David J. Hickton activated a school corruption hotline in the Western District of Pennsylvania. Citizens are being encouraged to report suspected abuses, including misuse of district funds, spending irregularities, and illegal collusion with outside vendors.
Just how prevalent is corruption in public education? During the past six months alone, scores of unlawful incidents took place in schools across the country. Here are 10 of the most shocking:
1. SAN DIEGO SCANDAL: Earlier this month, 26 felony charges were brought against four San Diego County school officials and a contractor accused of paying bribes. The charges alleged that contractor Henry Amigable provided school board members with thousands of dollars of restaurant meals, Los Angeles Lakers playoff tickets, Rose Bowl tickets, and airline, theater, and concert tickets in exchange for awarding him school contracts. Former school superintendent Jesus Gandara was among the accused.
2. TROUBLE IN TENNESSEE: Cinnamon Davis, a 24-year-old secretary at Varangon Academy, was indicted in November 2011 for embezzling between $10,000 and $60,000 from the residential school for troubled youth. She turned herself in on the same day a statutory rape case brought against her on behalf of a 17-year-old Varangon student was dropped.
3. OKLAHOMA OUTRAGE: Former Skiatook Superintendent Gary Johnson pleaded guilty in December 2011 to four counts of accepting cash bribes totaling $10,000 from Rick Enos, a vendor of school custodial supplies and security equipment. Enos bribed Johnson to steer district contracts his way, then overcharged the district by $570,000 to sell them his wares.
4. WEST VIRGINIA WOES: Earlier this month, Mason County Board of Education vice president Teresa Warner was given a six-count felony indictment for selling GEDs. Between 2002 and 2010, when Warner was authorized to conduct GED tests, students paid her more than $1,000 to issue them passing grades.
5. TURMOIL IN TAMPA: Parrish Construction received more than $100 million worth of business from the Polk County School Board, and is accused of having bribed former district official Bob Williams with more $50,000 worth of gifts to guarantee favorable treatment. Williams resigned in January 2009, but quitting didn't shake the FBI from his tail. A trial date is set for March 2012.
6. ASHAMED IN ATLANTA: After a state investigation last summer revealed widespread cheating by teachers in Atlanta’s schools, officials announced that the district will repay more than $363,000 to the U.S. Department of Education. The federal funds were originally given to the schools as a reward for high test scores.
7. MAYHEM IN MICHIGAN CITY: Stacy Sydow, a 30-year-old school employee, was charged in September 2011 with three counts of Class C felony forgery for cashing checks belonging to Marsh Elementary School. Sydow was given a checkbook to purchase supplies for a school party. She is alleged to have used more than 20 checks to buy personal items for her family, mostly at Walmart. Her trial date is set for March 5, 2012.
Sydow was given a checkbook to purchase supplies for a school party. She is alleged to have used more than 20 checks to buy personal items for her family, mostly at Walmart.
8. CHICAGO CORRUPTION: At Chicago’s North-Grand High School, more than a dozen Chicago Public School and city employees submitted false applications for free or reduced-price lunches for their children. According to Chicago Public Schools’ Inspector General James Sullivan, the same type of fraud is happening in schools all across the city at taxpayers’ expense. In a January 2012 report, Sullivan surmised that the federal school lunch program is rife with abuse because of incentives for high enrollment and minimal checks and balances.
9. GREENVILLE GREED: Danny Lee Langley, former maintenance director of Eastern Carolina’s Wayne County Schools, and his assistant Earl Rhodes pled guilty in December 2011 to charges of bribery and conspiracy. The two men helped All American Roofing and Construction win bids for school roofing projects in exchange for a cash percentage of the profits. Langley faces up to 10 years imprisonment and Rhodes faces up to five.
10. BAMBOOZLED IN THE BRONX: According to Bronx city investigators, P.S. 31’s recent budget cuts didn’t deter Principal Liza Cruz Diaz from billing for more 100 hours of overtime pay when she wasn’t even at work. Diaz, say officials, habitually asked a secretary to punch her timecard hours after she left. She also is accused of using school funds to make personal purchases, falsifing evidence that she reimbursed the funds, signing her own timesheets, and smuggling records out of the building when she realized she was being investigated. Department officials are looking to fire Diaz, and to discipline the secretary who falsified her timecards.
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