U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor has convened a “working group” of anti-fraud investigators from federal and local agencies tasked with rooting out endemic corruption in the District of Columbia’s education system.
The new task force began work in the shadow of a string of high-profile fraud and abuse cases within the city’s schools.
“Instead of trying to pick up the pieces after the damage has been done, we’re out there in the schools meeting key people and getting the word out that we’re there to help,” Taylor told The Examiner. “We want to make sure the public money goes to benefit the kids, not line the pockets of corrupt people.”
Taylor’s prosecutors have brought at least three school officials to court on criminal corruption charges this year.
He said that after Mayor Adrian Fenty gained control of the city’s crumbling schools, his office realized the mayor may need help gaining control over the billions of public dollars coursing through the system.
Taylor said he wanted his team to be “proactive rather than reactive,” and it was assembled accordingly. It’s made up of line prosecutors, including Steve Durham, chief of the white-collar corruption unit, as well as agents from the FBI, the Department of Education’s inspector general and the D.C. inspector general.
The team’s effort is welcomed by veteran school reform advocates such as Mary Levy, schools expert for the Washington Lawyers Committee.
“Over and over, I’ve watched as auditors and the media show up after the damage has been done — and too late to prevent problems,” Levy said. “I’d rather they caught up right away.”
The team has already begun its work, Durham told The Examiner. Last summer, Fenty and his chancellor, Michelle Rhee, declared a school-repair “blitz” that moved tens of millions of public dollars out of the door in a failed effort to get schools in working order.
Durham said that agents from the D.C. inspector general pulled dozens of work orders, contracts and vouchers and made site visits to make sure that every toilet ordered was being installed. There haven’t been any prosecutions from the effort, but that’s hardly the point, Durham said.
“A big point of the working group is that we get the message out there,” Durham told The Examiner. “The message we’re sending out is, ‘Don’t even think about it.’ ”
Bad apples?
School officials who’ve run afoul of the law this year
» Charles Emor, founder of the publicly funded SunRise Academy: Sentenced to one year and one day in prison for his role in a stolen-computer ring
» Brenda Belton, former executive director of the Board of Education’s charter schools: Sentenced to 35 months in prison for helping herself to hundreds of thousands of public dollars
» Eugene P. Smith, former director of schools’ internal audit: Pleaded guilty to stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a defunct charter school
Got atip on the D.C. schools? Call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or e-mail [email protected]
