Wednesday, May 23, 2007
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN — A decision by the city school district to verify the legitimacy of addresses for city schoolchildren enrolled in charter schools appears to be paying off.
Treasurer Carolyn Funk told the school board’s finance committee Tuesday that the district has found 40 pupil addresses believed to be fraudulent in a review process that began about two months ago.
That amounts to nearly $206,000 in tuition payments that Youngstown won’t be paying to charter schools, she said.
The district had been faced with $21,483,337 in tuition payments for city children attending charter schools this year. Funk said there are about 2,400 names on that list.
State reimbursement for attendance follows the pupil, so charter schools that enroll Youngstown kids bill the city school district for tuition payments.
In an effort to verify the legitimacy of those claims for tuition, the district hired the legal firm of Roetzel and Andres, with offices in Akron and Cleveland, to handle the process of ensuring the city school district isn’t being charged tuition for children that don’t actually live in the city.
Roetzel and Andres will be paid between $6,000 and $7,000 for its one-year services.
“We have to prove a fraudulent address,” said Dr. Wendy Webb, Youngstown superintendent of schools.
Board member Lock P. Beachum Sr. asked if checking whether addresses are legitimate is a responsibility of the school district.
“There is no one out there [at the state or any other level] doing it,” Funk said, explaining that Youngstown opted to do it to protect itself.
The process takes as many as four mailings to pupil addresses suspected of being incorrect or fraudulent, as well as repeated consultations with charter schools claiming to have children at those addresses enrolled, Funk said. Sometimes, those schools have new addresses for those children, but haven’t notified the district of the change, she said.
Webb said the majority of the 40 addresses found to be suspect, so far, are for children supposedly enrolled in cyber charter schools.
The verification effort has reduced the district’s total tuition bill for the year to $21,277,392 so far, according to Funk’s calculation.
“As the identification process continues, I anticipate further reductions,” she said.
gwin@vindy.com