Triangle private school faces possible investigation after being suspended from vouchers

A Johnston County private school is facing a potential criminal investigation over allegations it received Opportunity Scholarship voucher money for students who didn’t attend the school.

The Mitchener University Academy in Selma was suspended from receiving Opportunity Scholarship funds in early 2023, according to Mary Shuping, director of government and external affairs for the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority.

Following an investigation by the agency, Shuping said the school was ordered to return $37,319 that had been disbursed in the fall 2022 semester for students who had not attended or who had withdrawn from the school. She said the full amount has been returned.

“We have turned the matter over to the State Bureau of Investigation as required by statute,” Shuping said in an email Tuesday. “We take violations seriously and are grateful that the process worked to identify this issue.”

The school was among those cited in a recent N.C. Justice Center analysis of whether some private schools received voucher money for students it wasn’t actually educating.

The report was released as North Carolina legislators consider expanding the Opportunity Scholarship program to any family, regardless of income level.

Moses Mitchener, the school’s founder, did not immediately respond to questions about the potential SBI investigation. But Mitchener said the school will remain open and focus on helping high school students.

“We have downsized to virtual-only moving forward,” Mitchener said. “We are open and offer private pay only while remaining online.”

Schools receiving vouchers for non-existent students?

The Justice Center analysis lists 62 times when private schools received more vouchers from the Opportunity Scholarship program than for students they reported having.

Mitchener’s suspension predates the release of the report by Kris Nordstrom, a senior policy analyst with the Education & Law Project at the N.C. Justice Center

If the enrollment figures are accurate, the left-leaning policy group says this represents approximately $2.3 million of fraudulent payments to these schools across the state.

“At the end of the day, it’s really incumbent on the voucher proponents to show that this voucher program is not being abused and is not a huge avenue for fraud,” Nordstrom said in an interview Monday.

But Mike Long, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, said the potential abuses don’t outweigh the good the voucher program is doing for students.

“You will never get pushback from our organization as it relates to ensuring North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program is protected from any impropriety,” Long said in a statement. “We will always be on the forefront guarding an amazing scholarship program that, this school year, helped over 25,000 students obtain access to the school of their choice.”

Discrepancy in state data

The Opportunity Scholarship program was initially promoted in 2014 as a way to help low-income students to escape failing schools by receiving funding to help pay the cost for attending a private school.

For the 2022-23 school year, $133.8 million was awarded to 25,547 students at 544 private schools.

Nordstrom compared the enrollment data reported annually to the state Division of Non-Public Education with the number of voucher recipients at each school from the Education Assistance Authority.

Shuping said the numbers won’t be identical because the Division of Non-Public Education data comes from one point of time while the NCSEAA data is collected over the whole year. Shuping said the authority’s data is verified in multiple ways.

In some cases, Nordstrom found that the discrepancy was only a few students. But in other cases, schools reported dozens more voucher recipients than total students.

School suspended from voucher program

For the 2021-22 school year, Mitchener received $443,100 in state funding for 149 voucher recipients. But the school, about 30 miles east of Raleigh, reported having only 72 students to the state Division of Non-Public Education.

Mitchener said in an email Monday that the school had more than 200 students. But Mitchener said that he was unable to edit the state report after it was submitted to reflect the higher number.

Prior to the 2021-22 school year, the school had never reported having more than 34 students to the Division of Non-Public Education. But Mitchener said the COVID pandemic increased their enrollment.

After receiving information from a parent, Shuping said the agency determined that the school had violated statutory requirements and program rules related to the certification and endorsement processes. She said that the school had also violated the student withdrawal policy.

In March, Shuping said Mitchener University Academy was declared ineligible to participate in the Opportunity Scholarship program. She said that the agency stopped approximately $300,000 in funds from being distributed for the spring semester as well as requiring the return of $37,319 from the fall semester.

The school received $316,725 in voucher funding in the 2022-23 school year.

Should NC expand voucher program?

In addition to schools reporting more voucher recipients than students, Nordstrom’s analysis found some schools were collecting voucher money even after they stopped reporting enrollment to the state Division of Non-Public Education. He said this brings up the question of whether schools received voucher funding after they closed.

The Division of Non-Public Education is required by statute to notify the Education Assistance Authority within five business days of a school becoming ineligible to operate, including school closures.

The problem, Nordstrom said, is not all private schools are the same. He said some private schools are “fly-by-night operations” in strip malls and basements of homes that are taking advantage of the “Wild West” environment for the voucher program.

“This is part and parcel of being the least regulated voucher program in the nation,” Nordstrom said. “The potential for fraud is going up if you triple the size of the voucher program.”

Nordstrom said the analysis shows why GOP lawmakers should pause plans to expand the voucher program.

The state House has passed legislation that would expand the Opportunity Scholarship program to any family, regardless of income level. The Senate would also increase voucher funding, raising it eventually to have more than $500 million a year.

“We have long believed that parents and families in our state should have access to the school of their choice regardless of their ZIP code or income,” said Long, of Parents for Educational Freedom. “That belief will never change, despite the negative rhetoric coming from longtime opponents, whose only goal is to protect a one size fits all system, rather than empowering parents to choose what is best for their children.”