Schools in the area are in a state of uncertainty as to whether or not they have to return tens of thousands of dollars after the State Auditor General and the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) revealed last week that hundreds of schools in the state have either been overfunded or underfunded by Title I funds for the past three years. Just days after that announcement a second error was found showing that the ADE had under allocated $15.2 million in IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), funding.
The Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas sent out a notification to districts stating that Title I funds will be distributed as they were expected and that the department is in negotiations with the USDE, proposing that schools be held harmless, meaning that schools that were overfunded for the past three years will not have to return the funds and their future allocations won’t be reduced.
The ADE is also asking that underfunded districts and charters be made whole over the next five years by the amounts they were shorted using funds that the department had set aside.
Although those districts and charters that were underfunded IDEA funds haven’t been revealed, local districts that were overfunded Title I funds included the Winslow, Holbrook, Joseph City and Snowflake school districts.
Tentative figures show that Snowflake Unified School District was over allocated $228,618, Holbrook Unified School District $82,256, Winslow Unified School District $83,526 and Joseph City Unified School District $57,875.
According to Winslow School District Cyndie Mattox, these funds are critical with the funding cuts already impacting the district. “These funds support our reading program and teacher development. We’re already $400,000 down and if more is taken from us we’ll be in big trouble,” she said.
Mattox also noted that although she just returned from a superintendent’s conference in Prescott, no mention was made regarding the funding issues. “I learned about it of Facebook and I was fuming mad,” she added.
Snowflake School District Superintendent Hollis Merrell was also unaware of any issues regarding funding until the topic was announced in the news. The letter received by the district only noted that several audit findings had occurred and that the parties responsible for the misallocations have been replaced, but did not note any dollar amounts.
