The Department of Education will be sending down a monitoring team to review the Dougherty County School's federal grant programs. This is in addition to the $10 million of federal money that's on hold.
The monitoring team that was sent down by the Georgia Department of Education in May never got all of the appropriate documents for some of the competitive grants. So they're making a trip back to Albany to clear up some questions.
Dougherty County Schools' federal grant programs are under close scrutiny by the Georgia Department of Education.
With about $10 million of federal funds on hold, DOE is waiting on information from the superintendent. And the department will also send down a monitoring team to clear up additional questions.
"For the competitive grants, they are required to do certain things, the things they committed to do when they applied for and received the competitive grants," said Scott Austensen, the Chief Financial Officer for the Georgia D.O.E. "So the monitoring that happens for both school improvement grants and race to the top grants include reviewing last years work and performance to make sure they're accomplishing what they said they would be accomplishing."
In a letter to Superintendent Dr. Murfree, the deputy superintendent for Race to the Top says their monitoring teams were not able to complete their visit last month because appropriate documentation wasn't available.
Now they're scheduling a time to come back. In addition to competitive grants, the free and reduced lunch program is in question.
"We need to get clarity on the veracity or accuracy of the free and reduced lunch count, because they're a big part of the formulas from Washington. So if the formula is wrong because the free and reduced lunch number is wrong, then we the Department of Education would have to pay back funds," said Austensen.
The department has asked the school system to finalize a review of the free and reduced lunch applications and then send them the documentation.
"If they don't resolve this, they won't be able to draw the funds down and a lot of these funds are paying staff and we do appreciate that which is why we're committing to getting things accomplished so quickly," said Austensen.
Some school board members were shocked to hear that funds were frozen and want to get the issue resolved as soon as possible.
"You know the Title I funds, that's going to have direct impact on the children," said Do. Co. School Board Member Darrel Ealum.
No deadline has been set, but state officials are expecting the information from the Dougherty County School System very soon.
"They've got to get these things worked out. So I don't think there's really much need for a deadline unless they have some source of funding we don't know about," explained Austensen.
Darrel Ealum says he's meeting with the superintendent Wednesday afternoon to discuss all of these issues.
The Georgia D.O.E. chief financial officer says it's uncommon for them to freeze funding.
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