Florida sisters found guilty of using private religious school to steal from voucher system.

[madfloridian]

They had a mistrial for their first trial. That never made sense because they bought a Hummer and Lexus with the money.

This took a while for a pretty straightforward case. I have real concerns of mixing Florida's public school money with vouchers for private religious schools.

Sisters Found Guilty in Fraud Case

BARTOW | After a day and a half of deliberations, a jury found sisters Betty Mae Mitchell and Jeannette Nealy guilty of using their family's private religious school to steal money from Florida's voucher system.

Neither sister showed any reaction when the six-member jury returned its verdict Wednesday morning after a five-week trial.

Mitchell, 40, and Nealy, 39, were allowed to remain free on bail, pending the results of their pre-sentencing investigation, which will take about six weeks.

A previous trial in the case ended when a jury couldn't reach a verdict and a mistrial was declared.

Prosecutors said the women swindled about $200,000 from state and federal programs through a network of corporations, including the private religious schools Faith Christian Academy in Bartow and Cathedral of Faith Christian Academy in Lakeland.

Previously their lawyer had tried to blame the problems on bad record keeping, but I guess that $35,000 Hummer got in the way of such an argument.

Lawyer blames Florida voucher money theft on bad record-keeping...like that $35,000 hummer?

..."According to Assistant State Attorney Wayne Durden, the family billed the federal government $9,000 for lunches served in June and July 2003, when the school wasn't in session. They also collected $65,000 from another federal grant program for lunches, and withdrew $18,000 in cash and then another $25,000 in cash from that program. It is not known what they spent most of the cash on, but they appear to have used the $25,000 for bail money when they were arrested in the fraud case on June 29, 2004, Durden said.

In the summer of 2003, Betty Mitchell purchased a used 2003 Hummer H2 with $35,000 in cash that was taken from state scholarship funds, according to Durden.

The state has also alleged that Nealy bought a 1990 Lexus L400 in December 2003 using cash that was deposited into the account of Restoration NOW ministries, which is run by the family. The students were disabled and exceptional-education students, and the state paid the school a certain amount of money per child who attended.

The more recent articles fail to mention that two of the defendants had previously been charged in the death of Mitchell's former husband. There was a hung jury there as well.

BARTOW -- The private-school principal accused of stealing state voucher money via the now defunct Faith Christian Academy had once been tried for the murder of her husband in Arkansas.
Betty Mae Jives Mitchell, then Betty Clark, and Louise Henry were accused in 1987 of poisoning Mitchell's former husband, Thomas Joseph Clark, with arsenic in Crittenden County, Ark. The trial ended in a hung jury, and the state dropped its case against the pair.

I believe there are still types of vouchers which allow public tax money to go to private religious schools, with little oversight of the students' progress.

[ulysses]

1. can't be. vouchers are the solution to our educational woes.

:eyes:

[Nomad559]

2. Vouchers are the solution to our educational woes

It must be true, Steve Jobs said so.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news/2007/02/72754
Jobs has also been a longtime advocate of a school voucher system, another ridiculous idea based on the misplaced faith that the mythical free market will fix schools by giving parents choice.

Jobs argues that vouchers will allow parents, the "customers," to decide where to send their kids to school, and the free market will sort it out. Competition will spur innovation, improve quality and drive bad schools (and bad teachers) out of business. The best schools will thrive.

:eyes:

[madfloridian]

3. Florida's Pre K are free to go to religious private schools...

last I heard, and I don't think they are overseen by the public school system as far as curriculum.

I think of the adage...get them when they are young and teach them what you want them to know.

[ulysses]

7. the more I hear these nimrods advocate running schools on a business model,

the more I want to beat them senseless.

[porphyrian]

4. Jesus told them to steal from children, so it was OK. - n/t

[SoCalDem]

5. You mean the "Jesus Faith Tabernacle School/Donut Shop" was not a real school?

Who-da-thunk-it..

This is precisely why so many people voted for the whole voucher scam..

As soon as vouchers arrive, so do a whole crop of storefront-jesus schools, whose tuition is surprisingly the exact same cost as the amount of the vouchers..

[ck4829]

6. K&R

[madfloridian]

8. Ok, found the part about vouchers and Pre-K and private religious schools.

I am not aware of any changes since then. And it took two trials to find them guilty??

This is ridiculous.

http://startingat3.org/news/Sa3news_050201_FLPreKProgramFallsShort.html

"While the public schools must accept every child who meets residency and age requirements, providers in the VPK program can reject preschoolers for any reason at all, including socioeconomic status and ability. There is even a built-in incentive for providers to reject students who appear least likely to succeed, since each VPK program will be rated based on student performance on a kindergarten readiness assessment.

Second, the VPK program falls short of the constitutional mandate for high quality programs. As the ballot initiative made clear, "high quality pre-kindergarten" must be "delivered according to professionally accepted standards," including a "core curriculum," and "appropriate staffing ratios, teacher qualifications and professional development." These quality standards are consistent with the research on early childhood education.

The State of Preschool: 2004 State Preschool Yearbook, by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) rates each state’s preschool program according to a research-based checklist of quality benchmarks. When the doors open for the VPK program next school year, the program will meet only two out of ten of NIEER’s quality indicators – staff-child ratio and class size limit. The program fails on the other critical benchmarks, including curriculum standards and qualified teachers. On teacher qualifications, VPK misses the mark on what experts agree are the keys to quality - teachers with a bachelor’s degree and specialized training, assistant teachers with a child development associate credential, and on-going professional development. VPK does not require these credentials and training, and lacks any plan to move Florida’s prekindergarten workforce in this direction.

The VPK program also faces potential challenge under the no-aid provision in the Florida Constitution. This provision in the clause against the establishment of religion mandates that "no revenue of the state ... shall ever be taken from the public treasury directly or indirectly in aid ... of any sectarian institution." The VPK program depends in large part on private, church-based programs to serve Florida’s preschoolers. In the recent decision Bush v. Holmes, 886 So.2d 340 (2004), the Florida Court of Appeals ruled that the state school voucher program, through which state-funded vouchers are given to parents to pay tuition at private schools, including sectarian and church-based schools, violates the no-aid provision. The Court found that any disbursement made under the voucher program and paid to a sectarian or religious school is made in aid of a "sectarian institution," within the scope of the no-aid provision of the anti-establishment clause, namely, the school itself, even if it is shown that no voucher funds directly benefit or support a church or religious denomination. The voucher case is likely to go before the Florida Supreme Court and may bear on the constitutionality of the VPK program under the no-aid provision.

Prepared: February 1, 2005