In a latest telephone interview with Gov. Kevin Stitt for a story about his monitor file on training, I used to be in a position to discuss to the governor straight concerning the Bridge the Gap Digital Wallet program, and the findings from our investigation with The Frontier (catch up here.)
Stitt allotted $8 million in federal funds to this system, dispersing $1,500 grants to low-income households to purchase faculty provides in 2020.
Our investigation, and a federal audit, discovered households spent greater than half a million {dollars} on objects of questionable academic worth: TVs, doorbells, barbecue grills, residence home equipment, and different objects.
Auditors advisable the U.S. Department of Education claw again the funds that had been misspent. Where would that cash come from?
It’s doable the Legislature would discover the funds within the state price range.
It’s additionally doable the state will prevail in its lawsuit against ClassWallet and the corporate can pay again these funds.
Stitt, although, additionally instructed one other means.
“As quickly as 18 months in the past, we discovered that there might have been households that misused these funds. We did an audit. We discovered there have been $700,000 price of potential misrepresentations from these households, $1,500 at a time. So we put them on discover.
“If the Legislature wants to sue those families for that $1,500, we can do that. The vendor is being sued and we think we’ll recover that $600,000 or $700,000 for the taxpayer.”
But Stitt’s appointed secretary of training, Ryan Walters, who’s working for state superintendent, had given “blanket approval” for the households to purchase something on choose vendor web sites.
Stitt additionally appeared to excuse some purchases of residence home equipment. “The individual folks in Oklahoma that got that $1,500, they’re saying, ‘Well, we didn’t do anything wrong because our school was closed in Tulsa. And so the reason we bought a washer and dryer is normally our kids clothes were washed at school.’ And the one family that bought a refrigerator said, ‘Well, the reason we bought our refrigerator is because our school was closed.’ And that part was okay with this plan.”
A degree of clarification: we discovered over 100 fridges within the buy knowledge And Tulsa was removed from the one faculty district utilizing digital instruction within the fall of 2020.
The state’s dealing with of Digital Wallet has turn into a main difficulty within the races for governor and superintendent of public instruction. Be certain to learn our sequence of tales publishing this week on Stitt’s first time period.
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— Jennifer Palmer
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