Let's Cut Some Spending: $225 Million in School Fraud

In our Let's Cut Some Spending series, ForAmerica chronicles the many ways Washington wastes YOUR tax dollars.

Today's offering: $225 million in confirmed K-12 education fraud that never reached a single kid.

A new joint investigation from Open the Books and the State Financial Officers Foundation, drawing on the Department of Education Inspector General's own reporting to Congress, found 74 confirmed cases of school fraud across 24 states and Puerto Rico since 2019 -- averaging more than $3 million each. Less than a third of the money has ever been recovered.

The worst single case happened in Indiana, where two schools inflated their attendance numbers to inflate state funding, then allegedly funneled $44 million to companies owned by the schools' own founder. In Florida, a Broward County Public Schools information officer allegedly steered a $17 million no-bid contract to a friend's business -- in exchange for a security job for himself and his son, and a house sold to him $150,000 below market value. Chicago Public Schools, meanwhile, collected $1 million in federal grants meant for Native American students using an application padded with more than 1,000 students of South Asian descent, and still can't say how many students were actually enrolled.

And then there's Janis Bucknor, former head of a Los Angeles County charter school, who admitted to stealing $3 million over five years -- a third of her school's entire federal and state funding -- and spent over $220,000 of it on Disney cruises and theme park trips.

"Fraudsters are seemingly trying to pick the pocket of American taxpayers everywhere we turn."

That's Education Secretary Linda McMahon, responding to the findings on Fox Business. The Department has already clawed back roughly $1 billion in fraud from the FAFSA student aid system this year, but this report shows the problem runs straight through classrooms in every corner of the country.

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$225 million could have funded real classrooms, real teachers, and real kids -- instead it funded Disney vacations and a friend's no-bid contract. Let's cut some spending.

Source: Open the Books, RealClearInvestigations