State orders sub-par voucher school to repay $740,000

For the third time this school year, state officials have dropped a participant from the private school voucher program in Milwaukee. And for the first time, the state is requiring the school to repay nearly three-quarters of a million dollars it received in voucher payments, and banned several people affiliated with the school from running another one for at least seven years.

Tucker's Institute of Learning, which reported last fall it had 95 students in 9th-12th grades and 4-year-old and 5-year-old kindergarten, has too many irregularities in financial procedures and has major performance problems, Department of Public Instruction officials said. The school failed to file an audited report on official attendance and a report on fiscal controls by the deadline.Tucker's also allowed an employee who was not a certified public accountant to file an audit report on the school's finances, which was supposed to be filed by a CPA not affiliated with the school.

State officials are requiring Tucker's to return $740,000 for the voucher payments it received since September 2004, and they also barred 12 people affiliated with Tucker's from starting any more voucher schools or joining existing voucher schools for seven years.

State officials have received nearly 40 new applications for voucher schools next year, bringing the total for 2006-07 to 160 schools that have applied to be part of the voucher program. DPI will screen applications and have an approved list this summer.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Tuesday (March 14, 2006) that momentum is building to end public support of schools in Milwaukee that are doing poorly.

This is "a reflection of the people who are supportive of these (school) alternatives joining up with those of us who regulate, and saying, 'We have to be careful,'" Deputy State Superintendent Tony Evers told the newspaper. "We don't like closing schools, but we like even worse allowing schools that are under-performing or not doing the job financially to exist."

This is at least the eighth private voucher school to close in Milwaukee during the last two years, and more are expected to close under a new law that requires all to become accredited within three years.

Resource page on voucher schools

Posted March 17, 2006