WASHINGTON 鈥� D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said Tuesday that a review is underway after a report of possible enrollment fraud at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.
Bowser held a news conference Tuesday, just hours after reported that dozens of families who live outside D.C. may be avoiding the tuition payments required for their children to attend the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.
Two D.C. officials told The Post that a preliminary check by the Office of the State Superintendent for Education of about 100 students who claimed D.C. residency found more than half may live outside of the District of Columbia. Nonresidents can attend the school, but are required to pay $12,000 in annual tuition.
Ahnna Smith, the deputy mayor for education, told 海角精品黑料 that the irregularities were discovered as part of an annual review of school enrollments that begins every October. Checking the residency documentation of each family is part of the process, Smith said; 鈥渢hey found a number of irregularities at Duke Ellington, and that triggered a deeper investigation.鈥�
They鈥檙e now checking the residency documentation for all 566 students at Duke Ellington, Smith said.
Families who haven鈥檛 been paying and can鈥檛 prove D.C. residency, she said, will have the chance of either withdrawing or paying back tuition.
“We have no interest in paying for students at our public schools that are not D.C. residents,” said Bowser at the news conference. “That is聽why we聽have a very robust system of verification that has been made聽even more robust in the last year.”
According to Superintendent Hanseul Kang, when it comes to admission to their programs, Duke Ellington gives preference to eligible students who are D.C. residents over nonresident applicants.
The Post reported that when officials in the state superintendent鈥檚 office shared the questionable residency claims with staff in their office and the attorney general鈥檚 office, they were told to 鈥渢ake your time鈥� with the investigation, adding that 鈥渋t鈥檚 an election year鈥� and such a story would be bad news for Bowser.
Kang said at a hearing with the D.C. Council’s Education Committee that she had no knowledge of such a comment, “and I would never direct a staff member to slow down our work for any reason other than what the work requires.”
This is the third scandal involving D.C. Public Schools in the past few months: In November of last year, an investigation found that teachers at F.W. Ballou High School were pressured to pass students who hadn鈥檛 fulfilled the requirements. The principal was reassigned.
And last week, Chancellor Antwan Wilson resigned after a little more than a year on the job after admitting that he received improper help getting his daughter transferred to Wilson High School 鈥� one of the city鈥檚 highest performing schools, which has a waiting list of hundreds of families. Deputy Mayor for Education Jennifer Niles also resigned.
D.C. Council member David Grosso, the chairman of the Education Committee, said in a statement that 鈥淭he number of scandals plaguing our education system is staggering.鈥�
He added that he was 鈥減articularly frustrated and disturbed鈥� by the report of 鈥渁n alleged cover-up by the Office of the State Superintendent for Education, and possibly the Office of the Attorney General.鈥�
海角精品黑料’s Kate Ryan contributed to this report.
