In the years from 2000 to 2003, a contractor with Tennessee’s Department of Education overcharged the state by over $200 thousand. Now the state Senate Education Chairman is questioning what department officials knew, and when they knew it.
Appalachian Education Laboratories was contracted early this decade to recruit and train top-flight teachers to work in underperforming classrooms. In 2004, the company’s CEO found evidence AEL administrators had been overcharging the state, and voluntarily called to alert Connie Smith in the department’s accountability office.
It took roughly a year for the state to launch an audit into the hundreds of thousands of improperly billed dollars. State Senator Delores Gresham wants to know if it took so long because Smith tried to conceal the potential fraud.
Auditor Torrey Grimes doesn’t think so. He helped investigate the matter with the state comptroller’s office.
“We don’t think it was an issue that she was deliberately withholding information. We think it’s more of an issue that her mindset was that AEL had overbilled and it was an internal problem to AEL, and it was not the Department of Education’s problem.”
Grimes says Smith mentioned the overcharge to her supervisors, but at first no one grasped the depth of the overbilling. Ultimately AEL, now known as Edvantia, paid back the state’s money, along with interest and legal costs.
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