State schools Superintendent Ryan Walters is insisting again that Mid-Del Schools will be forced to repay about $574,000 in federal COVID-era relief funds, although the Oklahoma County school district said two months ago it would willingly return the money.
Walters and Mid-Del Superintendent Rick Cobb disagree about whether or not the money was misspent. The district has acknowledged it used the money for athletic field maintenance and said it had approval from the Oklahoma State Department of Education to do so for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years.
Walters took control of the state agency in January 2023, when he began serving as state superintendent. He claims federal guidance from December 2022 ― issued months after Mid-Del had spent the money ― made the expenditure illegal.
The district said in early May it would return the money, even though it believes it was spent legally, and would “work with the Office of Title Services to re-allocate them in a manner that they feel is allowable." That office is contained within the state Education Department.
The state agency manages federal funds that flow through the agency to the state’s more than 500 districts, including Title Program Grants and ESSER III programs. Title funds consist of federal money received annually that is meant to supplement state-provided education funding. ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funds come from three federal stimulus bills passed in 2020 and 2021.
Nevertheless, Walters issued an after-hours, three-paragraph news release Thursday night that was critical of Cobb and the district but light on details. According to the release, an administrative hearing concerning the situation was held by the agency, although the release didn’t say when.
“Mid-Del Schools and its Superintendent, Rick Cobb, have been dishonest at every turn about how it used federal funds destined for the classroom on athletic fields,” Walters said in the statement. “This was a clear misuse of taxpayer dollars from the beginning. Instead of coming clean immediately, Cobb chose to continue sidestepping the law and both federal and agency policy. The district failed taxpayers by not employing adequate financial controls while making decisions that appear to be tainted by nepotism.
“I am proud that my administration is rooting out financial impropriety like this, and we will continue to work every day to make sure every dollar of taxpayer money goes toward benefitting Oklahoma students.”
Walters did not provide any examples of how the district failed to employ financial controls or of the presence of nepotism in the Mid-Del decision-making process.
In a statement issued Friday, the school district said its appeal hearing "consisted of three top advisers to State Superintendent Walters. They were in a no-win situation. Doing the right and lawful thing would have meant going against him. This whole dispute involves differing interpretations of complex federal regulations. It is very interesting that the Superintendent is now accusing Mid-Del of being dishonest when we fully disclosed every penny we spent, and Oklahoma State Department of Education officials approved every expenditure claim.
"It is outrageous for the State Superintendent to use this occasion for more political grandstanding. Since Walters has been in office, the Department has asked districts to return COVID Relief Funds dozens of times. None of those other requests have been accompanied by a press release. In every other one of these situations, the school district has had the opportunity to reallocate the funds. We are exploring our options to continue to do what is right for the students, families, and staff of Mid-Del Public Schools."
Dan Isett, a spokesman for the state Education Department, didn’t answer emailed questions about why the administrative hearing was held, whether the agency now believes the guidance it gave the district for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years was in error, and how the district was dishonest if it relied on guidance from the state Education Department in how it spent the funds. He instead referred The Oklahoman to a statement issued by the Mid-Del district in May, which does not address those questions.
Issue surfaced when Walters made allegations during a state Senate education budget hearing
The issue came to light during an Oklahoma Senate education budget hearing on Jan. 11. After being asked by state Sen. Brenda Stanley, R-Midwest City, about federal funds that the Mid-Del district hadn’t received ― funds that, under previous administrations, have arrived in district bank accounts during the autumn months — Walters alleged Mid-Del misspent more than $500,000 of federal funds “on lawn care that is expressly prohibited in federal rules and regulations." Walters did not provide evidence to support that claim and Isett didn't answer emailed questions about those claims.
Moments after Walters made that allegation, The Oklahoman emailed the district seeking a response and a spokeswoman said that was the first the district had heard of any such concern. A statement from Cobb at the time referred to Walters’ allegation as “both irresponsible and disrespectful.”
Two weeks later, Cobb attended the monthly State Board of Education meeting and — as a member of the public ― signed up to speak to the board, which is led by Walters.
“Your statement was wrong, on multiple levels, and I can’t stand idly by and let you defame our great school district or any of the hard-working people handling our federal programs applications and claims, up to and including myself,” Cobb said, staring at Walters.
“I have several problems with your comments. First, it’s just not true to say that we misspent federal funds. With all three tranches of COVID funds, we took extra care to ask questions, sometimes redundantly. This has been such an extraordinary process and amount of money that we wanted to make sure to get everything right from the beginning.
“Words matter. When you spread misinformation, no retraction, no correction completely undoes the damage. On behalf of my community, I implore you to do better. To be better.”
State agency demanded repayment in May and district said it would comply
In May, the state Education Department’s general counsel, Michael Beason ― in one of his first actions since being hired by Walters for that job ― sent a letter with a “warning and request for remediation” to the district, demanding the money be repaid. The letter said the district also "must submit a Corrective Action Plan addressing the strengthening of internal controls and the identification of allowable/non-allowable expenditures in the management of federal funding."
The district said then it would repay the money.
“We will also review our purchasing policies and procedures,” the district said in a statement in response to Beason’s letter. “Incidentally, these were just reviewed during an on-site consolidated monitoring visit by the OSDE’s Office of Title Services on March 28. In a letter dated April 1 (received April 16), we were thanked for our cooperation and told that “no further action is required.”
The district also said in May that as it worked “to prepare a full response, we would ask that the OSDE fulfill the Open Records Request we submitted January 26, 2024 (ORR #24-045)."
That request read: “We are requesting electronic copies of all emails between the Oklahoma State Department of Education and Mid-Del Public Schools related to Federal Programs. Additionally we are asking for any internal email communication among OSDE staff regarding Federal Programs and Mid-Del Public Schools.
“A review of the internal deliberations that were had among OSDE staff between January 9, 2023 and January 25, 2024, as requested, could possibly prove useful in helping us develop the corrective plan requested in this letter,” the district said.
Isett also didn't answer an emailed question about the agency's response — if any — to Mid-Del's open records request. The district noted in its statement on Friday: "We also renew our call for OSDE to fulfill our Open Records Request dating back to January in order to provide additional context in this matter."
Under Walters, the state Education Department has often moved slowly in responding to open records requests. The Oklahoman has had only two of 11 such requests made since October answered, and one of those responses didn’t contain the information asked for in the request.
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