LITTLE ROCK — Questions about whether Little Rock School Board President Katherine Mitchell improperly received payments from her school district are now under investigation by the Pulaski County sheriff 's office at the request of Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley.
"I sent the written documents ... over to the sheriff and asked him to take a look at it and tell me what he thinks," Jegley said Monday.
Neither the prosecutor nor the sheriff face any kind of deadline for completing the review.
Mitchell, who has been on the School Board since December 1988, acknowledged last week that she was an instructor in a nontraditional teacher licensure program in 2004 and 2005 for which she was paid a total of $6,400.
The paychecks for the work came from the Little Rock School District, raising questions about whether Mitchell violated district policy as well as Arkansas statutes that prohibit school board members from holding employment in the districts in which they serve, except in limited circumstances.
Mitchell, who could not bereached for comment at her office Monday afternoon about the investigation, said last week that she did not realize that she was working for the Little Rock district.
The news of the district payments to Mitchell and now the legal investigation come just after Mitchell, as part of a four-member majority of the School Board, voted to buy out the remaining two years on the contract of Superintendent Roy Brooks at a cost that could exceed $600,000.
The 4-3 vote on May 24 to remove Brooks is symptomatic ofthe bitter division on the board. Should Mitchell be forced to resign her board seat representing Zone 1 in east Little Rock, the board support for Brooks - who isn't slated to leave the district employment until mid-August - could swing in his favor.
The 2004 and 2005 teacher licensure program - conducted at Philander Smith College where Mitchell is an education professor - was funded by a grant to the district from the Arkansas Department of Education. Mitchell said she believed it was a state program, although the paychecks and the Internal Revenue Service income reports were issued to her by the district, and the program coordinator was Marion Woods, the school district's professional development coordinator.
Robert Powers, a parent of a Little Rock School District high school student and the creator of a Web site devoted to tracking the work of the state's largest district and its board, met with Jegley more than a week ago about the district payments to Mitchell, and about Mitchell's apparent failure to disclose the payments on her annual statement of financial interest, which is a document that most publicofficials must file with their local county clerks.
Jegley said he sent the documents given to him by Powers to Pulaski County Sheriff Doc Holladay on Friday.
"I just told him that he can give me a call if he has any questions," Jegley said. "He can take it from here; just handle it by the book like anything else."
The prosecutor chose the sheriff's office to do the review rather than the Little Rock Police Department. The police department has a closer relationship to the school district because of the shared School Resource Officer program in which city police officers are assigned to some of the district's largest schools.
"I thought it would be best for the situation to have a good, cold, independent look taken of it," Jegley said.
Holladay said Monday that he had received the file from Jegley and forwarded it to his investigators.
He said the investigation will include interviewing parties in the case, but first his staff is identifying just what information it needs.
"I'm not sure how long it will take or how in-depth we are going to go with it," Holladay said. "It sort of depends on what doors are open when we get there."
Mitchell was paid $1,600 in 2004 and $4,800 in 2005 for her work, according to documents obtained through the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. She was typically paid in increments of $400 a day for work that primarily was done in the summers to prepare nontraditionally licensed teachers.
Nontraditional teachers are those who have college degrees in fields other than education but become teachers, often as second careers. To earn their state teacher licenses, nontraditional teachers are typically required to take a series of summer and weekend workshops while holding down regular teaching jobs.
There are several state laws that touch on school board member employment in the same school district.
Arkansas Code Annotated 6-13-616, which has its origins in 1935, says, "No person who is elected to a school district board of directors shall be eligible for employment in that same school district."
Based on that specific statute, the Little Rock School Board in 1999 adopted a policy that says that to be eligible for board service, a person cannot be employed by the district.
Arkansas statutes 6-24-101 through 6-24-120 restrict school board members from using their positions to "secure privileges," "self-dealing" or "knowingly enter into contracts or have an interest in contracts with the educational entity for which they serve" - although exceptions are allowed in which case approval by the local School Board and even the Arkansas commissioner of education is required.
Arkansas Code Annotated 21-8-701 and Act 1599 of 2001 requires school board members and others in public service to file financial statements or face fines of up to $1,000 or jail time for knowingly or willfully failing to comply with the reporting provisions.
Powers, the parent who took Mitchell's payments to the prosecutor, also has filed a complaint with the Arkansas Department of Education.
That agency also is reviewing the Powers documents, which include nearly 40 pages of copies of checks and contracts dealing with the summer program as well as copies of Mitchell's annual financial interest forms.
Front Section, Pages 1, 3 on 06/26/2007