When the state Board of Education voted to take over the Logan County School system, members were reacting to a wide range of problems uncovered by a recent review.
But a few financial irregularities stood out to state board members as they asked questions about the review. And one grabbed their attention even more than others: a one-bid contract from a local religious school to provide virtual education for young public school students.
That was Heritage Educational Services, which, according to the review, landed a noncompetitive contract valued at $565,000 to provide virtual classes. The review team came away unconvinced that Logan got its bang for the buck. Worse, the review questioned whether enrolled students were receiving the thorough and efficient education guaranteed by the state constitution.
“One of the things that was hardest for me to swallow and also to understand was the relationship with Heritage,” said Chris Stansbury, one of the members of the state school board.
“It is still hard to understand the relationships between the board, the county and Heritage, and I think some of that was probably intentional by the way they set this up. I was also shocked by that half-million-dollar-plus bill that the public education system was left with by Heritage.”
The review team said its responsibility was to assess the public school system and that it had not interviewed representatives of Heritage, a private company. Heritage so far has not responded to MetroNews invitations by email to respond to the report’s findings.
The state board voted to take over Logan County Schools last week after the review highlighted dozens of problems that included a lack of transparency by county schools officials, toxic relationships in the county system and questionable spending habits.
By far the topic that received the most attention by the review team and concern by the state board was the virtual program run by Heritage Educational Services.
Leaders of the review team indicated there were still loose ends to explore further, but the question of whether the virtual program was truly providing a thorough and efficient education to the students enrolled, including some special education students, called for immediate action.
“The team determined based on interview comments and evidence collected, Logan County Schools failed to exercise due diligence and the appropriate oversight with regard to the contract with Heritage Educational Services to provide virtual school instruction,” the review team reported.
“Evidence supports the Logan County Schools students who enrolled in the virtual school program have not received a free and appropriate public education and are not properly supported to ensure their academic achievement, safety, and well-being.”
West Virginia law requires all counties to offer a full-time virtual option for K-12 students. To help with costs, the state makes a virtual platform available as an option for counties.
However, the state education department has concluded it is not in the best interest of most kindergarten to attend school virtually because most students that young learn best in a classroom setting.
So the WV Learns Virtual Platform is only available for upper grade levels. If a county wants to opt in for the program for younger students, then the county is responsible for providing a teacher and facilitator.
In 2020-2021, while schools were dealing with the disruptions of the covid-19 pandemic, Logan County entered into the contract with Heritage to provide facilitators for kindergarten through 12th grades and teachers for kindergarten through fifth grade.
There are 74 students enrolled in the program, according to the state’s review.
“The county office employees that we interviewed prior to this talked about how they wanted to take pressure away from the teachers, and that’s very understandable,” Charlene Coburn, senior officer for support and accountability for the West Virginia Department of Education, told state board members.
“I think the intent, in the beginning, was to provide this resource so that their classroom teachers were not trying to do both when they first started doing this during covid, but then it morphed into something else after covid.”
Before partnering with Logan County Schools, Heritage Educational Services, LLC had operated as Heritage Christian Primary & Preparatory School, a private school with a reported enrollment of 31 students.
Eight days after Heritage Educational Services was established as a company, Logan County’s school system named it the virtual program’s sole provider. The review said the basis of the no-bid contract was a letter from Heritage Educational Services proclaiming itself a sole provider.
“However, the contract between Logan County Schools and Heritage Educational Services contradicts the sole source claim by prohibiting Logan County Schools from contracting with another entity to provide virtual education facilitation,” the review stated.
The review concluded that students who were already enrolled at Heritage Christian Primary & Preparatory School transferred to Logan County Schools for the sole purpose of enrolling in the virtual program that was being run by Heritage in the first place.
And the review found that in addition to the local school system’s contract, some parents of virtual school students were paying additional money for children to attend the Heritage Educational Services building each day to complete school work.
Meanwhile, the school system seemed to be losing track of whether students enrolled in the virtual program were completing their work, participating regularly or even failing.
The review determined that nine Man Middle School students have been incorrectly linked in the WV Learns Platform to a West Virginia educator who is neither employed by Logan County Schools nor Heritage Educational Services.
In other words, those students fell through the cracks to the point that they were assigned to an educator who wasn’t connected to the county school system or to the virtual schools provider.
State board member Debra Sullivan was still absorbing what she had learned in the report last week. She sounded stunned as she reacted to it.
“So this report is in some ways not the end of your work in Logan County,” she said. “And it would also appear that there may be instances where those outside the world of education would be taking an interest in some of the financial things that have been going on – the court system, the federal government.”
The room got quiet for just a beat. The response to Sullivan’s question was nonverbal.
“OK,” Sullivan concluded.