NC removes Johnston County private school from voucher program, refers to SBI for investigation

A Johnston County private school that received $316,725 in state funds this year has been referred to the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation after being found ineligible for further state funding.

The North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority found Mitchener University Academy in Selma ineligible to receive the state’s private school voucher, called an Opportunity Scholarship.

The vouchers are paid directly to the school by the state on behalf of eligible lower-income families.

The agency found the school ineligible for funds in March and ordered the repayment of “a number of scholarships,” said Mary Shuping, the agency’s director of government and external affairs.

Shuping said late Tuesday the school had repaid the $37,319 requested by the agency in scholarships for students “who had not attended or who had withdrawn” from the school.

The school has been removed from the program at the same time the Opportunity Scholarship program is poised to nearly triple in size, if legislation passes, costing more than $400 million two years from now. Critics have questioned how much oversight the state conducts over the program.

The State Bureau of Investigations has not yet confirmed whether it is investigating the school.

The Authority did not go into details on why the school was found to be ineligible, and the school’s director, Moses Mitchener, did not respond to an email asking why. But late Tuesday, Shuping said a parent told the agency the school was not following scholarship certification and endorsement protocols. The school must certify that a student attends the school, and parents and the school must endorse the use of the scholarship for the student.

After receiving the tip, the agency stopped $300,000 in payments to the school and ordered the repayment of $37,319.

The school is among 26 private schools in which the number of Opportunity Scholarships awarded exceeded the number of students the schools reported enrolling during the 2021-22 school year, according to an analysis first published by the North Carolina Justice Center and confirmed by a WRAL News analysis.

The North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority reported disbursing 149 Opportunity Scholarships worth $443,100 to Mitchener University Academy during the 2021-22 school year. That fall, the school reported 72 enrolled students to the North Carolina Division of Non-Public Education.

“Because DNPE data is a point in time and SEAA data is collected over the entire year, we would not expect these two sources to be identical,” Shuping wrote in an email. Shuping did not respond to follow-up questions about how big of a gap is to be expected among schools.

WRAL News found a number of private schools with disproportionate enrollment of Opportunity Scholarship students. During the 2021-22 school year, 17.8% of private school students had an Opportunity Scholarship. But state data show Opportunity Scholarship recipients made up more than 75% of the student body at 70 private schools that year, and more than 50% of the student body at 149 private schools.

Kris Nordstrom, education policy analyst at the North Carolina Justice Center, found 62 instances since 2018 in which a private school reported enrolling fewer students than the NCSEAA reported disbursing Opportunity Scholarships for. Nordstrom is a vocal voucher opponent and suspected many schools were unstable, opening and closing quickly, and wanted to look at some data to find out more. That’s when he noticed the differences in the scholarships and enrollment.

“It just goes to show it’s the Wild West and someone needs to get a handle on this before we start spending half a billion a year on it,” Nordstrom said.

Bills in the House and Senate, widely favored and pushed by Republicans, would expand the Opportunity Scholarship program from a $133 million program serving lower-income families this school year into a more than half a billion-dollar program serving families of all incomes by the end of the decade. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has been campaigning across the state against the bills.

WRAL News has sought comment from bill sponsors Rep. Tricia Cotham, R-Mecklenburg, and Sen. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover.

Mitchener University Academy received $149,520 during the 2020-21 school year for 43 Opportunity Scholarships, despite reporting only 34 students enrolled. It received $59,010 during the 2019-20 school year for 20 Opportunity Scholarships, while it reported 20 total students enrolled.

To be eligible, schools must, among other things, certify that the Opportunity Scholarship student has enrolled in the school.

Mitchener told WRAL News he enrolled more than 200 students last year and this year. He said both that the school had grown after the fall enrollment count and that he had entered the wrong data into the enrollment count. He said the same thing happened in 2020-21, too.

Mitchener told WRAL News that the school had recently transitioned into an online school. Opportunity Scholarship rules don’t explicitly prohibit “online learning” but do state that a school must be “physically located” in North Carolina.

Mitchener told WRAL News he enrolled students throughout the school year, including some who paid “out of pocket” and others he allowed to attend tuition-free.