Fairfax County Public Schools will have to repay $1 million to the federal government after forging signatures on an application for grant money to help at-risk students prepare for college.
This settlement comes after more than eight years of discussion between the school district and the justice department, according to The Washington Examiner. The Department of Education had initially wanted to impose a multi-million dollar fine on the district.
The forged signatures, which were part of the 2000 application, allowed Fairfax to collect $2.7 million over five years to fund the Gear Up college readiness program at Glasgow Middle School.
The Examiner reports that the application required the school to secure matching funds from private companies.
But the school employee writing the grant application forged signatures to make it look like the school received private funding, when it actually had not.
Also coming out of Fairfax Schools, the Post has an op-ed submission by a former Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology — an elite, selective public school in Fairfax County — about the struggles of being a minority at America’s best high school.
I’m grateful that the NAACP and the Coalition of the Silence are holding Fairfax County Public Schools accountable for its policies. My hope is that this complaint will make TJ take a long, hard look at itself. These conversations are difficult, but they’re ones we need to have if the school is truly committed to fulfilling its mission, especially since the TJ I went to was not always a supportive environment for people of color or with learning disabilities.
Local
Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia local news, events and information
IN OTHER NEWS:
* A House panel has bumped up the amount of money a casino in Anne Arundel County and a planned casino in Baltimore would get under an expansion of gambling. Members of the Maryland House of
* Delegates are starting to define proposed changes to a measure to expand gambling in the state.
* The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawiek looks back at his earlier interview with CBS journalist Bob Schieffer and recalls when Schieffer said that he and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley were planning a battle of the bands, with Schieffer and the Honky Tonk Confidential versus O'Malley's March, the governor's Celtic rock band.
* Foreign Policy ranked D.C. 25th on the list of 75 powerhouses of the urban future.
* The District of Columbia could soon be out from under a decade-old court order to provide better school bus service for special needs students.
* A ping-pong center in Maryland trains junior Olympians.
* The latest on rapid transit in Montgomery County
* A D.C. resident hopes to create "heat maps" of each neighborhood that show how much security they appear to offer.
* Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell on how Republicans can define Paul Ryan for Independent voters.
* Now that McDonnell is not the VP, what does the future hold for him?
