This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Sept. 28, 2011 -The principal of a St. Louis elementary school inflated attendance figures -- the numbers used to determine how much money public schools receive from the state of Missouri. Teachers who questioned her actions had their desks ransacked, according to a state audit released Tuesday.
State Auditor Tom Schweich said his office did not try to determine how much extra money the St. Louis Public School district may have received as a result of the attendance manipulation at Patrick Henry Downtown Academy at 1220 N. 10th St. between 2009 and 2011, when his office received a tip about the inflated figures and activated a rapid response team to investigate.
But with 270 students at the school, Schweich said the amount would not be much. He said figuring out the precise amount was beyond the scope of his audit. He also said that spot checks at other schools in St. Louis did not turn up any similar discrepancies.
A spokesman for the St. Louis Public Schools said the district receives about $20 a student per day in state funds.
The principal, Esperansa Veal, was placed on administrative leave in May. Superintendent Kelvin Adams Jr. told reporters after Schweich released the report at the auditor's office downtown that Veal is being paid while on leave. He said she would remain on such status until a hearing into her situation is conducted; he would not give an estimate on when that may take place. Her annual salary is $76,823, the school district said.
Schweich said the attendance changes may have helped Patrick Henry meet progress requirements under the No Child Left Behind act and could have resulted in the school receiving extra money.
In a low-key response to the findings, Adams said that "the data speaks for itself." He said the district has done internal audits on schools for attendance and test scores and not found any other examples of such manipulation of the figures.
Asked if he was surprised to find out about what was going on at Patrick Henry, he replied:
"What surprised me is that we weren't aware of it."
Adams said that academic achievement had been rising at the school and because such improvement often is the result of higher attendance, he did not realize the figures had been inflated. He also said that the school had had some virtual classes, and he thought that some increase in attendance could be attributed to that component.
Acting on a Tip
Schweich said that in late April, his office first received what he called substantial, credible information about possible inflated attendance figures at Patrick Henry. When he determined that the situation met two criteria -- the possibility that misrepresentation, fraud or violations of the law may be occurring, and the possibility that evidence could be destroyed -- he activated for the first time the auditor's "swift assessment program."
The rapid response team tried to prove the allegations in two ways, he said: sworn testimony from teachers and others who worked at the school and extensive cross checks of data.
He said all members of the Patrick Henry staff responded to the subpoenas except Veal, who would not testify. Others provided what Schweich called "strong and clear testimony" that Veal had directed attendance data to be changed so that it appeared that more students were attending the school than really were.
For example, Schweich said that Veal's secretary testified that she was told to identify every student with five or more absences that year and make changes in the information entered into the computerized attendance system so that the students were marked tardy instead, so the school would receive credit for those students having actually attended class.
In some cases, he said, students who had been ordered to serve out-of-school suspensions, under which the school district would not receive state reimbursement for them, were actually listed as present. Students who attended class for only part of a day were counted as having attended all day, and students who had withdrawn from the school were still listed as present. In the case of 34 other students, he said they were listed as having attended classes at Patrick Henry even though there was no evidence that they had ever enrolled.
As a result of the changes, the audit found, Patrick Henry had the district's highest attendance rate for elementary schools in 2010: 97.3 percent.
"This is a pretty serious set of allegations," Schweich said.
Explaining how attendance is recorded, the auditor said that contrary to how things are done at other schools, where teachers enter data directly into the computer, at Patrick Henry teachers kept attendance on individual sheets that were then turned in to the principal's office, where they were put into the computer.
When some teachers began to suspect what was going on, Schweich said, they began to keep separate attendance sheets. In some cases, he added, once questions were raised about possible inflated attendance, teachers reported that their desk drawers had been ransacked on the day they got subpoenas and some sheets were missing. One teacher reported that his classroom door was "kicked out."
Data Are Cross-checked
As vivid as the testimony was, Schweich said, his office took the extra step of making sure that the data backed up what members of the Patrick Henry staff were alleging.
He said that on a macro level, attendance at the school was up 12 percent in the three years studied, when only two other schools that his staff compared it to showed growth of more than 3 percent.
Schweich acknowledged that mistakes can be made when data are entered into a computer, but if the discrepancies at the school were simply mistakes, he said there would be as many changes that showed more presences than absences than there were that showed more absences than presences.
Instead, he said, his staff's analysis showed that the figures were seven times more likely to show inflated attendance figures than to show mistaken absences -- a finding that he said showed "intentional manipulation of the data."
He called for changes in the computer system that would show who logged on to the system and when, so it could be determined what member of the staff was entering data at what time. "You're not going to be manipulating data if your name is on there," he said. "We think it can be done and we hope the St. Louis Public Schools will do it."
Adams said the school system is going back to the vendor who created the computerized attendance system to see what changes can be made.
Other recommendations include determining whether any students were improperly counted and reporting any necessary corrections; investigating allegations that Veal directed that unverified changes be made to the attendance figures; looking into allegations that records were stolen, destroyed or altered; and updating attendance submitted to state education officials as needed.
In its official response, the school district said it considers the issues raised by the audit "to be of grave concern and fully intends to follow up on the testimony and findings."
More specifically, it said it would review and update enrollment and attendance figures at Patrick Henry and make what changes are needed. It also said it would change attendance policies to increase accountability controls.
Principal's Background
According to a page on the city schools' website, Veal became principal at Patrick Henry in July 2007. When she took over, the school's attendance was 85.2 percent, according to the audit, but it climbed steadily over the next three years to the 97.3 percent in 2010. During that period, the district's average attendance for elementary schools hovered between 92 and 93 percent.
Veal had served as assistant principal at Patrick Henry and at Mason School before that, and she was a classroom teacher for more than six years. She graduated from Harris-Stowe State College as valedictorian and holds master's degrees from Webster University and the University of Missouri at Columbia.
Under a section of the website that gives her educational philosophy, Veal wrote:
"My goal as an educator is to not only create strong productive adults ... it is to help create opportunities that will help to shape all of our SLPS children into strong productive adults who have hearts ... who care about themselves, others and their community. We have to not only implant lifelong excellent work habits into every student that walks through our school doors, but we also need to instill a sense of belonging...truly knowing in their hearts that someone on this Earth cares about their well-being and their future...
"Educators are the beacons that shine through the mist of uncertainty ... leading the way to shores of certainty ... we can help guide our children to a successful tomorrow."