Arrested
Atkinson was named in an eight-count federal indictment (press release) alleging she engaged in a long-running scheme to solicit bribes from vendors to obtain contracts with BISD and Rio Hondo ISD, when she was an assistant superintendent there.
The indictment alleges that in exchange for using her influence in contracting decisions with the Rio Hondo and Brownsville districts, Atkinson would demand and receive money which she said were “campaign contributions” that were in reality bribes that were not reported as campaign contributions.
The indictment also includes an assertion that Atkinson, during what turned out to be a law enforcement sting operation, demanded and received bribes totaling $10,000 for using her influence on Brownsville’s board that led to the full board’s approval of a purported film company to make a film on district property.
At the time of her arrest, Atkinson worked as Texas Southmost University’s executive director of high school programs and community outreach — and had previously been superintendent for the Socorro, Santa Rosa and Los Fresnos ISDs.
Atkinson was released on bond following her not guilty plea in a preliminary proceeding before a federal judge, who imposed strict travel restrictions as a condition for release.
Also Arrested
Federal authorities arrested (Dec. 18) the founding CEO/chief financial officer of a Texas charter district that abruptly closed in September 2019 on charges of conspiracy, mail fraud, theft of government funds, money laundering and false bankruptcy declarations.
The 18-count indictment returned against Richard S. Rose (press release) accuses him of embezzling funds intended for the operations of Zoe Learning Academy charter district and using the money for his personal expenses such as legal fees, a lawsuit settlement that didn’t involve the charter, and to buy a timeshare in Hawaii. The charter had elementary campuses in Houston and Duncanville (near Dallas).
TRS Audit
The state auditor’s office (Dec. 9) gave TRS high marks for its financial statements, but also concluded that the retirement system is not doing a good enough job to ensure that the data that ISDs and other school employers submit to the retirement system about their employees is accurate.
Specifically, the audit report dinged the TRS’ implementation of its Teacher Retirement Unified System for Technology (TRUST) for allowing reporting employers to delete records after submission to the system. The records to be submitted to TRS by all TRS participating employers about all their employees include info about TRS eligibility, names, genders, birth dates, pensionable earnings, service credits, etc.
The TRS, in its official response, said that TRUST is a complex system, with many components, that includes parts and calculations that are still being developed, and that the employee census reporting part of the system for employers has only recently been implemented.
The system pledged to implement additional review processes to identify likely employer errors. TRS also included an advisory in its December UPDATE newsletter to employers on checks the system will make to ensure employers are not deleting their TRUST employee census records in error.
Note: We’ll have a summary of the December TRS meeting in next week’s issue.
“Cancelled” Jet Plans
The board of IDEA Public Schools (the state’s largest charter network) abruptly cancelled plans to lease a private jet, with pilot, under an eight-year $1.92 million-a-year agreement, after news about the plans broke in the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Federation of Teachers took to social media to criticize the deal.
IDEA said the decision to lease the jet was a prudent business decision that did not involve public funds, and that the jet would have provided an efficient way to quickly transport school officials to the charter’s diverse locations across the southern U.S. and to meet with donors.