FBI Asked to Probe Detroit Public Schools

The Detroit Free Press reports:

Detroit Public Schools Superintendent Connie Calloway has asked the FBI to investigate possible misspending of funds connected to a program to recruit students to the declining city schools, the Free Press has learned.

In a confidential memo to the district’s 11 school board members, which the Free Press obtained Monday, Calloway told the board that she turned over two boxes of documents related to the Retain and Gain program. She also said she was contacted by the FBI shortly after she was hired and has had several conversations with agents since.

The documents she turned over involve allegations of undocumented employees and work hours and how a specific funding source was used.

Efforts to reach William Kowalski, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office, were unsuccessful, as were efforts to reach the agency’s spokeswoman. But Kowalski has said in the past that the FBI does not comment on investigations.

The district’s Retain and Gain program was a grassroots effort to help the district market its schools to potential students and retain old ones to try to help save a district that has lost 67,000 students since 2000.