BIE Official Allegedly Inflated Gifted Program Enrollment and Student Attendance Numbers at Former School

We investigated allegations that a BIE official, when he was the principal of a BIE boarding school, had attempted to increase the school’s Federal funding by: • Allowing or directing the enrollment of students in the school’s gifted and talented (GT) program without properly assessing them • Submitting inaccurate student attendance records We found that enrollment in the school’s GT program went up dramatically while the official was principal and that this increased the school’s Federal funding, but we did not find evidence that the official had directed school staff to identify GT students specifically to augment the school’s funding. We also learned that the school employees who oversaw the GT program after the BIE official left did not consistently comply with regulations governing GT programs at BIE schools that receive Federal funds. In addition, we found that most of the school’s students were absent as many as 6 days before the end of the school year when traveling from the school to their homes, but when the official was principal he directed school employees to mark them present in the attendance records. We did not find that this practice directly affected school funding, but it did reduce the students’ available instructional time. We provided this report to the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary – Indian Affairs for any action deemed appropriate.