Daleville school district reacts to Indiana lawsuit seeking $150M from closed online schools

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The leaders of two now-closed Indiana online charter schools are accused in a new lawsuit of defrauding the state of more than $150 million by padding their student enrollments and inappropriately paying money to a web of related businesses.

The lawsuit announced Monday by the Indiana attorney general’s office comes nearly two years after Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy shut down amid a state investigation that found they improperly claimed about 14,000 students as enrolled even though they had no online course activity.

An audit linked much of the misspending to Thomas Stoughton, who headed the schools until 2017.

An attorney for Stoughton declined to comment.

Statement

“While we are heartened by efforts to hold accountable parties responsible for alleged improprieties in the operation of Indiana Virtual School (IVS) and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy (IVPA), we were disappointed to learn of the decision by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita to include current Daleville Community Schools Assistant Superintendent David Stashevsky as a defendant in the civil action initiated to recoup allegedly ill gained public funds.

“The claims alleged against Mr. Stashevsky in this civil lawsuit relate to his very brief employment by IVS during the 2011-2012 school year, the very first year of that virtual school’s operation, and more specifically the September 2011 ADM report for IVS. None of the allegations against Mr. Stashevsky relate to his employment with DCS or to DCS’ role as authorizer of IVS or IVPA. As noted on page 19 of DCS’ official response to SBOA’s Special Compliance Report of Daleville Community Schools, DCS questions the accuracy of SBOA’s conclusions regarding IVS’ September 2011 ADM report and, as a result, the allegations regarding Mr. Stashevsky.

“David has always been and remains a trusted and well-respected school administrator who has served our school community with distinction. It is worth noting that Mr. Stashevsky played a key role in bringing the IVS/IVPA enrollment irregularities to the attention of SBOA in the first place. In August 2018, data on IVS/IVPA students first became available to DCS from the Indiana Department of Education. Almost immediately, Mr. Stashevsky set to the task of downloading and arduously analyzing all of the available data. It took nearly five (5) months of review of over 250,000 cells of data which tracked 15,000 plus students over five (5) years of enrollment for Mr. Stashevsky to complete DCS’s substantial review and analysis. After about a month into this process, when Mr. Stashevsky noted irregularities that seemed suspicious, DCS approached SBOA regarding its concerns. It was Mr. Stashevsky, on behalf of DCS, who uncovered irregularities in IVS/IVPA enrollment and course completion data and promptly notified SBOA of their concerns. Without him, SBOA and, in turn, the Attorney General would have no knowledge of the matters alleged in the pending civil action.

“We look forward to allowing the legal process to unfold.”

Daleville Community Schools