ROCKVILLE, Md. — After combing over 13 years of records from more than 7,000 transactions on behalf of 93 students at a school for the disabled, the Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy says there is no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
McCarthy says “clearly there was mismanagement” involving student finances in a work/study program, but McCarthy says there was no evidence of a criminal act.
The investigation into the finances at the Rock Terrace School, part of the Montgomery County Public School system, dates back to 2013, when parents told WTOP that they suddenly discovered that bank accounts had been opened in their children’s names without their knowledge. One woman, who spoke to WTOP at the time on the condition that her name not be used to protect her daughter, said she was surprised to find a W-2 in her daughter’s name.
“We never saw any of that money. We never saw any of the statements. Come to find out when we saw the statements, the school had their address down as her home address,” she said.
The Rock Terrace School serves students with disabilities and houses a program designed to prepare students to live and function as independently as possible. When news of the accounts and handling of money broke in 2013, concerned parents met with school officials and were told that an investigation would be carried out by MCPS.
Montgomery County School officials launched an investigation, and reported that there had been sloppy record-keeping but no malfeasance on the part of administrators. Officials told parents that bank accounts had been set up for students in a program aimed at giving them life skills; the deposits and withdrawals were made as a way of helping students learn how to handle their own finances in the future.
While Montgomery County prosecutors found no wrongdoing, McCarthy says money was often commingled in accounts; earnings from work programs were combined with local business grants and school program money, and he says his office had a difficult time tracking the money. McCarthy says the oversight by school officials in some years was good; in other years, very poor.
“The inconsistencies were all over the place, the sources of the monies were multiple,” McCarthy says.
But, McCarthy says, his office had to answer the question: Was the conduct criminal? Did someone enrich or appropriate money for their personal use?
“And the answer,” McCarthy says, “is that simply did not happen.”
In 2014, the Montgomery County Board of Education came up with a plan to reimburse affected students, offering some a flat fee of $200 and reimbursing others based on the W-2’s that had been issued in their names. McCarthy says the sums of money involved in the transactions were generally small: $20 to $25. Had his office determined a crime had been committed, he says, it would have amounted to a misdemeanor — and the statute of limitations on misdemeanors runs out within one year of the act.
WTOP’s Kate Ryan contributed to this report.
