David Roach

CHARLESTON – State Schools Superintendent David Roach will retire from that position effective June 30, after he was grilled by West Virginia Board of Education members over alleged misuse of federal COVID-19 dollars by Upshur County Schools.

The Upshur County superintendent at the time of the alleged misuse was Sara Lewis-Stankus, who spent nearly a year as the state’s deputy superintendent from August 2022 until May, when she retired.

The state Board of Education posted on its website Wednesday evening that it will hold a special session at 9 a.m. on June 23 in Capitol Building 6, Suite 600, 1900 Kanawha Boulevard, East in Charleston. At that meeting, the board will vote to accept Roach’s retirement effective June 30 and appoint a new state superintendent.

Roach was named state superintendent in August 2022 after serving as executive director of the West Virginia School Building Authority. He replaced Clayton Burch, who had resigned from the position to become superintendent of the West Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind.

The state Board of Education received a briefing Wednesday morning on a special circumstances review report on Upshur County Schools conducted by the Department of Education which looked at the operation of federal programs and spending at the county school system among other issues.

As a result, the state board placed the Upshur County School system into a state of emergency, placing the Upshur County Board of Education under the authority of the state board. Retired Preston County Superintendent Stephen Wotring was named as acting Upshur County Superintendent.

“I don’t think there’s anyone in this room who wants to be dealing with this type of situation. It’s very unfortunate,” said state Board of Education President Paul Hardesty. “We have fiduciary responsibilities sitting around this table to be stewards of the taxpayer’s money. As long as I’m sitting in this chair, I’m going to try to do that to the best of my ability.”

Questions from state board members to Roach Wednesday focused on the possible involvement of the former county superintendent in the probe, and why state board members were kept in the dark for months.

Jeffrey Kelley, the senior officer for Support and Accountability for the department, said the review has only scratched the surface, but what Department of Education officials have found so far has warranted reaching out to the Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Education and local law enforcement with additional department investigations to continue.

“Our procedures were a sampling of finance records representing less than 1% of total transactions covering four fiscal years,” Kelley said. “The process will dictate to great degree what the next update looks like. So, depending on what we find, it will expand maybe a little bit to some extraordinary degree. We won’t know until we get through those processes.”

Laura Pauley, director of Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) programs, said the financial audit uncovered hundreds of thousands of dollars of misused federal funds, plus misuse of state and local tax dollars.

The review team found 12 instances of contracts that included food and beverage charges for staff retreats for Stonewall Resort in Roanoke totaling $49,260, 14 contracts for food and beverage charges for staff retreats at C.J. Maggie’s in Buckhannon totaling $21,834, and a contract for a staff retreat at a bed and breakfast with overnight accommodations in Buckhannon totaling $1,415, and $38,000 on a national conference for staff.

The special circumstances review was triggered by a routine Local Education Agency (LEA) monitoring review that began in December 2022 and resulted in a report in February. The monitoring visit looked at county spending of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds provided to counties through federal COVID-19 appropriations. Upshur County Schools received more than $16 million in through three different ESSER funds.

According to the February LEA monitoring report, 1,006 family passes were purchased by Upshur County for the West Virginia State Wildlife Center in French Creek in the summer of 2021. The passes were also used by school staff and even two county board of education members. The cost of the passes was more than $21,000 with 246 passes unaccounted for.

Another 1,227 family pool passes were purchased for Upshur County pools with 116 passes used by school employees, two used by county board members, and 111 passes unaccounted for. The pool passes cost more than $62,000.

The special circumstances review also found misuse of state purchasing cards, improper reimbursements, federal funding being used for teacher and staff compensation at rates higher than normal rates, insufficient travel policies, and no-bid contracts.

“The pool passes and the wildlife passes were the most egregious of the report,” Pauley said. “I think that’s what’s made the headlines in the news. There were several other concerns … not normally things we would see in our monitoring. And also through that process, interviews kind of tipped us off that this may just be the tip of the iceberg.”

The review also found improper hiring of family members of county board of education staff, and payment of additional compensations for Lewis-Stankus, who served as Upshur County Schools superintendent for five years until August 2022, when she was named as deputy superintendent of schools by Roach.

According to an earlier report by WCHS-TV, Lewis-Stankus left the Department of Education in May around the time the special circumstances review team began its investigation of Upshur County Schools. According to Kelley and Pauley, Lewis-Stankus was not involved in either the LEA review or the special circumstances review.

Prior to the briefing on the special circumstances review, state Board of Education members grilled Roach about the timeline of the investigations and why the board only began hearing about the investigation in May when the first issues in Upshur County were posted to the department’s website in February. Roach said he was not made aware of the issues until March, but Hardesty said the first email to state board members about the situation was May 26.

“The communication to where you made the board aware that there were serious problems in Upshur County and you were going to do a special circumstance review was May 26, 2023,” Hardesty asked Roach. “Is that correct?”

“To this board, yes. But it was made sooner to my departments,” Roach said.

“You work for us. Let’s keep that in mind,” Hardesty said. “You work for this board. I’m just trying to establish a timeline.”

State board member Debra Sullivan expressed dismay at the questioning of Roach prior to the board being briefed on the special circumstances review report, as well as some of the details of the special circumstances review being leaked to media prior to the board receiving the review and acting on any recommendations.

“I’m frankly mystified why we’re having this discussion right now. We have not heard the report,” Sullivan said. “I think that Mr. Roach is becoming the flashpoint for this when the problem is a situation in Upshur County Schools that we have yet to hear about.

“A confidential work-in-progress draft report has been circulated to the press; privileged communication between the state superintendent and state board members apparently has been leaked,” Sullivan continued. “I’m concerned that this has moved from the state Board of Education out to the public.”

In the meantime, the West Virginia State Police are securing the Upshur County Board of Education offices until state department officials can be on the ground there.

“I am a firm believer that people have to answer to federal and state authorities for criminal activity involved in this based on what I see,” Hardesty said. “I’m not a prosecutor. I’m just saying that we have fiduciary responsibilities. We are provided facts to get those in the proper authority’s hands. We have a fiduciary responsibility to do that.”