Alberta settles with Christian homeschooling fraudsters

by | January 10, 2017

The dust-up between Alberta Education and the Trinity Christian School Association has been settled, but it’s hard to get enthused about how.

I mentioned this story , but since Alberta’s a bit off my beat and we don’t currently have any contributors from that area, the story never really got much air time here. Granted, it wasn’t really much of a SHAFT issue: yes it involved a Christian private schooling association, but the dispute was primarily about money… not the quality of education being provided. At any rate, the story seems to have wrapped itself up without the threatened court battle. The province “won”, but it was a pretty hollow victory for secularism in general.

I’ll give you the gist of the story, but please do bear in mind that I am a distant observer, so my facts may be disordered.

The story started back in

[Trinity Christian School Association logo.]

Trinity Christian School Association

The audit uncovered a lot of shady shit: government funds were being used to purchase liquor, gift cards, expenses related to baby-sitting and funeral arrangements as well. But that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Alberta Education had provided $5.6 million of public funds to Trinity for their homeschooling program. While Trinity’s Cold Lake school only has 13 students, their homeschooling program serves ~3,500 students across the province – around a third of all the homeschooled students in Alberta. What Eggen’s auditors found was that Trinity had shuffled $5.2 million – around 93% – of that money to an organization called the Wisdom Home Schooling Society.

Who is the Wisdom Home Schooling Society? Excellent question. David Eggen was wondering the same damn thing.

[Wisdom Home Schooling Society logo.]

Wisdom Home Schooling Society

Well, it probably won’t surprise you to turn out that the board of the Trinity Christian School Association and the board of the Wisdom Home Schooling Society are pretty much entirely made up of the members of just two families. The two companies were effectively paying each other and the family members privately… using public money… often at ridiculous rates.

For example, Wisdom was leasing a facility from one of the family members at ten times the market rate. Wisdom built a second facility by paying Trinity a cool half-million… which Trinity then sold to a foundation (the details of which I couldn’t uncover in time)… which then turned around and leased it to Wisdom. And remember, the Wisdom Home Schooling Society is not a school like the Trinity school in Cold Lake (which itself only has 13 students), so one wonders what kind of “facility” Wisdom really needs that they couldn’t get orders of magnitude cheaper.

All-in-all, the audit found that Trinity and Wisdom paid 32% of their operating expenses on office and administration costs, where the administration was mostly the two families, and the offices were mostly owned by those same people. Public boards spend 3.4% to 5.6%.

And $988,000 earmarked to be disbursed to parents over the last three years was simply… not. It just went into Wisdom’s bank accounts. As far as I know, it’s still there.

Here’s where the story gets a little murky.

According to Eggen, he tried to work with Trinity to sort all this shit out, but they weren’t being cooperative. According to Trinity, Eggen didn’t even give them a chance to explain themselves. In any case, Eggen acted. In , he shut down Trinity’s Cold Lake school, and effectively shut down their homeschooling program at the same time. Eggen told affected parents to seek education options elsewhere.

Now the issue became a public fight.

Trinity/Wisdom went on the defensive, of course. Unsurprisingly they played the Christian persecution card, but they also whined about the loss of “parents’ rights”, and rallied their thousands of client parents to agitate on their behalf. Alberta’s Wildrose Party jumped in, too… on Trinity/Wisdom’s behalf, natch.

But things quickly got even more complicated. Because while the primary reason for the kerfuffle in the first place was financial mismanagement, in his public statement Eggen also criticized the quality of education Trinity/Wisdom was providing. The government’s recommendation that parents ditch Trinity/Wisdom and seek education options elsewhere wasn’t made lightly. Completely aside from the quality question, the plain fact is that Trinity was recognized by the government… Wisdom was not. So all the students under the Wisdom label… well, Wisdom is not accredited, so their diplomas are simply worthless.

And then there’s the question of the quality of the education.

[A scanned image of a fill-in-the-blank student test problem, "In the late 1970s Jim Jones tried to institute a theocracy, but his abuse of the Bible only led the people of his community into", where the blank at the end is filled in with "death".]

An actual question from one of Wisdom’s tests.

Graduates of Wisdom’s programs started coming out of the woodwork, alleging that not only were their diplomas useless when applying for post-secondary education, the actual education they’d received was bullshit. It was a lot of Biblical analysis, and being told evolution didn’t happen – one student said: I really didn’t learn any science that would be acceptable to a lot of Canadian universities.

[A scanned image of a fill-in-the-blank student test problem, "William Penn said, Those people who are not governed by God will be ruled by", where the blank at the end is filled in with "tyrants".]

I also note that the question above seems to have wording about “Nazi government” and “concentration camps”.

And through all of this, questions about whether private education should be publicly funded at all… or at the very least, if it is, how much oversight there should be. Alberta’s funding of private education is the highest in Canada: since 2008, private schools get 70% of the funding per student allocated to public schools. And it turns out, that’s not what Albertans want.

[Graphic showing the results of a poll question "Do you support public taxpayer money going to support private schools?". The results are: yes, 27%; no, 61%; and not sure, 12%.]

The issue actually came up earlier this year, when the Edmonton Public School Board renewed a call for the province to end public funding of private schools. This has been the Alberta Teachers’ Association’s position since at least the 1990s.

But let’s put all that aside for a moment, and return to the case at hand.

So for a while it looked like both Alberta Education and Trinity/Wisdom were gearing up for a fight in the courts. From where I’m sitting, it sure looked like it was going to be a slam dunk for Alberta Education, so I was among the voices cheering for Trinity/Wisdom to bring it on. Having them dragged through the courts would probably go a long way toward discrediting the public funding of private schools in Alberta.

But on , the Alberta government announced that it would settle the case.

Now, to be clear, from what it sounds like, the government “won”. It got everything it would have asked for had it won the court case. A province-appointed administrator will manage Trinity’s public funds for at least one year. Wisdom has completely been booted from governance or financial involvement in the education of students.

So, win, right?

Well….

As others have pointed out, while the province “won”, the way they spun their victory makes it look like it was a compromise, or even a concession. The title of the press release – and the phrasing Eggen himself used – speaks of “ensuring stability” for the students. The way it’s framed allows the other side to spin it as a victory on their part – they can sing the “we took on the government and made them back down” tune…. patently untrue when actually looking at the facts, but the kind of people that spin will appeal to aren’t really going to be looking too hard at the facts. And of course, it allows the political opposition to spin it as a failure on the part of the Notley government.

But the real problem of this “let’s just put it behind us” strategy is that it means we never get to really have that debate about the public funding of private schools in Alberta, or the oversight of the quality of education. The only thing “fixed” is that Trinity probably won’t be able to pull off as much financial fraud, at least in the short term. But the students being defrauded out of real educations? That doesn’t get addressed.

This may be the best we can hope for in Alberta right now. We have to face the reality of the political situation Rachel Notley’s NDP is facing. They are doing a fine job, in my opinion, but they are in a rather precarious position. They have to clean up the mess the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta spent over four decades making… without shaking things up too much, that they come to be considered too radical a change. They are also squarely in the cross hairs of the Canadian “alt-right”. They can’t really afford to do anything politically dangerous like trying to reform private education or homeschooling. It doesn’t even matter that it’s what the general public wants, or that the entire public school system has their back. That’s a viper pit of Christian privilege. There’s no foreseeable way wading into that can end well for the Notley government.

So… we won? Sorta? I suppose we won about as much as we could have hoped to win given Alberta’s political realities. At the very least, some Christian fraudsters are going to have a harder time ripping off the public… for a year, at least. The silver lining may be that the issue of public funding of private schools came up again, and that a major player in the publicly-funded private school industry got some serious egg on their face. It may be the case that our victory today is minor, but it could turn out to to be an important step leading to an ultimate victory for education in Alberta.

8 thoughts on “Alberta settles with Christian homeschooling fraudsters

  1. John Zylstra

    Your analysis is completely absurd… The province did not win, because they would like to disband Wisdom/Trinity entirely, but realized that the parents of 3500 students would not be happy with that. So they were forced to reinstate accreditation. Trinity had to administer the funds themselves rather than subcontracting with Wisdom, a wholly owned subsidiary, if you will. Which is all technicality, and nothing of substance. Trinity was always accountable for what Wisdom did, anyway. In reality, the audit alledged all kinds of things that were taken out of context, were exaggerated in the telling, and were unbalanced. Especially the liquor expenses and funeral expenses.. a sympathy card? The inflammatory statements and vicious attacks, and hasty and aggregious actions by the government were unfair and unseemly and out of proportion. The timing was very suspicious and irresponsible.
    For example, you site the 32% for admin by Trinity/Wisdom vs 5% for public schools. However, 32% of 1600 per student is about $530. 5% of the $13000 spent on public school students is about $600. So the amounts are not much different in absolute terms, while the parents themselves make up the shortfall in funding by the volunteer teaching they do. So the audit was unbalanced.

    Reply
    1. Indi Post author

      That’s pretty imaginative math there. Mind explaining where you got your numbers from? I’m guessing the $1,600 is supposed to be the province’s per-student funding for home-schooling… but if you’re using that metric, the per-student funding for non-home-schooled students should be closer to *half* the $13,000 you mention.

      I suspect you’re adding the facilities funding to the non-home-schooled student cost… but that would be patently dishonest, because home-schooled students don’t have any facilities.

      Or let’s say you do want to include *everything* in the per-student funding. As you note, that means there’s not much difference in the absolute administrative costs per student… but that case you’re really comparing apples and oranges. You’d be arguing that there’s nothing fishy about the fact that home-schooled students require almost the same amount of administration as non-home-schooled students… when the non-home-schooled students’ administrative costs include facilities management, lab equipment inventory and maintenance, sports equipment inventory and maintenance, security oversight, human resources management for all the teachers and other employees (janitors, counsellors, and such), tracking grades and discipline, keeping connected with parents/caregivers, the overheads that come with teaching a class of dozens of kids rather than just one or two, and so on… all administrative and office costs that home-schooled students don’t require. What, you think all that’s packed into that $70 difference?

      Reply
      1. John Zylstra

        The only contribution the Alberta government makes to homeschooling is the $1600 per pupil grant, of which parents get about half for supplies. It provides a total of approximately $13000 to public and separate school students including per pupil grants, department costs, facilities, transportation, and other costs. The Fraser Institute has done a comprehensive analysis of this. This is not imaginative math. It is not dishonest at all, because of course homeschooled students do have facilities, but those facilities are their homes, which do not receive compensation. Your logic is confused. The whole point of comparison is the funding allocated.
        You argue that homeschooled students should not require the same amount of administration as non-home-schooled, but the whole point is that the report was misleading in its comparisons. Thus admin costs for homeschools are indeed not higher than public schools, whatever the reason. It is you who are switching and diverting from what the report has said… the report did not explain or argue the total amounts of admin should be less, only the percentages, which were made to look really bad. That’s the deception in the report. Without knowing what is included in administration, no discussion on differences can be held. But certainly homeschools do not get funding for facilities or transportation, which are huge items.

        Reply
  2. Judith Valleau

    Now that the truth has come out on how Education minister David Eggen had falsely accused Wisdom Homeschooling and could not prove any of his accusation aganst them. Were is his apology?

    Reply
    1. Indi Post author

      Uh, I don’t think you read the article, because that’s not what actually happened. Eggen’s accusations were never tested in court, but they’re pretty much proven to be true by the settlement. The homeschooling organization is now banned from managing their own finances, because of all the fraud – a government-approved auditor is now doing all their accounting – and the homeschoolers agreed to that rather than let the case go to court.

      Reply
      1. John Zylstra

        The homeschooling board is managing their finances under the supervision of a government approved auditor. Probably changes will be made. But it is assumed that after the changes are made, they will resume independant management of finances after one year. The homeschool board agreed to that because they are not interested in doing things that are not accepted within the expected financial protocols of the dept of education. However, many of the things the audit highlighted will not be affected, since the audit report was unbalanced. The main objective is that education continues, that independance of educational objectives is maintained, and that funding is fairly distributed. This main objective is agreed to by the laws of the province, as well as by this homeschool board.

        Reply
  3. mickelodian

    So, just to be clear did the taxpayer or the school board ever get the money that was siphoned off from the budget by these couple of families back?

    I mean, if the results of your little investigation are accurate then this was a fraud right? Fraud is a criminal offense, not one of civil proceedings…. Were there no arrests?

    Has anyone reported this matter of misuse of public funds to the Alberta Police? If not, why not?

    Reply
    1. Indi Post author

      You didn’t read the article either it seems – there’s clearly a trend of home-schooling supporters lacking basic comprehension skills here.

      The province didn’t lay charges or demand repayment because the families settled the case out of court. The settlement had one of their organizations completely kicked off the public teat, and the other put under government management. With results like that, you still don’t believe there was fraud going on?

      (And incidentally, they didn’t call the police because they didn’t have to: they have their own investigators – this wasn’t “my little investigation”, it was a provincial investigation, and all on the public record; I was just reporting it. They did call their own fraud investigators, they did find evidence of fraud – as I reported in the article – and their findings were made public… they’re what I quoted in the article. They also didn’t call the police because it wouldn’t have made sense for them to in any case; if they did it would have become a federal case – as all criminal cases are; that’s how the criminal system works in Canada – whereas if they used their own investigators, it stayed a provincial case, and they could handle it themselves.)

      That kind of settlement is hardly uncommon in white-collar crime cases and especially when dealing with an organization that provides important services to a lot of people, where anything more punitive would create widespread disruption or chaos. Trinity’s homeschooling services covered a third of all homeschooling across Alberta, so pursuing any more aggressive punitive measures would probably have done more harm to thousands of kids than to the fraudsters. The money was already spent on booze and baby-sitting… if the government had demanded it back, it would have had to come out of the budget for the kids.

      “An eye for an eye” may sound attractive by Biblical logic, but a responsible government has to consider the consequences of any punishment. While I don’t like the way they framed the settlement, I don’t oppose the settlement itself; it was a perfectly reasonable way to deal with the grifters without hurting the kids. Unlike the homeschoolers, the province had the best interests of the kids at heart when deciding how to deal with the fraudsters.

      Reply

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