The Frederick Press-Leader
Jul
31
2019
Page
0005
Fugate says “Boo!” to OCPA
Clip
resized
72% blog about “ghost students”
STAFF REPORT
OKLAHOMA CITY –
State Rep. Andy Fugate
(D-Del City) issued the
following statement in
response to a blog on the
Oklahoma Council of
Public Affairs website:
“I do not know what
the OSBI’s final report
will show or what an
audit from the State Au-
ditor will show regard-
ing the allegations made
against Epic Charter
Schools. I will reserve
my judgement for when
the investigations are
complete and we have a
final report.
“That being said, I am
disappointed the OCPA is
attempting to confuse the
Property of OPS News Tracker and members of the Oklahoma Press Association.
public with misleading
information when they
should be calling for a
full accounting and im-
proved transparency,”
said Fugate. “In a recent
blog, the OCPA claims
that districts across this
state have ‘ghost stu-
dents’ due to the state
funding formula, and
that’s just a blatant mis-
representation of how the
state funding formula
counts students.
“The formula includes
a multi-year count of
students to handle year-
ly fluctuations in district
attendance. This is sen-
sible when working with
budgetary estimates and
is no different than the
multi-year calculation
the legislature created for
GPT contributions to the
budget reserve fund cre-
ated in 2016. Nobody has
referred to that as ‘ghost
GPT.’ This is just a ri-
diculous assertion by the
OCPA.
“What is alleged with
Epic is that they inten-
tionally and aggressively
created an environment
that created ‘ghost stu-
dents,’ which allowed
them to fraudulently
make more money. Mon-
ey that comes from tax-
payers.
“It is more than inter-
esting that an organiza-
tion like the OCPA, which
claims to pride itself on
protecting taxpayers,
would be so disinterested
in finding out if and how
this happened.”