Consultants Missing Money! 5thEstate.com exclusive - must credit!

For three years, Lancaster School District has been paying the Bethel AME church from $2,500 to over $6,000 PER MONTH as consultants called "cultural translators". They billed the school @ $15 per hour The problem? Their contract was canceled at the end of July 31, 2003 and they owe the school district of Lancaster $25,000 that was advanced to them!

The $25,000 was actually advanced to Shalom Partnership c/o Bethel AME, 512 E. Strawberry Street, Lancaster PA. Last year when school officials looked over the almost $125,000 paid to Bethel AME, they realized that $25,000 was NOT accounted for. When the school asked Ed Bailey, pastor of the Bethel AME church, for the money, he said it was gone! At this time, 5thEState.com has confirmed that school district is currently seeking legal means to get the missing money returned.

Shalom Partnership's invoice was simple...very simple.

April 11, 2003 423 hours = $6,345!

5thEstate.com has been investigating school district consultants since we discovered that superintendent Ric Curry hired ex-con, drug dealer brother-in-law as a $1,500 per day consultant. At last weeks press conference we asked about Shalom Partnership

5thEstate.com: What did Shalom Partnership do?

Here is Ric's answer from the January 14 press conference:
"Shalom Partnership was a community- based partnership that Dr. Philips and I engaged with the Shalom Zone. There was a federal grant that we wrote in positions called "Cultural Translators". They were individuals that were community-based who would go into our schools, particular schools we would name, and work with helping to bridge the community and school. They were not school district employees, we did not want them to be school district employees, so Dr. Philips and I made a decision to ask the Shalom Partnership to hire those persons, the grant permitted that, and those persons, in effect worked for the Shalom Partnership. We required all of the cultural translators, since part of their day was school based, to have a criminal background and a child abuse check in every sense."

5thEstate.com: "Why did they just bill for hours without documentation?"

Here is Ric's answer from the January 14 press conference:
"What you are referring to is they would bill the school district for the hours that these persons worked. So that why you always saw something that referred to the hours. There is plenty of documentation in that these individuals were school based and reported to a school district person also. "

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