Oklahoma’s governor and his political allies in charge of $18 million in pandemic relief funds mismanaged the programs meant to help both low-income and privately educated students in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report released Tuesday by the state’s multicounty grand jury. Grand jurors issued a 31-page report on Oct. 10 after listening to witness testimony in September and October about two programs funded by the federal Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund. The report, directed by Republican Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, said there were no grounds for criminal indictments or any willful corruption. But it said the handling of federal grant money was “irresponsible, disappointing and indefensible.” The grand jury recommended several improvements to educational spending, including training in grant management, policies for administering grants and training for elected officials, agency employees and others in procurement standards, competitive bidding and conflict of interest. Gov. Kevin Stitt, through a spokeswoman, said Drummond weaponized a grand jury in his pursuit for a bid for governor in 2026. “Ultimately, this was an inappropriate and unlawful use of a grand jury, all to pursue a headline in the attorney general’s campaign for governor,” said Abegail Cave, Stitt’s communication director. “Oklahomans can see right through this weaponization of the law.” Spending during the first year of the pandemic was often chaotic and marked by few guardrails normally in place during non-emergency times. But the report said Oklahoma education officials disregarded guidance from the Trump administration that the governor-directed education relief funds go through established channels. The report said that decision was grounded partly in politics, with Stitt unwilling to trust that officials at the Oklahoma State Department of Education would support spending federal pandemic money on private schools. The Education Department at the time was led by Joy Hofmeister, and she and Stitt clashed repeatedly on mask mandates and school closures. Hofmeister in 2022 switched parties to run as a Democrat against Stitt in his reelection bid. Witnesses said at least one person in Stitt’s cabinet urged him to award the funds to the Education Department because it made sense logistically and politically. Stitt rebuffed the idea mainly because of policy differences over school choice; he wanted to direct the funding to private-school families. Stitt chose two nonprofits, Every Kid Counts Oklahoma and the American Federation for Children Oklahoma, to manage the programs. The grand jury wrote it was “deeply troubled” by the way the state offloaded its responsibility to oversee the money onto private entities without vetting them. The first round of Governor’s Emergency Educational Relief funds directed $8 million to the Bridge the Gap Digital Wallet program to help low-income families buy education supplies. That program was led by Ryan Walters, director of  Every Kids Counts Oklahoma, before he was named Stitt’s Secretary of Education in the summer of 2020. Walters was elected as state superintendent in November 2022. Reporting by Oklahoma Watch and The Frontier revealed pandemic relief funds meant to support student learning was spent on TVs, grills, furniture, Christmas trees and hundreds of other non-educational items. A state audit later tallied non-educational spending at $1.7 million.Emails from Walters directed ClassWallet to ignore safeguards against spending on non-educational items and granted blanket approval to purchases made from pre-approved vendors.  In an email Tuesday, Walters’ spokesman Dan Isett didn’t address that 2020 email or the specifics of the grand jury report. Walters has consistently pointed the finger at the vendor, ClassWallet. “Superintendent Walters’s deep commitment to fiscal responsibility and taxpayer accountability has been borne out during his time as Secretary and now as State Superintendent,” said the statement from Isett. “Under his leadership, OSDE has instituted the highest standards to ensure the most efficient use of taxpayer money possible.” In 2020, another $10 million in GEER funds went to a Stay in School program to provide up to $6,500 in scholarships to help families affected financially by the pandemic to continue to send their children to private school. That effort was led by Jennifer Carter, who leads the Oklahoma branch of the American Federation for Children, a group founded by former Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The organization has been a longtime proponent of public-funded vouchers for private schools. The grand jury report said neither the Bridge the Gap program nor the Stay In School program met federal requirements for pandemic grant funding. It said the programs instead were trial runs for a statewide private school voucher program. In noting ClassWallet’s failure to protect families’ personal data, the grand jury report said the state auditor received a spreadsheet from Carter with parent and student names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and schools. Carter had a consulting business, Libertas Consulting, that was involved in the disbursement of funds. That a director of a special interest group obtained this data was concerning, they wrote, and even more concerning was added information including political party registration and voting district. “This indicates that, unbeknownst to families, their information was being collected and processed for purposes other than that for which it was disclosed,” the grand jury wrote.Applications for the programs were supposed to go live on Aug. 10, 2020, but for about six hours on Aug. 8, 2020, early access was given to families attending a select few private schools, the report said. There’s no record of how or why those schools were chosen, though some met certain criteria, including that all students attended tuition-free, the school was for addiction recovery or the school subsidized at least 90% of tuition costs. More than $2 million in Stay in School scholarships and $167,000 in Bridge the Gap grants were awarded to applicants unfairly granted early access, according to the grand jury report. More than half of the Stay in School scholarships were given to families who wrote in their applications they did not lose income or expect to due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Carter could not be reached for comment.Jennifer Palmer has been a reporter with Oklahoma Watch since 2016 and covers education. Contact her at (405) 761-0093 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @jpalmerOKC. The post Grand Jury: State’s Handling of GEER Programs Troubling, But Not Criminal appeared first on Oklahoma Watch.