OSDE tells districts it miscalculated Title I funding allocations

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Superintendents from districts across Oklahoma tell News 4 their Title I Funding allocations from the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) suddenly dropped to $0 this week, and OSDE told them the department accidentally miscalculated the funds.

Last week, OSDE published its Title I funding allocations to school districts, letting districts know how much money they could expect for the upcoming school year.

But multiple superintendents told News 4, when they logged into the system that manages their Title I distributions on Monday, it showed those funding allocations had dropped to $0.

News 4 obtained audio of a zoom call OSDE held with leaders from schools districts across the state on Tuesday, in which OSDE’s Deputy Chief Academic Officer told school leaders a “glitch” caused OSDE to miscalculate the amount of Title I funds it allocated to districts last week, and that OSDE would need to recalculate them.

“So those figures are skewed, but we will have the correct ones up I guess either later today or tomorrow morning,” OSDE Deputy Chief Academic Officer Thomas Kirk can be heard telling school administrators during a webinar OSDE held with school district leaders on Tuesday. “I apologize. The ones that are currently on our website are not correct.”

Superintendents from multiple school districts across Oklahoma told News 4 they were shocked when they logged into their computers on Monday to see their Title I balances had dropped to $0.

“We woke up and the allocation notice wasn't there,” Mid-Del Public Schools Superintendent Rick Cobb told News 4.

“It had been zeroed out with no communication, no heads up that something was going on,” Bixby Public Schools Superintendent Rob Miller told News 4.

Title I is a federal program which provides schools, which have a certain percentage of economically disadvantaged students enrolled, with funding for things like tutors, support staff, extra teachers, specialty teachers more.  

“These are federal dollars, federal grant dollars that are used to help support students in poverty,” Miller said.

Every year, it’s OSDE’s job to decide how much Title I money to distribute to each school district in the state.

After OSDE tells districts their allocations, districts then put together their Title I spending budgets, which they must submit to the federal government by September 30 in order to receive the money.

In years past, OSDE has given districts their Title I funds months in advance of the September deadline.

But Miller and Cobb say this year, districts did not get their allocations from OSDE until last Thursday.

“Today is our fifth day of school,” Cobb said. “So we're a week into the school year and they finally gave us our allocation.”

They began putting in overtime to get everything ready by that September 30 deadline.

“We assumed [what we were allocated Thursday] would be our number and that's why we were planning to meet this Monday to start crafting our application, trying to figure out the budget,” Miller said.

After Miller and Cobb saw their Title I funds had dropped to $0 on Monday, they made calls to other superintendents to see if they were alone.

“And that was true for districts across the state,” Cobb said. “My phone was blowing up with texts from other superintendents, hey, where's our title one allocation?”

Both superintendents called OSDE to figure out what happened.

“And we were told that there would be information that would be revealed in [Tuesday’s] lunch and learn webinar,” Miller said.

OSDE periodically holds its ‘lunch and learn’ webinars with leaders from Oklahoma school districts to give them updates on things happening at OSDE.

Tuesday’s ‘Lunch and Learn’ webinar is when Kirk made those comments about the “glitch” that has caused OSDE to miscalculate Title I allocations.

“As I mentioned earlier, we posted some Title I allocations on our website Thursday afternoon,” Kirk can be heard telling attendees of Tuesday’s webinar. “And then very shortly after posting them, we recognized that the tool that we used to calculate them had a glitch in it. Some of the formulas were broken and it was not setting aside funds for school improvement or for state admin.”

Kirk promised that OSDE would send districts the correct numbers very soon. 

“So those figures are skewed, but we will have the correct ones up I guess either later today or tomorrow morning,” Kirk told webinar attendees.

As of Tuesday evening, leaders from multiple districts told News 4 their allocations were still listed at $0.

Cobb told News 4 he thinks he might know why things like this have slipped through the cracks at OSDE.

As News 4 has reported, dozens of numerous longtime OSDE employees have resigned since State Superintendent Ryan Walters took office.

“There have been, through the last four administrations, a lot of familiar faces that have helped us, who now are leaving,” Cobb said. “I think any time you have a lot of turnover, you lose institutional knowledge. That is critical.”

Miller said he has also heard support staff at OSDE has been tasked with a lot.

“I think there's good people that work at the State Department, so I certainly don't want to malign them,” Miller said. “I think the biggest issue is they're understaffed.”

In the meantime, Miller, Cobb and superintendents across Oklahoma will continue waiting.

“It's a point where we're ready to move on,” Miller said. “We've got school to run, we've got students in our classes now. We need to get this work done so that we can do what we need to do to serve our students.”

News 4 reached out to OSDE on Tuesday but did not receive a response.