UPDATE: Updated with more information from the auditor’s office at 10:30 a.m.
The Seattle Times reported today that the state Auditor’s Office is investigating the sale of a Seattle School District public school to First African Methodist Episcopal Church under questionable circumstances.
Although the district received a much higher bid—$9.7 million—from the private Bush School for the empty Matrin Luther King Elementary school, it decided to sell it to First AME for $2.4 million. The reason? A revised school district policy allowed the district to sell a closed school to the lowest bidder if they promised to use 50 percent of the space to support youth education or social services.
The Seattle School Board voted 5-2 in October 2010 to approve the sale. According to the Madison Park Times, school board members and neighbors were hopeful that First AME would offer programs for the community at the vacant school site which was purchased by the church with the help of taxpayer money set aside by state lawmakers to help a non-profit group buy MLK.
However, questions were immediately raised about whether district officials exploited their authority to help the church acquire the property. One name that has come up is that of Fred Stephens, the district’s former facilities director and a First AME congregant, who was involved in the sale in some ways. Currently a deputy in the U.S. Department of Commerce, Stephens was also questioned by the auditor’s office in the district’s $1.8 small business contracting scandal back in December.
· One former district employee told The Seattle Times that her boss, Fred Stephens, director of the district’s property division and an influential First AME congregant, was determined as early as 2007 to help the church get the school property.
“We are looking at the sale of MLK school to First AME church and whether the sale complied with district policy and procedures and state law,” says Kara Klotz from the auditor’s office. “We are looking at whether there was any conflict of interest.”
Klotz says that the SAO first received citizen complaints about the sale in March and decided to investigate it as part of the school district’s 2010 fiscal year accountability audit. Klotz says the SAO is aiming to release the report by the end of the month.
Institutional racism.
Fuck, these morons can’t do anything right. Mediocrity rises to the top, right?
i hope the School District enjoys the time they’ll be spending with the Bush School’s lawyers. that elementary is immediately adjacent to the Bush School campus.
You forgot to mention that AME did not pay $2.4 million for the property- taxpayers paid it on their behalf.
Doesn’t this violate laws against church and state? Isn’t it illegal for the state to use race as part of the factor for choosing AME over Bush?
Good to see Riya continues to be a great linker to actual journalism. She missed one fact, the church used state funds to buy the property. Where’s the outrage on that one? I guess guilty white liberals will just sit there and pretend no one has farted in their faces again.
Can we expect ‘social justice’ or the justice with find in actual law aka. equal justice?
“i hope the School District enjoys the time they’ll be spending with the Bush School’s lawyers.”
Unlike the race-baiting, race and social justice pimps and crooks at this taxpayer-funded church (and their supporters here at Slog), the Bush School has enough class to stay out of this. Read the article, they’re simply putting on their game face and walking away. Good for them.
If a predominately African American private school was rejected for the space despite offering $10million then the district turned around and used a few million in tax payer money to give it away to a predominately white Church or Synagogue the shit would hit the fan. It wouldn’t matter if the recepients of this were dirt poor. This would be nationwide news. Heads would roll. And compensation would be made to the “victims” of descrimination.
@8 clearly you haven’t heard of ‘white privilege’, the ability to get somewhere on time, plan for the future and possess a working knowledge of condoms. Such privileges must be eradicated through race and social justice initiatives.
This clearly can not be legal. Fred Stephens discriminated against buyers in order to give the property away to his church! Read this story and imagine it was a Mosque, Synagogue, or Mormon Temple. Imagine it was people in those “communities” who helped along swindling the Seattle public out of millions in order to get for free a piece of property that is focused on providing services geared almost entirely to people of their race and religion. It seems illegal on several different grounds.
Way to go, all you naive white “progressive” Seattle libtards.
There may be, in fact, some illegal activity going on with this. It may also be true the Fred Stephens and company may be corrupt. It is not fair to paint a whole race of people as guilty by association, that association being their race. The fact that these few people may be crooks and may also be black is not the issue. The issue is corrupt public employees. No one painted all white folks as crooks when Bernie Madoff and his ilk bilked the American public out of their life savings and the banks (owned and operated by white folks) destroyed the American financial institutions. Why is it ok to go after people based on their race?
fred stevens, silas potter, norwood brooks and goodal johnson. Take a look connect the dots. They all belong to the same church. FAME, same employer Seattle S D. you tell me. Look at who runs MLK for FAME.