D.C. School Board Vice President Carolyn Graham asked the school system to pay for a motivational speaker who addressed her private ministry, a whistle-blower has told investigators.
Steve Kapani, a financial analyst who worked in the board’s charter schools office, told investigators that Graham intervened after the school district’s finance office rejected a request to pay for the speaker, a source familiar with the investigation told The Examiner.
The source asked not to be identified because three investigations are pending.
Kapani prompted the investigations when he went to the D.C. inspector general’s office to report that his boss, Brenda Belton, was giving no-bid contracts to family and friends.
His account of the motivational speaker conflicts with Graham’s.
A Baptist minister and candidate for school board president, Graham has said publicly that it was “a mistake” that school funds paid for her ministry’s staff to attend a seminar held by “holistic mentor” Rebera Foston at the Sumner School earlier this year.
The seminar has dragged Graham into the widening probe of Belton’s spending. The city’s inspector general and auditor general, as well as a federal grand jury, all are investigating. No one has been targeted in the criminal investigation, but sources say that authorities are scrutinizing the Foston seminar.
Graham has said previously that she andBelton had planned to bring Foston in for a four-day seminar, two days of which would be used by Graham’s private staff. She said that she only learned of the “mistake” on the last day of the seminar and that she immediately paid the school board to cover the cost of the seminar.
Kapani told investigators that Belton initially asked the school’s finance office for $12,000 to bring Foston in. But the finance office rejected the request — in part because it wasn’t clear how a staff seminar with Foston would help benefit students.
After the rejection, Graham intervened with then-chief finance officer John Musso and approved the payment. On Sunday, Graham stood by her earlier comments.
“I don’t know what Steve Kapani is talking about,” Graham said. “You are at risk, really, of affecting a bigger issue here. And it needs to stop.”
