Two staffers vetted Wisconsin's $151M pandemic-school fund

Wisconsin's Department of Public Instruction was awarded about $151.4 millionv100_508_SECURED.pdf) in federal Emergency Assistance to Nonpublic Schools (EANS) pandemic-relief funds -- money meant to help private schools serve low-income students through COVID-era disruptions.▸ A U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General auditv100_508_SECURED.pdf) released September 29, 2025 found the state approved more than $20 million of it for 184 nonpublic schools that did not meet the low-income enrollment threshold Wisconsin itself had proposedv100_508_SECURED.pdf) -- among them 18 schools reporting zero low-income students. The office responsible for reviewing every application, the audit found, had one full-time employee and one term employeev100_508_SECURED.pdf).

Federal rules set a default: at least 40% of a nonpublic school's students had to come from low-income families to qualify for ARP EANS aid, though a state could apply to use a different percentage suited to its own circumstances.▸ The Department approved Wisconsin's request to use 21.9%v100_508_SECURED.pdf) instead. But Wisconsin's application also said it would fund schools that had already drawn on the earlier CRRSA EANS program even if they fell short of that 21.9% mark -- an approach the Department later said, at a December 2024 meeting, it had overlooked when it approved Wisconsin's plan, and that it did not comply with federal requirementsv100_508_SECURED.pdf).

The result: 184 nonpublic schools ineligible under the state's own threshold received more than $20 millionv100_508_SECURED.pdf) in EANS-funded services and assistance.▸ Auditors broke down how far short those schools fell -- 77 had 10% or less low-income enrollment, 38 had less than 5%, and 18 reported none at allv100_508_SECURED.pdf).

Eligibility for EANS required a nonpublic school to be a nonprofit and to certify it had not taken a Paycheck Protection Program loan after December 27, 2020.▸ Wisconsin had no process to independently verify either claimv100_508_SECURED.pdf) and relied entirely on schools' self-certification, because, officials told auditors, the two-person EANS office lacked the resources to checkv100_508_SECURED.pdf).

When OIG ran the state's own applicant list against the Small Business Administration's PPP loan database, it found at least one school that had received a $202,987 PPP loan on March 12, 2021 and had improperly collected $838,829 in EANS-funded services and assistance as a resultv100_508_SECURED.pdf).▸ Wisconsin later identified that school to reporters as Carter's Christian Academy in Milwaukee⧉ -- a 270-student school that separately draws about $3.2 million a year in Wisconsin taxpayer funding. The state told OIG it had recovered the $838,829 from the school, but had not, as of the report, shown OIG that money reached the federal governmentv100_508_SECURED.pdf).

Two smaller findings round out the audit: $297,477 in EANS expenditures Wisconsin's contractor could not documentv100_508_SECURED.pdf) -- in some cases, no payroll or timesheet records to show that staff billed to a school actually worked there -- and $21,312 paid for services delivered roughly six months after the CRRSA EANS program had already endedv100_508_SECURED.pdf).

Auditors also found Wisconsin's contractor charged nonpublic schools processing fees ranging from 2.44% to 10.5% of each expenditure, with no review of whether any given fee was reasonablev100_508_SECURED.pdf).

OIG issued seven recommendations, and Wisconsin disagreed with the findings and every one of themv100_508_SECURED.pdf) in its formal written response.▸ Seven months later, the Department's own press office was still listing the Wisconsin finding as an active fraud-and-waste case⧉ alongside pandemic-fund cases in Puerto Rico and West Virginia, and by late April 2026 the Trump administration was pressing Wisconsin's DPI to return the more than $20 million⧉.

DPI spokesperson Chris Bucher countered that the state's approach had been explicitly approved by the Department in 2021⧉ and that Wisconsin acted transparently throughout; School Choice Wisconsin president Ashley Czaja called the state's EANS record one of the best outcomes nationally, compared with states that returned money they couldn't distribute⧉.