Gear Up program cost $16 million, yielded mixed results

A program meant to increase the numbers of impoverished Native Americans attending college cost taxpayers more than $16 million over the last decade.

But the results of the South Dakota Gear Up program were mixed, according to the most recent evaluation, which was obtained by the Argus Leader. The program's administrators had failed to achieve nearly a dozen key outcomes during 2014-2015 while meeting a half dozen others.

It was one reason, along with red flags in at least two financial audits, that Department of Education Secretary Melody Schopp decided not to renew the Gear Up contract with Mid-Central Educational Cooperative. Hours after learning that the contract wouldn't be renewed, Mid-Central's business manager, Scott Westerhuis, is suspected of killing his wife and four children, setting fire to their Platte, South Dakota home and then killing himself.

"The fact that Secretary Schopp decided not to renew this contract obviously indicates that she was not happy with how things were going," said Tony Venhuizen, Gov. Dennis Daugaard's chief of staff. "Closing the Native American achievement gap is one of the department's four goals, and this year Secretary Schopp is leading a task force on that subject. It is a tough challenge."

In a letter to Mid-Central detailing the reasons for losing the Gear Up contract, Schopp cited financial problems and failures to follow proper accounting procedures.

"The reason for the non-renewal and termination is that MCEC has failed to successfully implement the program and has failed to comply with the terms of the grant award," Schopp wrote.

State officials are still working to find an institution that can take over the program.

Venhuizen said he'd approached the Board of Regents, but the state has not yet finalized an agreement.

"The hope had been for an orderly and seamless transition from Mid-Central to a new administrator but the sad events in Platte have made that more difficult, and it could lead to a disruption in some Gear Up programming," Venhuizen said in a statement. "We will hope to have the new administrator in place soon."

Paul Turman, South Dakota Board of Regents' vice president for academic affairs, said the board is working with the Department of Education to find state universities that can administer the program.

"Our intent is to work with them to find a partner to make sure the grant moves forward," Turman said Monday. "Our goal is to provide a seamless transition."

Turman said it might take time to put staffing in place, but he believed the summer program at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology could be up and running again next summer.

South Dakota School of Mines & Technology President Heather Wilson said the university has hosted the Gear Up program under different names for 20 years, but didn't finance it. Wilson said she'd like to see the program continue on campus.

"Mines is willing to work with the regents and the state Department of Education to assume administration of the grant if that is the best thing to do for the students," Wilson said in an email to the Argus Leader.

Turman said the state is working with the federal Department of Education to re-allocate the Gear Up funding.

The $16.5 million spent since 2005 was virtually all federal money, Venhuizen said. The state had put in $915,442 from 2008 to 2011, and a foundation supplied $150,000 between 2009 and 2011. The rest were federal dollars.

The latest evaluation showed that it was falling short in key areas of increasing the number of Native Americans pursuing post-secondary education, starting with the number of students it served. Under Mid-Central, the program had proposed enrolling 6,591 students but ended up providing services to 4,629.

One of the benchmarks missed was increasing by 10 percent the number of Gear Up students who took two years of math classes beyond algebra one. Another missed benchmark was in increasing the number of children who had grade point averages above a 3.0. The evaluation also showed that there were not clear numbers on how many Gear Up graduates had pursued post-secondary education.

But the program did meet other benchmarks, including boosting the number of participants who graduated from high school as well as increases in reading proficiency and in some grades of math.

Follow Jonathan Ellis on Twitter@argusjellis and Dana Ferguson@bydanaferguson