Prosecutors Look at Hardin's Trip

Daniel Bice continues to follow the story of Charlene Hardin's excellent adventure.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

County prosecutors have launched a probe to determine if School Board member Charlene Hardin broke the law when she took a taxpayer-funded junket to Philadelphia but then failed to attend a national conference on school safety.

“I would consider this to be at the fact-finding stage,” said Milwaukee County Deputy District Attorney Kent Lovern on Tuesday. “We’ll have to see where it leads.”

Lovern said the white-collar unit in his office is working with Milwaukee Public Schools auditors to find out what exactly happened — and didn’t happen — on Hardin’s trip to Philadelphia to attend the annual conference of the National Association of School Safety & Law Enforcement Officers on July 14-16.

Two officials with the organization told No Quarter this week that Hardin and Lolita Pearson, a data-processing secretary at the Milwaukee High School of the Arts, spent no more than five minutes at the three-day event. They said the two attended no seminars or meetings.

Lovern declined to identify any laws that Hardin may have broken.

Lovern wasn't in the mood to talk and neither was Hardin when some reporters asked her a few questions after a School Board committee meeting.

“I have no comment about anything, sir,” said the third-term board member.

But the north side representative did say she had no idea she was under investigation. She then refused to answer more questions, abruptly walking away from a small group of reporters while mumbling that she had already addressed all the relevant issues. She has said she attended the conference and visited a couple of schools that specialize in the arts.

But on Tuesday, she wouldn’t say which Philadelphia schools she visited. She wouldn’t say whether she traveled outside Philadelphia during the conference. She wouldn’t say if she asked Milwaukee High School of the Arts to pay for her jaunt.

“I don’t like being bullied — at all,” she snapped.

Ooh. Snippy.

So now Hardin thinks she's being bullied.

What's her problem?

Were there no goody bags or cookies and donuts at the meeting?

Is that why she was being so cranky?

School Board President Peter Blewett was almost as elusive.

Asked about Hardin’s trip, the board chief said he had some questions about it and had submitted those to central office administrators. He acknowledged that few knew that Hardin had gone to Philadelphia last month.

That apparently was because the funding had come through a school. MPS pays for one out-of-state trip a year for board members out of their office account.

Typically, Blewett said, the board president — meaning Blewett — has to sign off on any out-of-state travel by members of the School Board. Asked repeatedly if he had done so in this instance, he finally said, “I have no memory of that.”

I can understand why Hardin would want to avoid answering reporters' questions, but for the board president to clam up, too, indicates that this is a complicated mess.

He did say that Hardin had written a report on what she learned in the City of Brotherly Love. MPS officials have yet to release records related to that trip, including Hardin’s report.

Blewett said it was unusual for an individual school to pay for board members to jet around the country. But he danced around the question when asked if a school had paid for any of his past travel.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Blewett's "I don't know" is not the right answer. I wonder how many board members are sweating right now about their past taxpayer-funded travels .

Peter Pochowski, a former MPS official who now runs the national school safety group, was one of two conference organizers who blew the whistle on Hardin and Pearson.

Pochowski said Tuesday that he took more than 100 snapshots during the three-day event, and neither woman appears in any of them. He said there was one school safety session specifically designed for “decision-makers” such as school board members. Hardin didn’t attend, he noted.

What’s more, Pochowski said he had the job titles of all but a couple of the 110 conference participants.

“There were no other secretaries,” except Pearson, he said.

Even so, the head of the Milwaukee High School of the Arts, Barry Applewhite, continued to defend this week his decision to pay for Hardin and the secretary to go to Philly.

Applewhite, the assistant principal in charge of the school, said he invited Hardin to make the trip because of her interest in safety and arts issues.

Applewhite said this week that he’s still trying to get a handle on what exactly happened at the conference. He has said Pearson told him she had actually attended the conference, contrary to what the organizers and staff say.

“We’ll have to see,” he said.

Does anyone doubt that what we'll see will NOT be a detailed report on the conference from Pearson or Hardin?

Applewhite should explain why he entrusted Pearson, a data processing secretary, to take his place at the conference.

Maybe Hardin can at least tell investigators about the quality of the donuts and other items that she took from the snack tray after missing out on the goody bag.

Of course, if the trip was legitimate, evidence that Hardin and Pearson actually attended the conference sessions would have been revealed by now.

The question becomes: To what extent have taxpayers been funding inappropriate leisure trips for School Board members and MPS employees?