Courier-Journal: Head of Illinois nonprofit cooperating in U of L grant probe
The director of the defunct Illinois nonprofit that received the bulk of a $694,000 federal grant being investigated at the University of Louisville is cooperating with investigators, his attorney said yesterday.
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Thomas D. Schroeder, of Illinois, was also on U of L’s payroll from 2005 to this April as a research assistant to Robert Felner, the former dean of U of L’s College of Education and Human Development at the center of the investigation.
Schroeder “hasn’t been charged, and I doubt he will,” said Herbert Schultz, his attorney in Rock Island, Ill. He declined to comment further.
U of L documents show Felner arranged approval for Schroeder’s nonprofit corporation — the National Center on Education and Prevention Inc., based in Port Byron, Ill. — to provide and administer education surveys as a subcontractor. Its contracts with U of L totaled $450,000.
But according to the Illinois secretary of state’s office, Schroeder’s corporation was involuntarily dissolved March 1, 2006 — a year before the U of L deal was struck — after it failed to file its 2005 annual incorporation report.
Schultz confirmed Schroeder’s nonprofit had “ceased operation” but did not offer further details, including when it ceased operation.
The grant was to be used to create a center to help schools — including those in Kentucky — boost student achievement on federal No Child Left Behind exams. But local and state education leaders have said they have never heard of the grant or its research. And it remains unclear what grant-related work Schroeder produced.
Schroeder also is president of the Riverdale Community Unit School District No. 100 Board of Education, and executive director at the Rock Island County Council on Addiction, which provides addiction treatment, substance-abuse prevention and family services.
Felner’s resume shows he and Schroeder worked together on a substance abuse and prevention study between 1990 and 1994 while Felner was a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Felner’s attorney, Scott C. Cox, has said Felner denies any wrongdoing and is cooperating with investigators. Felner, whose last day at U of L was last month, backed out of a new job as chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside after the federal investigation became public June 20.
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