PUBLISHED: OCTOBER 7, 2014 01:33PM
UPDATED: OCTOBER 7, 2014 07:29PM

Thousands of dollars in kids’ lunch money reportedly got shuffled into the wrong accounts before 17 students had their lunches seized at Uintah Elementary School last January.

In an email to parents Monday, the Salt Lake City School District said more than $8,000 in cash and check payments had been inaccurately processed by personnel. The money had been applied to various student accounts, the email said, and parents who believe they may have been affected are encouraged to contact the district.

The $8,000 figure represents 4,000 student meals, district spokesman Jason Olsen said. The district found more than 300 checks that were misapplied between August 2009 and January 2014, but it was not yet clear the number of individual student accounts involved.

“We’re trying to get, as accurate as we can, the number of families who were affected,” Olsen said.

Uintah collects roughly $47,000 in lunch payments each year. Of the $8,000 in misapplied payments, half were misdirected during the 2012-2013 school year, a full year before the lunchroom scandal.

The district commissioned an independent investigation into the January incident, which generated national attention and led to policy changes. The district now guarantees a meal for all students regardless of their account status.

A report by outside investigators laid much of the blame for the trashed meals on Uintah Elementary lunch manager Shirley Canham, who was placed on leave after the lunch seizures and who chose not to return to work at the school this fall.

The report concluded that Canham failed to notify parents of low balances and lied to a visiting district supervisor about her procedure for serving students, which led to confusion on the day the 17 lunches were thrown away. The report also said that Canham admitted to occasionally placing the payment of one student into another student’s account.

In a recent interview with The Salt Lake Tribune, Canham said she was questioned by police officers about her handling of lunch payments, but the investigation did not lead to criminal charges. She said any misapplied funds were the result of regular accounting errors in the confusion of a busy lunchroom.

But Olsen said the $8,000 figure goes beyond what is typical for school accounting errors.

“We haven’t seen anything like this at other schools,” he said.

While the email sent to parents does not specifically mention Canham, Olsen said the district believes the errors resulted from Canham’s management of school accounts at Uintah.

He said district officials decided to take a closer look at Uintah’s books after receiving the independent investigator’s report, which led to the discovery of the misapplied funds.

“We had one of our [accountants] go in and pull the records, all the checks from the lunches, to see if they were applied in the correct manner,” he said.

But Michael Clara, a member of the district’s school board, said the $8,000 figure is “questionable.” He said the board approved an external investigation to ensure the release of accurate information, but the latest report of misapplied funds is coming from within the district.

“We commissioned external investigations,” he said, “because we didn’t trust what [district officials] were telling us.”

Clara said he’s heard from lunch managers at other schools in the district who are worried about accounting errors. Many students have similar last names or names that differ from those of their guardians, Clara said, which can result in confusion at lunchtime.

“They’re just doing this, in my opinion, to discredit a 61-year-old woman who’s not even working for the district anymore,” Clara said.

Even if Canham were guilty of everything she is accused of, Clara said, he still worries there were broader failures that contributed to the incident and that administrators at both the school and district have not been properly held accountable.

“You’re telling me that $8,000 is misappropriated,” he said, “and you’re just now figuring this out?”

Olsen said the problem likely went unnoticed because students were regularly fed, giving parents little indication that funds were being misapplied.

“We didn’t have any complaints or indication of this until the incident happened at Uintah,” he said.

bwood@sltrib.com

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