Tutoring centers / Feeding Our Future connections

The MN Reformer uncovers a new scandal involving tutoring centers. What are the connections to the Feeding Our Future scandal?

The headline in the MN Reformer this morning:

Low-income mothers lost tax refunds to tutoring companies using overseas instructors

This scandal involves a twist on the usual formula: the tutoring companies are not reimbursed directly by state government. Instead, the tutoring companies are paid indirectly through the state Dept. of Revenue (DOR) via a third-party vendor. The tutoring payments are then back-filled by client families (rather than general taxpayers), who then apply for tax credits (K-12 Education Credit).

[As a public policy matter, we have private companies, being paid by state government, who then acts as their collection agent with individual taxpayers.]

The problems began when the DOR started denying some families’ tax credit claims. The two companies named by the Reformer — Success Tutoring and Achievers Tutoring — are both based in Bloomington and both appear to be related to one another.

It is alleged that the tutoring companies recruited client families at a Bloomington mosque, Dar Al-Farooq. Further, the Reformer alleges the involvement of the corporate secretary of the mosque, whose day job is serving as the Muslim Coalition coordinator for the left-wing political nonprofit ISAIAH.

We documented the Feeding Our Future / Dar Al-Farooq / ISAIAH connections in this piece earlier this year. In the first Feeding Our Future courtroom trial this spring, the mosque was mentioned on several occasions, in different contexts.

Last week, the news outlet Somali Media MN published a story on the tutoring controversy. It takes a different viewpoint, blaming the government (DOR), rather than the tutoring companies. The author of the piece has his own (unrelated) connection to free-food.

To be clear, no entity or person mentioned above, not the tutoring companies, the mosque, nor any nonprofit has been accused of any wrongdoing in Feeding Our Future or any other case.

Also to be clear, the Feeding Our Future case does involve a tutoring company, but one unrelated to any person or entity discussed above.

Khadra Abdi, Feeding Our Future Defendant No. 57 and Guilty Plea No. 21 operated a large free-food distribution site out of her Shafi’i Tutoring center in Hopkins.

To repeat, neither Achievers Tutoring nor Success Tutoring themselves have any links to the Feeding Our Future controversy. In fact, the entities were founded after the free-food scandal broke.

Both tutoring companies are located at the same Bloomington office building. By coincidence, that office building was the site of two earlier feeding sites under Feeding Our Future, operated by unrelated building tenants.