A former business manager for the fiscally distressed Marvell-Elaine School District was ordered Tuesday to spend four years in federal prison for embezzling $471,665 that officials said caused teacher and counselor layoffs, and nearly shut down the district altogether.
After hearing from Clyde Williams, a member and former president of the district's School Board, and Henry Anderson Jr., superintendent of the 338-student district, Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. did what he said he had been leaning toward after reading letters from those affected, including the band director and teachers: he increased April Michelle Poor's sentence beyond the 33- to 41-month penalty range recommended by federal sentencing guidelines.
Marshall said he would have lengthened the sentence even more if not for defense attorney Mary Christina Boyd of DeWitt, who he said "focused me on Ms. Poor as a whole person" rather than just the person who embezzled from the district from August 2014 through December 2018.
In October, Poor admitted stealing the money by issuing 92 checks made payable to herself. She also admitted taking steps to hide the payments in the district's accounting system by making false entries indicating they were used to pay utilities and by altering bank statements by removing her name as the payee or removing the check image entirely.
Poor, now 43, had previously been a legislative auditor and "knew what Legislative Audit was looking for" when they audited the district's books, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jana Harris, who agreed that Poor deserved an upward variance from the guideline range.
Harris said that after a short stint in the school district's office, Poor was promoted to business manager in July 2014, giving her access to all of the district's financial records and bank accounts, and began embezzling within a month. Harris noted that Poor gradually increased the amounts and number of checks she issued to herself, and stopped only when she was caught during a legislative audit.
"She has cost people their jobs, caused reduced salaries and hurt children," Harris said. She said there is no longer a summer band camp, that instrument repairs now depend on volunteers and that the band has no uniforms.
Poor of Almyra spent most of the afternoon sentencing hearing sobbing into her mask at the defense table, her long hair falling forward to cover her black-rimmed glasses and most of her face. Marshall told her at least once to "collect yourself, please," and offered to take a break, but Poor declined.
Boyd of Walnut Ridge presented testimony from Poor's pastor in Conway and others who described the divorced mother of two as an active volunteer in the community who sang in the choir. Then Boyd made an impassioned plea of her own on behalf of the woman who she said was the last person "in our small community" who anyone would have believed would "do something like this."
Acknowledging that "the school district and the community have suffered greatly," Boyd said Poor is part of a "very religious family" who never had any previous trouble with the law, went to college, got married and "raised two exemplary children," including a daughter in college and a son in high school.
Boyd added that Poor "suffered a stroke that we believe is attributable to her mental state when this all came crashing down," and asked Marshall "to consider the totality of Poor's life," noting, "I don't know what punishment could be above what she has suffered already."
The judge asked whether Poor has made any restitution to the district, and Boyd replied that Poor intends to relinquish her retirement account of about $26,000 to the district. She said Poor thought about selling her car to repay the district, but is still making payments on it. She said that because of unspecified "medical conditions," which Poor later identified as seizures, tremors and depression, she doesn't have a job and "doesn't have anything."
Williams, who was the School Board president during Poor's tenure, told the judge that Poor's actions "put us in fiscal distress. We had to lay off teachers. We had to lay off counselors. The kids suffered more than anybody. It hurt the district and the community."
He said the school district is a consolidated one that serves several communities in a 260-square-mile radius, and noted, "If it wasn't for the state Department [of Education] working with us, we would be shut down."
Anderson, the superintendent since last year, said that as a result of Poor's theft, "we had to cut almost $400,000" from the district's $2.2 million personnel budget. "They had to cash in $200,000 in a CD to make payroll."
He said the district no longer has a financial cushion.
"We're in fiscal distress. That means I can't buy a pallet of copy paper, or toilet paper, if it's over $500 without board approval."
"The impact is not just financial," Anderson added. "It's a whole new way of how we have to do business." He said the district "was a very trusted district," but not anymore, and, "Trust is the exchange that moves everything."