State ends watch over Colorado City district

PHOENIX — For the first time in nearly four years, an Arizona school district serving a remote area of northern Arizona and southern Utah long dominated by a polygamist sect is no longer under state control.

The state Board of Education on Monday voted unanimously to end its receivership of the Colorado City Unified School District, which officials said is now in good shape both academically and financially.

Colorado City is a sparsely populated region located on the Arizona Strip, north of the Grand Canyon. Members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church chose it decades ago for the isolation.

The state placed the district in receivership in late 2005 because of financial insolvency and mismanagement. Those conditions no longer exist, and the district has repaid its debts to the state and an insurance co-op, officials said.

Owing money and having exhausted its bank credit, the district ran out of money to pay its employees for a period in late 2003, then had another cash crunch in late 2004.

Appointed in December 2005, the receivers cleaned house, accepting resignations from dozens of employees and implementing new controls on accounting, purchases and other activities. Two education experts from Utah State University were brought in to review school programs and make recommendations on improvements.

District Superintendent Carol Timpson arrived at the state board meeting after the vote. She expressed relief that the receivership had been lifted, saying it was been difficult to fill key posts jobs vacated by FLDS members, said Vince Yanez, the board's executive director.

The district's turnaround is remarkable "given the resources that are not available in that remote area," said board member Cecilia Owen, the Coconino County school superintendent.

"They have a good set of teachers that are really interested in educating kids. That's what is setting the culture," said Robert Bacon, a managing director of a Phoenix consulting firm that was appointed receiver for the district.

Under state law, the state board and the Department of Education will continue to provide oversight and technical assistance for two years, Yanez said.

Officials said the district's financial troubles earlier this decade included padding its staff to provide jobs for FLDS members and practices that included excessive travel costs and questionable property transactions, including the purchase of a $200,000 airplane.

The district's finances took a nose dive when the FLDS had its members withdraw their children from the district's schools, dropping enrollment — the basis for state funding — from over 1,000 to below 400.

The placement of the district in receivership was part of a multipronged crackdown that also led to a Utah court appointing a trustee to oversee finances of the United Effort Plan Trust that holds most of the homes and property in the area. Meanwhile, church president Warren Jeffs has been convicted in Utah and is awaiting trial in Arizona's Mohave County in criminal cases involving marriages of underage followers.