A court date has been set for a woman accused of stealing thousands of dollars from a parent advisory council for a Kelowna, B.C., elementary school.
Andrea Marie Blanchard, 46, is facing charges of fraud, theft over $5,000, forgery, using a forged document and altering documents to defraud. The charges stem from January 2016 to January 2018.
The missing money, believed to be around $25,000, was discovered by members of the parent advisory council (PAC) for South Rutland Elementary.
The court date is Dec. 16, 2021, at the Kelowna Law Courts. The PAC told Global News that Blanchard, a former PAC treasurer from 2014-18, has agreed to pay back around $26,000.
According to the PAC, the embezzlement proved costly, as the school went a full year without PAC-funded items such as hot lunches. Notably, funding for school trips was just given the green light this year.
“As PAC president when we discovered the misappropriation, we had extremely low bank balances,” Toni Koryakuss, current PAC vice-president, told Global News.
“At that time, we were not able to offer any kind of field trips, in-school supplies that would help out our teachers’ wish lists. We were not able to operate hot lunches at that time, or anything to do with financial support for our school.”
Two years on, Koryakuss says the PAC has financially recovered.
“We would like to put out a big thank you to our community and our local businesses and families for sponsoring our PAC,” said Koryakuss.
Thanks to that support, said Koryakuss, the PAC was able to not only pay bookkeeping fees to rectify their accounts, but also fundraise and gain back most of the money that had been misappropriated.
Further, Koryakuss said that’s allowed the PAC to fund a playground enhancement worth $16,000.
“We’ve slowly been able to start supporting our school again after that first year,” said Koryakuss. “Last year, we did implement hot lunches, and we did break ground for our playground enhancement this summer.
“There’s been countless volunteer hours put into not only the investigation, but reraising the money. And without our community support, we would not able to be where we are today.”
On Thursday afternoon, Kelowna RCMP issued a press release regarding the fraud charges.
“On December 9, 2018, the Kelowna RCMP began an investigation into a report of an alleged fraud involving a Kelowna area school Parent Advisory Committee (PAC),” said RCMP.
“The Kelowna RCMP Fraud Section worked closely with school officials and executive members of the impacted Parent Advisory Committee to gather information and advance the investigation.”