PARIS, Ill. (WCIA) — Exactly two years after their former superintendent’s home was raided by the FBI, an Edgar County school district is trying to retrace the county’s steps after more than $700,000 went missing.

The current Paris Union School District 95 superintendent said they have been getting shortchanged for the last six years, and now they’re working to find out why. Superintendent Mary Morgan Ryan said the district makes a request for money to the county every year. The number they give is what they use for budgets, and what they send to the state to get funding from them.

But since 2018, she said the county has been sending less money than requested, amounting to almost $750,000. In a memo to the Board of Education, Ryan said it affected day-to-day operations in the district. It also said it hurt their ability to pay back bonds taken out in 2012 to pay for the high school’s construction.

Ryan said she’s also worried they might not have been getting the right amount of money from the state. The Illinois State Board of Education has a formula to determine what they send school districts based on predicted revenue.

Since those were wrong, Ryan said they could have been getting less from them as well. She also said they’re working with the county to figure out why exactly the money came in under what it should have been. But Ryan said they’re in the early stages and, right now, aren’t certain about what’s causing it.

Ryan said the ball is now in the county’s courts since the school’s found the issue. Now, they will work to find out where the money is and how to cover the loss.

WCIA reached out to Edgar County for comment but didn’t hear back.

However, this isn’t the first time the Paris school district has seen money disappear. In 2023, the Illinois State Board of Education found more than $3 million in unauthorized use of government grants.

In that same year, the FBI searched former superintendent Jeremy Larson’s home since some of the money was federal. Larson was fired and the district set up a payment plan to repay the money.