Felner laid out plan for education company at meeting with Schroeder, witness says

This from the Courier-Journal:

Former University of Louisville education dean Robert Felner held a meeting with Thomas Schroeder in which he said he was setting up a company that would list Felner as president and Schroeder as an officer, according to a University of Rhode Island business manager who testified in U.S. District Court on Thursday.

Diana Laferriere, who attended the 2001 meeting with Felner and Schroeder, told Assistant U.S. Attorney Bryan Calhoun that Felner also told her that he wanted her to serve on the company’s board and paid her $1,000 a month for about three years for her service.

The company — the National Center on Public Education and Prevention in Illinois — was created in 2001 by Schroeder, who served as its executive director...

During her testimony Thursday, Laferriere recounted how Felner told her and Schroeder in 2001 that he was setting up the Illinois center to handle the training school district personnel would need to understand and use survey data collected and analyzed by another center he had previous set up at the University of Rhode Island.

That Rhode Island center’s name — the National Center on Public Education and Social Policy — bore a striking resemblance to name of the Illinois center. Prosecutors allege the similar names were used by Felner and Schroeder to cause confusion and conceal their scheme.

Laferriere testified during the three years she received checks from the Illinois center, she had to call Schroeder each year to get him to send her the necessary tax forms so she could file her income taxes. As time went on, she became concerned she was not being paid for doing anything, and asked Felner when she was going to do any work for the center.

“He said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. You deserve it,’” said Laferriere, who told Felner in 2003 to stop sending her the checks....