Georgia districts may have to repay some Katrina funds

Three Atlanta area districts used flawed counts of students displaced by Hurricane Katrina to wrongly secure millions of dollars in aid, federal authorities have charged. Now they are at odds with Georgia educators over how much schools should give back. More than 11,000 evacuees enrolled in Georgia schools after the 2005 disaster. Roughly $55 million in federal aid helped Georgia districts, but two years later, the federal government told Georgia it wanted an $8.2 million refund. State officials appealed on behalf of districts. They did their own check of the 132 districts that received aid and found half had accepted too much money. The state asked them to return a smaller amount — a total of $1.4 million.