A state investigation has found that dozens more people than previously known received financial-aid payments from Alabama’s Bishop State Community College without attending classes, including employees who said they were attending classes during their scheduled work hours, The Birmingham News reported.

According to the newspaper, investigators also found that the institution’s president, Yvonne Kennedy, controlled a private foundation and told her staff how to spend its money, despite Ms. Kennedy’s public assertions that she served only in an ex-officio capacity with the foundation. Ms. Kennedy, who is also a Democratic state representative, reportedly sent all of the $94,400 of discretionary state funds she received as a legislator in 2003 to the nonprofit foundation, which lacks records for how the money was used (The Chronicle, August 17).

The interim chancellor of Alabama’s community-college system, Thomas E. Corts, appointed a team to investigate the college’s finances after hearing allegations that several of its employees had helped relatives obtain financial-aid payments without attending classes, including a disabled 67-year-old grandmother who was signed up for three sports, the newspaper said. A member of the State Board of Education made a summary of the team’s findings public over the weekend.

Bishop State has also attracted scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Education, which recently placed the college on “heightened cash monitoring” status. That means it will have to document students’ eligibility for aid before federal officials will release the money (The Chronicle, September 5).

Alabama’s two-year-college system has been rocked this year by a series of allegations of mismanagement, leading to the board’s dismissal two months ago of the system’s previous chancellor, Roy W. Johnson (The Chronicle, July 13).