When Mary Tracy Morrison, director of Engage and the “Delta Institute for the Developing Brain” in Jonesboro was charged with “permitting child abuse” in April, we wondered if that was all there was to the story. Someone doesn’t just decide to run a child fight club, after all.
It turns out, to the surprise of no one, that it’s not. We sent FOIA requests to the Department of Education, Arkansas State University, and more, and there’s a lot to unpack. Buckle in.
Dr. Tracy Morrison’s Background
Dr. Morrison seems to have legitimate expertise in the field of occupational therapy and cognition, though she’s not an expert on autism and related diagnoses; she specializes in therapeutic interventions for traumatic brain injuries, strokes, and related cognitive disorders and diagnoses.
She received her doctorate in Occupational Therapy and Cognitive Neuroscience from Washington University School of Medicine in 2002, according to a CV dated from 2015 on Arkansas State University’s website. The CV lists several fellowships and multiple publications, and her Arkansas occupational therapy license is legitimate, according to the state’s website.
That’s Dr. Morrison’s background. Let’s talk about how we got here, looking backwards from the child abuse in Jonesboro.
The Delta Institute
One small fact piqued our interest and sent us down this rabbit hole. The “Delta Institute for the Developing Brain,” where the alleged abuse happened, has no website and started its Facebook page in March of this year. That in and of itself isn’t proof of anything, but it’s odd that an organization went from internet non-existence to alleged child abuse in less than a month.
So, as one does in Arkansas, we sent a FOIA request to the Arkansas Department of Education. Given LEARNS is designed to scam the state out of our tax dollars, we absolutely expected the Institute to be receiving some voucher funds, but we anticipated a few thousand here or there.
Nope; the documents received from ADE indicated the Delta Institute received over $300,000 in voucher funds for the 2024-2025 school year.
We couldn’t confirm how many students the Delta Institute has, but the Facebook page lists 1919 Hasbrook Road in Jonesboro as the Institute’s address, which, based on Google’s street view, seems to be a large house, so it can’t be that many students. That’s a lot of money for a pretty small operation.
This address, incidentally, brings us to the next part in the story.
Engage
Dr. Morrison founded Engage in 2017, according to the Facebook page (we couldn’t find any incorporation or founding documents). The program claims it seeks to help people diagnosed with autism or who have traumatic brain injuries learn important life skills. Engage has the same address listed as the Delta Institute.
According to this 2024 story from KAIT, Engage claimed about 120 learners. Engage isn’t listed on the participating list of EFA schools for ‘23-24, ‘24-25, or ‘25-26, likely because Engage doesn’t only work with kids. Their students include adults and seniors who struggle to manage intellectual disability. This makes Engage ineligible for LEARNS funds.
Naturally, starting an under-18 program to get that sweet, sweet voucher money is the next move. Besides, according to another KAIT story and a few social media posts, Engage didn’t always improve outcomes for students under 18 anyway.
Arkansas State University
Before Engage, Dr. Morrison served as the chair of the Occupational Therapy department at Arkansas State University from 2015 to early 2017. Naturally, we sent a FOIA request seeking her employment records, and they turned over some interesting stones.
Most of the info is standard employment records. Morrison accepted employment at A-State in January of 2015 and sent her resignation letter in February of 2017; termination paperwork was filed in June of 2017, despite her offer to stay in the position until August of 2017. That in itself is a bit odd; academic jobs aren’t easy to come by so leaving after just two years raises some questions.
Morrison’s employment history seems to corroborate this timeline. The CV contained in her employment files shows that after the completion of her doctorate in ‘02, she rarely spent longer than two years in one place. In general, she came out of the doctorate program with a few research and clinical fellowships, then moved to research and clinical director roles at various therapeutic institutes across the Midwest.
On the one hand, many academic fellowships only have funding for a couple years. On the other hand, her last few positions before coming to A-State were clinical scientist/director positions, which don’t necessarily have limited funding; one would assume that keeping those jobs and developing research partnerships would be advantageous for an up-and-coming researcher, but her longest stint after her last fellowship was three years (2010-2013) at the Sister Kenny Rehabilitation Institute in Minneapolis. There’s a trend here of relatively short work stints and moving around quite a bit, giving the impression of someone who may be difficult to work with.
Indeed, the final pages of Morrison’s employment file is a series of emails and text messages. After her termination paperwork at A-State was filed in June, another faculty member informed the Dean at the time that Morrison sent aggressive and threatening texts to her in August of 2017. One message says she “won’t go away” and “we can be friends or foe,” calling the former colleague a “hypocrite” and a “coward.”
Morrison also indicates that she was “blocked” in spring of 2017, presumably around the time she sent her resignation letter. It’s unclear whether she was asked to resign or did so voluntarily, but it is clear she did not part on good terms with her colleagues at A-State, and there’s some evidence in these messages that students in the occupational therapy program had serious concerns about her.
In short: she doesn’t seem like someone who should be trusted with children who have specific educational needs.
The Cost
That’s Morrison’s story, by and large, but why spill so much ink on the convoluted story of Dr. Morrison?
Here’s our reasoning: this story reinforces what we’ve said all along about LEARNS. The law allows bad actors into our students’ education and has very few mechanisms for oversight. In the space of a year, Dr. Morrison ramped up a new program out of a house in Jonesboro, took $300,000 that should’ve gone to public schools, and abused kids. Not only did the state do no due diligence on Morrison, but encouraged people like Dr. Morrison to “revolutionize educational freedom.”
If the state could provide the dictionary they’re using to define “freedom” that would be stellar.
If abuse of the voucher system to this level happened once it can happen again, and likely is happening elsewhere. Now that LEARNS is universal, how much more fraud and abuse goes on across the state? We already have our eyes on a few other voucher vendors, but this event alone should make the state re-evaluate how vendors are selected and the oversight they receive from state officials.
We have to call this out. LEARNS should be, if not repealed, drastically restructured so this can never happen again. More oversight for LEARNS vendors is essential. If these were the documents on Morrison we could get via FOIA, what else is out there that the state had access to before deciding to give her $300,000?
Our kids deserve a Department of Education that will protect them. Our schools deserve better than to have their money siphoned away to an abuser. We deserve officials that care to actually educate children.
