COLUMBUS ? A southeast Kansas prosecutor has filed a motion to dismiss felony charges against twin 34-year-old women, one of whom was accused of posing as a 13-year-old boy and trying to enroll in Galena Middle School a year ago.

Birdie Jo Hoaks is charged with two felony counts of making false information and one felony charge of theft of services.

School officials said Birdie Jo Hoaks, posing as a 13-year-old boy named Chris Gomes, met with a special-education teacher for about three hours a day for four days in January 2004. Supt. Ray Dykens said the woman never was allowed to attend classes with other students and eventually stopped showing up at the school.

Becky Jo Hoaks was accused of helping her sister with the hoax. She faced two felony charges of aiding and abetting making false information and one felony count of theft of services. The sisters now live together in Joplin, Mo.

Cherokee County prosecutor Michael Goodrich, who accused former prosecutor JoAnna Derfelt last year of using the case to gain national publicity, said he didn’t think a jury would convict the two women.

Goodrich, who beat Derfelt in the primary election last year, said prosecuting the case would be a waste of the court’s time and taxpayer money.

Jim Jones, pastor of the Galena Assembly of God church, said last year the person he now knows as Birdie Jo Hoaks showed up at his church in October 2003 and claimed to be a teenage boy who was a victim of child abuse.

Jones said Birdie Jo Hoaks, who is about 5 feet tall and 140 pounds, was very convincing in portraying a boy who claimed to have been sleeping in a bus belonging to his church.

He said he urged the woman to enroll in the Galena School District.

Galena Middle School Principal Danny Albright said he agreed with Goodrich’s decision to have the charges dismissed, but he still thinks the women’s actions were serious.

“It was a major thing,” Albright said. “We spent some time trying to educate a person we thought needed educating. We got tricked. We were deceived.”