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checks and balances

September 29, 2011

DOE contract investigation renews attention on PEP’s role

by Rachel Cromidas, at 6:26 pm

Reports that a Department of Education technology contractor improperly stole millions of dollars from the city are returning attention to the way the school system reviews contracts.

Building more oversight over contracts was one of the goals of the reauthorized mayoral control law passed by state lawmakers in 2009. The law handed review power of contracts to the Panel for Educational Policy, the citywide school board controlled by the mayor. But since 2009, several panel members have complained that they lack the information necessary to review contracts before approving them, making their oversight authority meaningless.

In the case of the contract with Future Technology Associates, the firm accused of fraud yesterday by the city schools investigator, panel members had less than a day to review detailed information about the contract before voting on it in September 2009, according to email messages obtained by GothamSchools. Officials shared the information in response to a request by the Manhattan representative on the panel, Patrick Sullivan.

The contract came up for a renewal vote at the first meeting of the PEP after the mayoral control reauthorization. In an email to Sullivan the day of the meeting, department General Counsel Michael Best cited reauthorization as motivating school officials to prepare more thorough background materials.

Sullivan, an opponent of the Bloomberg administration’s education policies, responded that those materials — which included a draft agreement between the city and Future Technology Associates — were not sufficient. He said that a day to review them was not enough time.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment today. School officials have previously said that it would be impossible to provide detailed information to panel members because in most cases the contracts are still under negotiation when they come up for PEP approval.

In his 2009 email, Best said that his “understanding” was that the city’s practice was in line with those of boards of educations around New York, which he said do not review draft contracts before approving them. He said the more powerful Board of Education that existed before Mayor Bloomberg won control of the schools in 2002 operated the same way.

A spokeswoman for the New York State School Boards Association, Barbara Bradley, disputed that characterization, saying that New York school boards have access to full contracts before they approve of them. “They do their homework, they don’t rubber-stamp the contracts,” Bradley said. “If they want to go through it line-by-line, they could. But they’re also relying on the superintendent at the board meeting to lead them through this kind of thing, or their school attorney.”

In an interview today, Sullivan called on the chairman of the PEP, Tino Hernandez, who is a mayoral appointee, to step down. “Someone needs to take accountability for the failure of the PEP here,” Sullivan said. “The PEP didn’t carry out its oversight role as mandated in the state education law, so I think we need to have a chairman who is willing to make that happen.”

Hernandez, the former chair of the City Housing Authority who was appointed to the PEP in 2004, did not respond to emails from GothamSchools today.

Gbubemi Okotieuro, the PEP’s Brooklyn representative, seconded Sullivan’s request for more information about contracts. He suggested that the Department of Education share the information it has on each contract one to two months before it comes up for a vote. “Don’t just give me two weeks notice. Give me good information well before a major contract is about to come up,” he said.

The 2009 reauthorization also handed more oversight power of contracts to the city comptroller, who reviews contracts after they are approved by the PEP. In July 2010 the DOE proposed that the PEP vote to give blanket approval of all contracts, but it withdrew this proposal after John Liu, the comptroller, spoke out against it and brought it to the attention of state legislators.

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  • Ellen

    Aw shucks folks, do y’all  really think them guys need to know what they are a-votin’ on? Why that smack of democracy!  Or public control of public money!  We don’t do that stuff here in NYC

  • Pogue

    At PEP, we don’t peruse contracts, we get admonished by concerned students, parents, and educators for a couple of hours, and then we vote on items the way Mr. Bloomberg demands us to.

    That’s democracy the Bloomberg way.

  • Pogue

    At PEP, we don’t peruse contracts, we get admonished by concerned students, parents, and educators for a couple of hours, and then we vote on items the way Mr. Bloomberg demands us to.

    That’s democracy the Bloomberg way.

  • James S.Vlasto

    Michael Best is again wrong when he said the Board of Education of the City of New York did not review contracts before voting. Nonsense, prior to every board meeting most of the contracts to be discussed were reviewed by the Board Members and their staff.  Frequently, the contracts were sent back to the chancellor for more detail. Often, the Board rejected contracts or tabled them before the meetings. As a former senior aide to Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez  in the 1990s I can attest to that statement.

  • Pogue

    With all the scandals involved with the DOE’s contracts, and the ripping off of our taxpayer money for education, it makes better sense that they DIDN’T look at and okay all the swindling going on.  At least then, PEP could say we’ve been a little lax and we’ll do better.

    Thus, looking at contracts or not looking at contracts…Who’s accountable for all this corruption and malfeasance?

  • nuff said

    at what point will the State step in and end this PEP farce? How many times do we have to see the board exists in name only?

  • Bronxactivist

    Corruption patronage nepotism nah that does not exist just like Bloomberg said that he does not see panhandlers on the subway. With 18 billion in the bank he is talking about the Poor and public education. Sounds like an Advance oligarchy to me. The few are controlling the many. The media is bought off the regulators do not regulate and the politicians in general are beholdent to the few with most of the money

  • I noticed that…

    Michael Best is only best when he justifies for the mayor’s demands.  Best is also only best at recalling what is best for the mayor and the mayor’s billion dollar empire.  I guess Best is trying to keep his position and protecting the mayor’s interest.  No bid contracts = Bloomberg’s empire growth.

  • I noticed that…

    How do you spell corruption and collusion? BLOOMBERG, KLEIN, BLACK, WALCOTT & PEP

  • V

    Dear Teachers,

     

    Allow me first to apologize for this interruption into the stream of
    conversation and comment. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of
    every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition.
    I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, whereby
    those important events of the past usually associated with someone’s death or
    the end of some awful bloody struggle are celebrated with a nice holiday. I
    thought we could mark this October the 1st, a day that is sadly no
    longer important to the UFT-it being 3-years since our last raise, 2-since our
    last contract-by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a
    little chat.

     

    There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now
    Michael Mulgrew is praying no one sees this and remembers. Why? Because while
    the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain
    their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen,
    the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong
    with our Union, isn’t there? Silenced, scared, paid off by Bloomberg, poorly
    organized, indifferent, undereducated. And where once we had a UFT president
    that objected(not Randi), thought, and spoke out, we now have a silent puppet
    who is quietly coercing our conformity and soliciting our submission for who he
    really works-Randi and in turn Bloomberg.

     

    How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well, certainly there are those more
    responsible than others, and they work for the UFT making a lot more than you or
    me, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only
    look into a mirror. We vote in blocks without thinking, without considering
    who we are voting for, what they didn’t do for us. I know why you did it. I know
    you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? Unions being forced to pay medical benefits,
    the economic collapse, layoffs, AIG, TARP. There were a myriad of problems which
    conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the
    best of you, and in your panic we turned to the 5th person down on the list(no
    one else wanted the job) Michael Mulgrew. He promised nothing, he delivered
    nothing, and demanded only a $500,000+ compensation pack(including, medical,
    retirement, paying all tolls, parking, an apartment in Manhattan(besides his
    home on Staten Island, etc.), and for that he got obedient consent.

     

    I seek to end that silence. To remind this Union of what it has forgotten.
    More than fifitly years ago a great leader-Al Shanker- wished to empower
    teachers to fight for a fair contract in perpetuity. Instead the Union has
    dragged in everyone who would come, 150,000 Union dues is all they see. His hope
    was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words
    given to Police and Firefighters-who got 8% raises over the last 2-years,
    Bloomberg’s staff who got 8.5% raises over the last 2-years, DOE staff who got
    5.9% raises over the last two years. So if you’ve seen nothing, if the
    ineptitude of this Union remain unknown to you, then I would suggest you allow
    the 1st of October to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I
    feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me and
    tell our Union and the City we’re not going to be scared and quelled into the
    bottom of the city labor force!

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