GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

A day after taking aim at inflated food costs at the Department of Education, Comptroller John Liu blocked the city from paying more for custodial services.

In an uncommon move, Liu rejected a $65 million contract with Temco Service Industries today, saying the DOE had not justified a 44 price hike when applying to renew a contract with the Bronx provider of cleaning and maintenance services.

Since at least 2007, the department had paid Temco $45 million annually for its services. Liu said the department had not explained an additional $20 million tacked on to the contract extension.

“With budget deficits still looming, contracts with huge inexplicable cost increases and other outstanding questions simply cannot be green-lighted,” he said in a statement.  “An extra $20 million on top of $45 million is an enormous amount of money.”

DOE officials said Liu had not alerted them to his concerns before he issued a press release rejecting the contract today. (more…)

The city has underestimated both the scope of its bedbug problem in schools and the response needed to deal with it, say critics who have followed the parasitic pests’ resurgence in recent years.

More than 3,500 cases of bedbugs were confirmed in an untold number of schools last year, but city officials said just one school was actually infested. Now, the city is on the verge of finalizing long-awaited contracts with three pest control companies — but the contracts don’t reflect last year’s spike in bedbug cases, and critics say they are inadequate to deal with the problem.

Department of Education officials have long maintained that schools aren’t hospitable environments for the nocturnal insects, but one pest control executive who has done business with the city says they aren’t looking hard enough.

“I don’t think they’re serious about the problem,” said the executive, who asked to remain anonymous. “They don’t want to know there’s a problem. They don’t want to spend money on the problem.”

He said his company didn’t try for the new contracts because he thought the contracts were ”woefully underbudget” to deal with the problem. In fact, he said, the costs associated with the task would put have put his company at a loss.

Two of the contracts are worth $14,999 and estimated 225 hours of work for each pest management company — an hourly rate of $67 — according to price quotes that the DOE published when it began collecting bids from vendors. (more…)

An essential piece of the state’s Race to the Top plans is in limbo after State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli shot down a controversial contract.

On Friday, DiNapoli rejected a $27 million contract with Wireless Generation to build a statewide “Education Data Portal” that would have allowed schools and teachers to track and use student performance data.

State teachers unions and advocates had protested the contract because it was offered without competitive bidding and because Wireless Generation’s parent company, News Corporation, is embroiled in controversy over illegal wiretapping conducted by some of its publications. DiNapoli cited both concerns in his letter to the State Education Department turning down the contract.

The rejection marks yet another setback in the state’s school reform plans. Last week, a judge ruled that the state should not be allowed to use student test scores to count for 40 percent of teachers’ evaluations, bringing to a standstill a centerpiece of New York’s Race to the Top plans. Now the data clearinghouse that would make the evaluations possible is also at risk. (more…)

With school doors set to open in just weeks, City Councilwoman Gale Brewer wants to know why the education department hasn’t hired a contractor to handle the resurgence of bedbugs in its classrooms.

“I ask that you immediately initiate a bedbug treatment contract to deal with this issue before the start of the school year,” Brewer wrote to Chancellor Dennis Walcott last month.

Brewer penned the letter in response to a GothamSchools report that showed a tripling in the number of bedbugs cases found in schools last year, to 3,590.

The surge of cases has placed strain on the Department of Education’s pest management division, which is required to treat every case of bedbugs. Normally, that work is handled by a private pest management company, but schools have been without a specialized contractor for nearly a year.

Bidding on the new contract began nine months ago, but the DOE has yet to award it, spokeswoman Marge Feinberg said. Feinberg said that the city planned to respond to the letter, which also requested a list of the schools that were treated for bedbugs, but had not yet done so. (more…)

An unlikely union force turned out for the monthly school board meeting tonight to protest a controversial contract that was up for approval.

For once, it wasn’t members of the United Federation of Teachers that was most vocal against the city’s education proposals, but thousands of angry phone technicians with the Communciation Workers of America.

The workers are part of a 45,000-member nationwide strike against Verizon for higher wages and better health benefits. For two weeks, the New York Locals  have picketed in front of Verizon stores and corporate headquarters.

But tonight, the workers took their fight to Murry Bergtraum High School – coincidentally across the street from Verizon’s main headquarters – where the Panel for Education Policy voted to approve a $120 million contract for the telecommunications company to provide data services to the Department of Education. (more…)

On Wednesday, members of the Panel for Educational Policy will vote on several controversial Department of Education contracts totaling millions of dollars.

But the panel’s 13 members won’t be able to see the details of the contracts, which the DOE cannot finalize without their approval.

Department officials said this state of affairs is typical.

The DOE provides panel members with various parts of the contracts being drafted if available, but often contracts up for approval are still under negotiation when the panel members vote, DOE officials said.

Panel members who believe they received insufficient information about a deal may vote against it.

“No” is how Patrick Sullivan, the Manhattan borough president’s PEP appointee, said he plans to vote on Wednesday, when two high-profile contracts are up for approval: a $120 million two-year deal with Verizon Wireless, and contracts of roughly $1.5-3.5 million each over three years with six ”restart partners” — nonprofit Education Partnership Organizations set to take over operations at 14 struggling schools.

“They’re definitely putting the cart before the horse,” Sullivan said. “Approval is pretty much expected. They want the panel to approve in advance what they intend to do, and they will decide the details and specifics.” (more…)

Today’s news about a contractor accused of stealing $3.6 million from the Department of Education comes from a report by the Special Commissioner of Investigations. We’ve pasted the full report below.

The report paints a picture of contractor Ross Lanham’s straightforward scheme: he billed the DOE at a high price, and paid his subcontractors at a lower price. The difference, allegedly, went into a lavish lifestyle that includes three houses on Long Island.

More surprising, though, is the extent to which IBM and Verizon turned a blind eye to Lanham’s accounting. For instance, when an IBM staffer noted irregularities in Lanham’s billing, Lanham protested that the DOE was “okay with it.” IBM, perturbed, shuffled Lanham and his consultants into a different subcontracting company with a different name, but said nothing to the DOE.

Next, Verizon accepted Lanham’s subcontractors after he threatened to take the DOE contract to IBM. Puzzlingly, Verizon found out that Lanham was not giving his subcontractors the full amount that Verizon was paying out, but only went into action after the DOE contacted them with their concerns. (more…)

Protests from Comptroller John Liu have prompted the city to scrap a proposal that would have let it enter into certain contracts without individual approval from the citywide school board.

Since the state legislature voted last summer to extend Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s control over the city schools, the Panel for Educational Policy has been required to approve all contracts worth more than $1 million as well as those that were given without competitive bidding.

Last week, the city quietly announced that it would ask the panel to approve a resolution giving the city “blanket approval” to enter into contracts negotiated by other city agencies. But Liu objected, calling the resolution an “end run” around the panel’s oversight authority over the Department of Education. Liu also pointed out that while the resolution was listed on the agenda for tonight’s panel meeting, text of the resolution was not posted to the Department of Education’s website.

This morning, the city removed the resolution from tonight’s agenda. If the resolution had remained on the agenda, it likely would have passed; the panel is controlled by a majority of mayoral appointees, and has never defeated an item proposed by the city.

Members of a citywide school board displayed flashes of independence last night, a rare event for a group critics frequently deride as a rubber-stamp body.

For the first time in the Panel for Educational Policy’s history, protests from school leaders and panel members pressured education officials into withdrawing a proposal from consideration.

Officials pulled back plans to eliminate the sixth grade of P.S. 126 in the Bronx, turning it into K-5 school — an idea that angered those who want to expand the school and others who worried about the lack of middle school choices in the area.

Department of Education officials said the scale-back was meant to alleviate overcrowding in the school, but it could wait. “There’s enough space for it to be K-6 for one more year,” said Debra Kurshan, head of the DOE’s Office of Portfolio Planning.

The panel also voted to postpone another resolution, ignoring pleas from DOE officials to approve it immediately. Several panel members — including some appointed by the mayor — said they needed more information. (more…)

Members of the revived Panel for Educational Policy approved more than a dozen Department of Education contracts last night over the protests of colleagues who demanded that they be allowed to read the full documents.

Reconvened for the first time since mayoral control’s renewal, the panel now has the authority to approve contracts worth over one million dollars. It also reviews any contracts that were handed out without competitive bidding.

But the biggest change on panel last night was not a result of those contracts, $250 million of which sailed to approval with a nearly unanimous vote, including contracts with Octagon and the Future Technology Associates, which have come under criticism.

The main difference was that the person who has been the panel’s single active dissident, Patrick Sullivan, the representative from Manhattan, yesterday was joined in his protests by Anna Santos of the Bronx. Both objected to voting on the contracts because, they said, none of the panel members had read them in full. (more…)