GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

ALBANY — State education officials expressed doubt today about whether the testing firm Pearson, which has several contracts in New York, can handle its expanding workload.

“Obviously, the public is starting to question, I think, very aggressively with us whether or not they’re able to manage all of the things they’ve taken on,” New York State Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said of Pearson, whose subsidiary testing company NCS Pearson, Inc. has a five-year, $32 million contract to create tests for the state.

Tisch, who has criticized the testing company before, was responding to Pearson’s latest misstep in test administration. On Friday, the New York City Department of Education said nearly 5,000 students were told they were ineligible for the city’s Gifted & Talented programs when they actually should have made the cut. Three separate errors took place during test grading, which Pearson oversaw, department and company officials both said. (more…)

City officials are fretting that even a temporary halt to hiring at 24 turnaround schools will weaken their ability to carry out a key piece of the improvement strategy for those schools: recruiting top-quality teachers.

On Tuesday, when the Department of Education agreed to halt hiring in the schools for at least a week during the first round of a union lawsuit, officials said no hiring would be happening yet anyway. But they are worried about what would happen if Judge Joan Lobis grants a temporary restraining order extending the freeze, as she did two years ago when a union lawsuit over school closures came before her.

If that freeze extends into June, officials say it could hurt the schools’ chances of attracting and retaining the most qualified teachers in the applicant pool.

When the judge decides whether to grant a temporary restraining order, she will weigh the likelihood that the unions’ case has merits — but not the merits themselves — and also the likelihood that a delay would harm the schools. Department officials seem likely to argue that the schools would not be able to recover from a slowdown because teachers may not be able to hold out until June if they receive other job offers before then.

But the request for a restraining order is not unexpected: The UFT vowed to sue almost as soon as Mayor Bloomberg announced the turnaround plans in January, and seeking a temporary restraining order is the first step in many legal fights over school policy. (more…)

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.