Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district ends $767,070 contract its board did not approve
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district spent over $342,000 on a professional development contract that did not get school board approval and was abruptly suspended in December.
The board is expected to talk Thursday about the two-year contract and the work that was done.
Local policy requires contracts valued at over $90,000 to get school board approval. State law also requires contracts to go through a pre-audit process, which was not done, district officials said.
The contract’s total cost would have been $767,070, according to a “master services agreement” between the district and professional development consultant Education Elements.
School board Chair Mary Ann Wolf said the board did not learn about the details of the contract until November when Superintendent Pam Baldwin was expected to provide an update. Board members questioned the spending after seeing the Nov. 21 agenda, vice chair Amy Fowler said.
Her initial questions were met with confusion, Fowler said.
“I was just wondering why we were taking on this big endeavor and not finding out about it until several months after it had started,” she said, “because our whole push as a board and with most things that we do is a really long process of trying to get stakeholder input from the community and parents and teachers and students before embarking on transformational changes like this.”
Contract, policy decisions
School board records received Jan. 28 show Baldwin briefly updated the board on the work with Education Elements in at least two written reports. It is not clear when the reports were sent to the board, but they appear to have been written in June and July.
Board members said there was little or no discussion about the work until it appeared on the Nov. 21 agenda. The item was pulled from the agenda and moved into closed session, Wolf said, because of the personnel issues involved.
On Dec. 2, Baldwin sent a letter to Education Elements officials suspending the work until the board could discuss it. The board posted a statement Dec. 5 on the district’s Facebook page, noting that “the process in which the District embarked on engaging those services was inconsistent with District policies.”
Schools spokesman Jeff Nash said Baldwin would not be available for an interview until next week. Education Elements partner Jason Bedford, who negotiated the contract, did not return a call Tuesday seeking comment.
The contract was closed out Tuesday, and the district is tightening policies and controls to avoid similar issues in the future, Wolf said.
“We feel like this has been an important process to make sure we have the internal controls in place and other checks that we need to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” Wolf said.
The district has learned enough to continue the work on its own, she said. The work aligns with the district’s instructional framework and strategic plan, she said, which emphasizes personalized learning styles and a “culturally relevant” classroom atmosphere.
Teaching coaches, principals, assistant principals, specialists, and a team of teacher and student service leaders have gone through the training, Jessica O’Donovan, the district’s assistant superintendent for instructional services, told the board in November.
The second phase would have looked at how to roll out the program’s tools to teachers this summer, she said.
“It is about getting to know every student as a person, in all of their dimensions and using every tool in our growing district toolbox to help our students get where they want and need to be,” O’Donovan said. “It’s about finding a balance between standards driven instruction, which we know is essential, and student voice and choice, which is equally important.”
Confusion about payments
According to emails provided to the board, Fowler said, Baldwin and O’Donovan talked with Education Elements before the agreement was approved. Jessica Bennett, the district’s assistant superintendent for business and finance, finalized the agreement.
The confusion, Wolf said, seems to stem from a question of whether the contract should have been classified as a cumulative agreement, which doesn’t require board approval, or as a one-time payment.
The administration saw the contract as cumulative, based on the statements of work issued each time a payment was due. Each monthly payment was below the $90,000 threshold requiring board approval.
However, the master services agreement signed June 27 included the total cost and noted that invoices would be issued for each payment due under the agreed-upon payment plan.
The agreement also notes that “each (statement of work) will expressly refer to this Agreement, will form a part of this Agreement, and will be subject to the terms and conditions contained herein.”
The board has asked many questions about what happened and whether it has happened with previous contracts, Wolf said. She noted that the N.C. Association of Educators also is raising the issue of cumulative contracts. The district is considering a change that would clarify the local policy, she said.
“Something like this gives you an opportunity to look hard at things and the processes and the controls that you have in place,” Wolf said.
Fowler said the superintendent shared with her other contracts that should have gotten the board’s approval but were treated as cumulative contracts. Another contract that showed up recently on the board’s consent agenda had not been through the competitive bidding process, she said.
While the administration has seen a lot of turnover in the last few years, Fowler said, it’s still not clear why the administration was confused about the process for approving contracts.
“You would think that the person in charge should know,” she said.
What’s next
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro School Board will meet at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Lincoln Center board room at 750 S. Merritt Mill Road in Chapel Hill. The meeting agenda can be found at tinyurl.com/r7qaweq.
This story was originally published February 12, 2020 at 3:26 PM.
