The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board held its first meeting since a member of the system’s leadership resigned over a contract that violated district policy. Members of the community voiced their concerns and asked for change.
The meeting was called specifically to address the ongoing controversy of a $767,070 agreement between Chapel Hill Carrboro-City Schools and the consulting firm Education Elements. It was the first time the public directly addressed the full board since the resignation of Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance Jennifer Bennett, who was directly involved with structuring the payments of the Education Elements contract.
Over two hours of public comment, district leadership came under criticism from educators and parents of the school system. The topics spread wide: requests for a whistleblower policy, improved communication the community of spending methods and accountability of those who Bennett reported to. Many of these comments led back to the central issue of the Education Elements contract, where more than $300,000 was spent without public approval by the school board before the deal was terminated in January.
John Montavon, a Spanish teacher at McDougle Middle School, pointed out the venture capital background of the Education Elements founder as a red flag. He said he believes not only do deals like the one CHCCS entered ultimately lead to buying further products from the company, tangible results are rarely seen.
“Education Elements has multi-million dollar contracts from Alaska to North Carolina that have routinely failed to produce any objective measure of students success in achievement, much less narrowing the achievement gap,” said Montavon. “Calling Education Elements expert consultants on instructional frameworks is like calling a used car salesman an expert on transpirational frameworks. Somehow at the end, you’re always going to end up needing the car they’re selling.”
Emails between a managing partner of Education Elements Jason Bedford and Bennett reveal payments were specifically structured to keep the agreement away from a school board vote. District policy 6420 requires any contract worth more than $90,000 to come before the board for approval. Payments made to Education Elements every few months were hundreds of dollars below the threshold.
Bennett’s actions were regularly mentioned during the meeting’s public comment portion, which was moved to Smith Middle School from the Lincoln Center to accommodate the crowd. Members from the CHCCS Special Needs Advisory Council spoke to how Bennett was directly responsible for a 50 percent cut of Exceptional Children’s Resource Teaching Assistants in the past school year.
The advisory council, known as SNAC, sent a letter to parents involved with the program on February 27, highlighting the cuts to these EC Teaching Assistants. The letter said data from the district showed Bennett was responsible for recommending the reassignment of more than 20 EC Resource TA positions across the board, which halved the district’s amount.
Many parents spoke to this at Thursday’s meeting, describing how the change in staffing has directly impacted their children’s learning and grades this school year. Chair of SNAC Andrew Davidson was one of the first to speak, saying the council believes Bennett was not truthful in her reasoning to cut EC service personnel. He requested the school board make a discussion of the matter a formal agenda item in the future.
“We are urging you all to push the administration to clarify how it was possible to cut EC staff, but still somehow spend more money on special needs students,” Davidson said. “It does not add up.”
Others who spoke said EC services were not the only area to experience cuts. Shelby Swanson, a junior at East Chapel Hill High School, is the daughter of a kindergarten teacher within the district. She said faculty at her mother’s school were recently told they would not be awarded an annual bonus for completed training because the funding had run out, in addition to no recent pay raises.
“I just think it’s very disappointing in light of the news recently about these under-the-table payments to new professional development training programs,” said Swanson, “[when considering] these recent cuts to her salary.”
Ultimately, no action was taken on Thursday by the board, although multiple policy changes and plans for an external review of the system’s financial dealings were discussed. But many of the board members apologized before the meeting’s conclusion, saying they empathized with the community’s frustration regarding the spending and lack of communication.
Board member Joal Broun was one who spoke before the meeting adjourned, expressing hopes that the meeting was the first step of the school board and district improving its transparency.
“I’m hopeful that as a board, working together, we can come to a place where the community can trust us again. We hear loud and clear that we don’t have that trust, we are very cognisant of that. I thank you for coming out and, as crazy as it sounds, I look forward to seeing you some more.”
Further meetings have been scheduled for the CHCCS school board in March to address other topics and continue to address the ongoing fallout of the Education Elements partnership. On Thursday, March 16 and 19 were the dates mentioned as additional meeting dates.
Photo via WTOC.
CHCCS is rotten at the top. The fish stinks from the head.
The state needs to take over this failing school district.
The achievement gap won’t get better as long as the color of your skin drives policy at the top.