****UPDATE: Information in this article has been updated following the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools School Board meeting on Thursday night.****

In the last year, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district prepared to enter a contract worth $767,070 that was not publicly approved by its school board, including making multiple payments. The district announced it voided the contract and settled with the contractor this month, with the superintendent and school board apologizing for failing to follow district policy at the board meeting on Thursday night.

According to documents obtained in a public records request, the school system prepared to enter into a “master services agreement” with the professional development consulting company Education Elements on June 13, 2019. According to the agreement, which has CHCCS Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance Jennifer Bennett listed as the customer contact, the district would have made ten payments over the course of a year to Education Elements for help with CHCCS’ ongoing strategic plan. Payments were to range in amounts from $42,000 to $89,300 and were to be due every two to three months.

While the year-long master services agreement was never signed, an $89,300 amount was paid by CHCCS to Education Elements on  June 26, 2019, with Bennett signing an initial agreement for that amount on June 27, 2019. Two additional payments, of $82,000 and $87,370 were paid in October and November, respectively, from the district to the consulting firm.

An attachment to the master services agreement describes an ‘understanding’ between the two groups from May 31, 2019, indicating Education Elements would partner with CHCCS to aid in implementing the district’s ongoing strategic plan. Education Elements describes its professional services as helping “build cohesiveness across initiatives, expand capacity and knowledge of Personalized Learning and provide tools that directly support student success.”

According to Chapel-Hill Carrboro City School district policy 6420, any contract involving expenditures in excess of $90,000 must be reviewed by the board attorney and approved in advance by the board unless provided otherwise in board policy. The policy also says while the superintendent and those authorized by the superintendent have the ability to enter into contracts or approve amendments to contracts, those deals are limited to costs being less than $90,000.

In addition, North Carolina has a general statute that requires contracts to be pre-audited before becoming effective. In the copy of the contract received by Chapelboro, no such pre-audit is included.

At the CHCCS School Board meeting Thursday night, Superintendent Pam Baldwin shared a statement during her remarks about the contract. She said while the district learned many strategies from its time working with Education Elements, she said the contract has since been terminated and has given the consulting company an $82,800 settlement.

“Although the partnership with Education Elements was a real benefit in helping us develop teaching tools for our district, we discovered that our engagement of the company exceeded our contracted authority as set by board policy,” said Baldwin.

The superintendent also said the district has since reviewed its contract processes and will be making changes to policies in an attempt to be more forthcoming.

“New processes and controls,” Baldwin said, “[may] include a bi-weekly of review by all contracts by the superintendent and the finance officer that are over $50,000, a monthly review of all vendor contracts shared in cabinet and with the board, and creation of forms to track contracts sent to the finance department which require signatures of the [requesting] staff member, superintendent and finance officer.”

A report Wednesday from the News & Observer into the contract said the agreement between the school district and consulting firm was suspended on December 2, as revealed by a letter from Baldwin to Education Elements officials.

Education Elements and finances regarding the agreement were not mentioned in CHCCS School Board agendas except for the November 21, 2019 agenda, which says the item was pulled. According to the News & Observer’s report, the item meant to be an update from Baldwin to the board, which confused board members. It was then discussed in closed session due to its involvement with personnel.

More board members spoke to the contract at Thursday’s meeting following a presentation of an instructional framework Education Elements helped develop. Some members were critical of the formal agreement never coming to them for a vote.

“I feel like, at best,” said Jillian LaSerna, “it was neglectful it didn’t come to the board and at worst, intentional. And I’m not sure where [these payments] lie. I think the board will [now] be in a position where we need to provide oversight as we are doing that for our budget moving forward.”

Deon Temne, who is a first-term board member with LaSerna, compared this relatively new school board to a partnership that’s gotten off to a difficult start.

“We have a new marriage,” he said. “We’ve only been married three months and we have some infidelity. I don’t think if this [contract] came before the last board it would have passed. That’s where we lose trust.”

Prior to the Thursday’s meeting, there had been a few instances of CHCCS publicly acknowledging a form of relationship with Education Elements.

An August tweet from an Education Elements associate partner shows the company’s employees visiting Chapel Hill to speak with members of CHCCS leadership, primarily Baldwin. The tweet includes the hashtag the consulting firm frequently uses when visiting districts it contracts with.

On December 5, 2019, three days after the contract was reportedly suspended, the CHCCS district’s Facebook page shared a message from the Board of Education addressing its work with Education Elements. The board wrote it “recently learned that the process in which the District embarked on engaging those services was inconsistent with district policies.” The post also said the board would be working with administration to review the work of Education Elements and it would update new board members being sworn in with background knowledge on the situation.

The new policies discussed by Baldwin and Bennett at Thursday’s Board of Education meeting are expected to be discussed at the district’s Policy Board meeting on Thursday, February 20.

Featured image via the Town of Chapel Hill

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