Recently reviewed discussions between CHCCS district leadership and Education Elements revealed new details regarding a $767,067 partnership between the two organizations.
Leadership for the school district said Education Elements helped create a framework to help CHCCS adopt a personalized learning model. Superintendent of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Pam Baldwin told 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck on Wednesday the work the groups did together laid the path for this transition.
“We have created an instructional framework that we continue to tweak with our team,” she said. “We also have some walk-through tools and some resources for our teachers. We’re beginning now to build the training modules to make sure our leaders, teachers and coaches are able to implement those tools.”
But the contract between the Education Elements and the school district, which expected to run for at least the school year, was voided in 2020 after six months.
At its most recent school board meeting, CHCCS leadership said this was done because the agreement violated district policies. One element of this was the failure to come before a vote of the school board to approve the contract, which is required for partnerships worth more than $90,000.
Despite there being no signed contract between Education Elements and CHCCS for the $767,070 amount seen in drafts, correspondence recently obtained in a public records request shows the two organizations appeared to be on-track to reach that amount.
Emails between a managing partner of Education Elements Jason Bedford and the CHCCS Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance for Jennifer Bennett reveal payments were specifically structured to keep the agreement away from a school board vote.
In an email response to a contract draft sent by Education Elements on June 26, Bennett said, “Need to get you guys to modify the [contract] if you can since if we include the whole potential payment value, then we have to take this to the Board since over our $90K threshold and …,” leaving the sentence unfinished before moving to the next.
Bennett then wrote saying the two parties could sign a contract with intent of fulfilling the entire amount but without including the addendum that displayed the full cost.
Two days later, the parties signed eight separate service of work agreements totaling $538,070 for the 2019-2020 school year. Bennett signed all eight for the district on the same day, June 28. The payments were to range from $38,000 to $89,300 and were due every few months over the course of July 2019 to June 2020. Records show at least three of those payments were completed for a total of $259,470. Upon the cancellation of the contract, CHCCS provided Education Elements an additional $82,200 in a settlement.
Baldwin said this week the plan was originally to only enter an exploratory agreement with Education Elements, which had a cost under the $90,000 threshold. But she said the district failed to bring it to the board despite making payments beyond the initial amount.
“We were initially trying to start with some small processes to work with Ed Elements,” said Baldwin, “and so initially it wasn’t over that amount. Working through, we missed continuing that process to bring it back to the board once we were over the $90,000.”
At the latest school board meeting when sharing a statement about Education Elements, Baldwin said policy changes could be forthcoming to better reflect finances. She reaffirmed that on Wednesday.
“We’re just trying to address our controls and our policies to ensure we have structures in place to catch anything we may miss,” said Baldwin. “We went through the process looking at specifically board policies so we know our limits, as well as making sure our systems are catching something we may not catch [when using] paper and pencil.”
Some of those policy changes, including one meant to protect whistleblowers from retaliation, were on the agenda of the CHCCS policy committee meeting on Tuesday night.
Photo via Town of Chapel Hill.
This is not surprising as this is unfortunately and sadly normal for our district. Lincoln Center is full of individuals who use this district as a stepping stone. They come in, spend LOADS of money on programs that just get tossed in a few years and then move on to other places leaving those of use who live and work here permanently to deal with the mess. This is just one of many examples of how those at Lincoln center put their own interests ahead of the students and the teachers. Every. Single. Time.
We desperately need a new superintendent! And why are no criminal charges coming from this obvious cover up?
http://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2017/02/16/baldwin-leaves-her-mark-asheville-schools/97954244/
Her prior district was glad to see her go….
This begs the question – where was the oversight from the elected school board? Jean Hamilton and Amy Fowler are running for County Commissioner claiming that the schools have priority repair and maintenance needs, yet they allowed this waste of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Follow @BackChccs on Twitter for so much more
The state need to step in. This rogue school district is using public money to run a private school system.
Just look at the scandals of the past few years.
The school district is being taken to court due to disabled children being sexually abused on their property.
School security guard arrested for sexually abusing minors.
The Glenwood outrage. Segregation in this day and age.
Teaching assistants arrested and charged with murder.
Accounting irregularities are common place. But the board don’t even bat an eyelid.
Trips to Jamaica for staff at our expense as the school district claim not a single person of color is worth hiring as a teacher in NC or even the US.
Never mind the cost of flights and lodging, just look at those expense claims.
The massive achievement gap that gets worse year on year. Unless you fit the private school profile this school demands you are little more than meat for their grinder.
What does the school district do? Hire some of the most dubious characters you can possibly imagine in an attempt to create a diversity screen to hide their actions.
The entire top tier needs removing and there needs to be deep house cleaning of their central office but the relationships between board mbers and employees prevents justice for all the deeply wronged children and parents in Chapel Hill.
Talk about small town.
Shame, shame, shame.
Time for the state to take over running CHCCS.
Not a penny more of public money should be sunk into this institutionally racist and highly discriminatory private school system.
It is past time the people of chapel Hill had a public school system.
CHCCS has had scandal after scandal for years.
It is currently being sued following sexual abuse of disabled students on its property.
A teaching assistant was arrested and charged with murder; a member of school security was arrested for sexual assault of a minor; a young girl was sexually assaulted and the video posted on social media; recurrent financial irregularities and many more awful things happen inside CHCCS walls every single day.
The district is run with public money like a private school system and if your child does not not fit the academic profile of their private school system heaven help them.
The achievement gap is terrible. It’s gotten worse because intead of working on it the board hired a bunch of dubious characters to make a diversity shield to try to avoid the wrath of the electorate but failed.
Now we are left with bad actors, daily outrages and a small town school district with crumbling schools as money that should have gone into infrastructure has been funnelled away into the pet projects of senior administration.
They even jetted away to Jamaica on the public purse after declaring all persons of color in NC and the US as unfit for employment in the grey dull oppressive walls of CHCCS.
It is past time for the state to take over running this failed school district.
It’s time CHCCS had a public school system.
Better answer for taxpayers: consolidate OCS and CHCCS. It’s a waste of taxpayer money to fund TWO small school districts with two separate administrations and bureaucracies.
Even the combined district would still be smaller than most metropolitan school districts in the country.
There does need to be a thorough investigation of the extent of this problem. Specifically, which members of the school board and administration aware of this contract and involved in hiding it from public debate? Do any members of the school board or administration have undisclosed relationships with Education Elements (financial or professional) that might benefit them to entering into this contract? In order to have confidence our Board members and administration we need to know exactly what happened and why. A statement from each board member disclosing the extent of their involvement would be the minimum.
Education Elements (EE) is a venture capital financed software firm founded by Anthony Kim. Kim is an architecture major with a proven track record developing systems to package “educational” software, track kids and teachers, market it, and then sell it all for a big profit for himself and his investors. He has already done it with “Provost Systems” that he sold to Edison Schools. EE is Kim’s newest venture aimed at public schools and scooping up their money. They have multiple million dollar contracts with schools from Alaska to NC that have produced almost no objectively measurable results. Calling Education Elements experts in “Instructional Framework” is like calling a used car salesman a “Transportation Framework” consultant. Somehow your system is always going to need the cars (software) they are selling.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-04-26-million-dollar-advice-the-high-cost-and-limited-return-on-personalized-learning-consulting?_ga=2.224748306.920548154.1572295127-748325408.1572295127
Education Elements is a venture capital backed software firm. Its founder Anthony Kim is an architecture major with a proven track record of developing technology to package “educational software”, track kids and teachers, market it, and then sell it for a healthy profit for himself and his investors. He has already done this once with “Provost Systems” which he sold to Edison Schools. EE is Kim’s latest venture to scoop up money from public schools. EE has multi-million dollar contracts from Alaska to NC that have routinely failed to produce any objective measure of success in student achievement, much less in narrowing the achievement gap. Calling EE expert consultants on “Instructional Frameworks” is like calling your used car salesman an expert on “Transportation Frameworks” somehow you are always going to end up needing the cars (software) they are selling.
The whole point of this article is that the administration hid the expense from the Board of Education.
There must be a criminal investigation. Not by the Chapel Hill police who are in the pockets of the political Chapel Hill elite either.
It is time for federal investigators to come to Chapel Hill and see first hand the broken lives this school system has caused to keep their Public school school money being pumped into their private school system.
The article clearly states that they did not bring it to the school board . So how can you hold Amy Fowler and Jean Hamilton responsible ?
Why is the now-former Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance, who worked with the consultant to evade School Board oversight, still employed by the district?
I believe the issue is that district leadership knowing manipulated the information in attempts to hide it from the board. Despite their efforts, your opponents mentioned above, discovered the issue and are handling it.
You are spot on. What a disgrace.
Great point. This goes Beyond Baldwin.
The CHCCS was run by a black women and half the BoD was minorities. Your race baiting hate is a joke.
Your race baiting hate is pathetic. You know why there’s an achievement gap, we all do. But the world is full of cowards too scare to talk about fatherless black homes.