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Archive for the ‘BESE’ Category

Six straight years of lousy RSD audits; contracts signed by unauthorized personnel: just another day at White’s DOE

Posted in BESE, Contract, Contracts, Education, Ethics, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Public Records, Recovery School District, RSD on April 1, 2013| 13 Comments »

Like the muddy waters of the Mississippi River that flow right past the Claiborne Building, operations in the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) just seem to get murkier and murkier and its bureaucracy more and more difficult to navigate.

There is Teach for America (TFA), the cluster of TFA alumni awarded administrative positions in the department and the financial manipulations that go with that program; the controversy over charters and course choice; the ongoing courtroom battles over the funding of vouchers, the questionable appointments of out-of-state commuters, the agreement to feed student personal information into a data bank controlled by Rupert Murdoch, and the ever-daunting challenge of obtaining public records from the department, to name only a few.

Easily the most secretive of any state agency, DOE is supported by a governor who, ironically enough, likes to boast of his administration’s openness and transparency. DOE and Superintendent of Education John White operate with virtual autonomy—mostly because there is no system of checks and balances to ensure that the agency is answerable.

Requests for public records are ignored, The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), with the exception of two members, rubber-stamps anything Jindal and White suggest, be it ripping funding away from local school boards to pay for vouchers to approving applications for course choice (online) programs to burdening the department with costly six-figure positions filled by itinerates with little to no classroom experience.

White recently received his annual performance evaluation from BESE and predictably received high marks from nine of the board’s 11 members. The truth of the matter, however, is that White is woefully ill-qualified to lead even a local school system, much less a statewide system of 700,000 public school students.

Unfortunately, his six-weekend course (spread out over 10 months) at the Eli Broad Superintendents Academy does not qualify him to lead a Cub Scout troop. Yet, Gov. Bobby Jindal considered him more qualified than any other candidate to preside over the demolition of public education in Louisiana.

The Eli Broad Academy, by the way, has come under criticism for turning out superintendents who use corporate-management techniques to consolidate power, weaken teachers’ job protections, cut parents out of the decision-making process and introduce unproven reform measures.

The latest audit of the Recovery School District is evidence enough of White’s inability to run a statewide system.

The audit, released on March 27, revealed that for the sixth consecutive year, RSD continued to experience problems keeping track of millions of dollars in movable property.

Why does that reflect on White when Patrick Dobard is the RSD superintendent?

Well, for openers, the latest audit is for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2012 and White did not become state superintendent until January of 2012.

Prior to that, he was superintendent of the Recovery School District.

The audit says, “For the sixth consecutive year, RSD did not ensure that movable property was safeguarded against loss, including loss arising from unauthorized use and misappropriation. Our review of RSD’s movable property activity disclosed the following:”

• RSD’s annual certification of property inventory, which the Louisiana Property Assistance Agency did not approve, disclosed $26,664,976 in total movable property, which included 1,633 items with a total acquisition cost of $2,738,016 that have been identified as unlocated during the past four-year period. Of the 1,633 unlocated items, 1,380 items were computers or computer-related equipment. The 2012 annual certification also identified 908 items with a total acquisition cost of $1,482,060 (54 percent) as unlocated for the current period.

• RSD reported 10 incidents at six separate schools involving 97 movable property items with an acquisition cost of $73,667 as missing/stolen to the legislative auditor and the local district attorney. Of the 97 movable property items, 70 were computers. Management has represented that seven items with an acquisition cost of $6,118 have been recovered.

• The 10 reported incidents involved computers being stolen from four RSD direct-run schools and one charter school. There was no sign of forced entry in three instances that resulted in a loss of 48 items with an acquisition cost of $20,064. In one instance, 26 Dell laptop computers and 20 Apple I-Pod Nano media devices with an acquisition cost of $17,031 were stolen from an RSD direct-run school’s storage room.

• RSD’s movable property function is hampered by the decentralization of movable property at the various custodians (schools) and a lack of accountability and training of the custodians for RSD property. Failure to safeguard movable property increases the risk that assets may be misreported, lost or stolen. In addition, the year-to-year cost of replacing lost or stolen movable items could reduce the availability of funds (federal or state) for other educational objectives.

• During FY 2012, RSD did not ensure that employee separation dates were accurate or timely. Not recording separation dates accurately and timely could result in overpayments for terminated employees. This is the sixth consecutive year that we have cited RSD for inadequate controls over its payroll process.

White apparently is far more focused on insulating himself with fellow Teach for America (TFA) and Eli Broad Academy alumni by appointing them to top administrative positions.

Take Chief of Staff Kunjan Narechania and Deputy Superintendent Michael Rounds, for instance.

Rounds, like White, is a 2010 alumnus of Eli Broad and was brought in by White as Deputy Superintendent at $170,000 per year.

Rounds resigned his position as Chief Operating Officer for Kansas City Public Schools a year ago following an investigation into bid irregularities involving a $32 million renovation project for Kansas City schools and a month later the contract was cancelled by Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent Stephen Green (can you say Bruce Greenstein and CNSI?).

And then there is Narechania, a TFA alumnus who, while officially serving as White’s chief of staff, in reality performed functions normally handled only by a deputy or assistant superintendent.

Narechania oversaw all expenditures in the department; no one purchased anything—not a computer, not even a ball point pen without first obtaining authority from Narechania. All assistant superintendents and directors were required to report to her. No one was hired by the department without her stamp of approval—even when no one was quite sure what the new hire would actually be doing. That was evidenced only days before David Lefkowith was hired last June when she emailed White that there needed to be a decision about what to do about Lefkowith. As late as September and December of 2012, she was still signing off on contract amendments, a duty that did not fall within the job description of a chief of staff.

On Sept. 21, she signed off on an amendment to the department’s 15-year, $65.6 million contract with Data Recognition Corp. for administration of the statewide iLEAP testing program. The amendment added three additional years (to June 30, 2015) and $20.96 million to the existing contract.

Beneath her signature was the crossed through printed title “Assistant Superintendent.”

The other contract amendment had the proper title of Chief of Staff beneath her signature that approved a $3.5 million amendment to a $17.5 million contract with Pacific Metrics Corp. for the replenishing of materials for science, social studies and math.

So why didn’t White simply have Narechania confirmed as deputy or assistant superintendent?

One source within the department said it was because when White appeared before the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee for approval of the appointments of several other administrators last June, he knew he could not obtain Narechania’s confirmation because she was already acting as his number two, sighing all personnel paperwork, contracts, etc., on his behalf.

It would have been awkward to explain that to the committee.

That could be the reason he asked BESE to petition the legislature to approve a reorganization of DOE and has proceeded with that reorganization—without either BESE or legislative approval.

The problem, however, is that he has been operating outside the law for more than a year now by allowing her to sign off on personnel matters and on DOE contracts.

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Notable Quotables (in their own words)

Posted in BESE, Contract, Contracts, Education, Notable Quotables, Public Records on March 31, 2013| 3 Comments »

“If the contract is 8(g) funded, all provisions of this ownership clause apply except that upon termination or at the completion of 8(g) funding for a project/program, (BESE) may approve a contractor’s (TFA) request to retain equipment purchased with 8(g) funds based on the contractor’s assurance that the equipment will be used for educational enhancement.”

—Clause in a Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) contract with Teach for America (TFA) that would appear to allow TFA to maintain possession of equipment purchased with state funds should its contract with DOE be cancelled for any reason—even though, with a contract cancellation, TFA would no longer be teaching in Louisiana.

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DHH contracts notwithstanding, many Department of Education contracts seem to be flying under the radar

Posted in BESE, Contract, Contracts, Education, Public Records, RSD on March 31, 2013| 7 Comments »

When it comes to finding ways to waste taxpayer money, the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) appears to own franchise rights.

It’s not enough that Superintendent of Education John White has loaded down the department with top-heavy, six-figure administrative positions filled largely by out-of-state modern-day carpetbaggers—some of whom had to be compelled by state law enforcement authorities to purchase Louisiana license plates for their vehicles.

But a peek at the three contracts totaling nearly $1.6 million awarded to Teach for America (TFA) reveals built-in hidden costs about which White most probably would just as soon the paying public did not know.

A few weeks ago we did a story about TFA’s request for a state allocation of $5 million this year. In that story we revealed that local school districts are required to pay TFA a negotiated fee that ranges from $2,000 to $5,000—and then pay the TFA teachers’ salaries over and above those fees. Louisiana school districts, in addition to the salaries, pay a fee of $3,000 per teacher recruited—unless they are recruited by the Recovery School District (RSD).

Because the RSD is overseen by White and a compliant Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), it is able to be more generous with its fees to TFA—a lot more generous.

Contract No. 718050, a $382,500 TFA contract that began on June 1, 2012 and continues through June 30, 2014, calls for TFA to recruit 40 new first-year teachers for RSD at a fee of $4,500 per teacher, or 50 percent higher than the rate paid by other Louisiana school districts.

But wait. The contract requires the $4,500 per teacher payment not only for the first year, but for the second year as well, or $9,000 per teacher—three times that paid by other school districts.

Moreover, the contract calls for a $4,500 per teacher fee for five second-year teachers, bringing the total fee payment to $382,500

That represents a healthy bump from the fees paid under contract no. 718049, which runs from July 1, 2012, to June 30, 2014 for a contract amount of $234,500. That contract calls for the recruitment fee payment of $3,000 each for 25 first-year teachers and $3,000 each for 26 second-year teachers. Additionally, it calls for a fee of $3,250 each for the second year of those 25 teachers.

And then there is contract no. 717968 in the amount of $968,468 that calls for the recruitment of 520 TFA teachers to work in the parishes of East Baton Rouge, Jefferson, St. James. St. John the Baptist, St. Bernard, Orleans, Plaquemines, East Feliciana, Pointe Coupee, Ascension, Avoyelles, East Carroll, Madison, Tensas, Concordia, St. Helena and RSD.

Besides the potential violation of federal equal employment opportunity laws by giving stated preference to TFA teachers over more qualified applicants holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Plus-30s and Ph.Ds., the contract, which runs from Sept. 1, 2012 through June 30, 2013, contains a rather unusual clause which says:

• “If the contract is 8(g) funded, all provisions of this ownership clause apply except that upon termination or at the completion of 8(g) funding for a project/program, (BESE) may approve a contractor’s (TFA) request to retain equipment purchased with 8(g) funds based on the contractor’s assurance that the equipment will be used for educational enhancement.”

In 1953, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act was passed to regulate offshore leasing and to determine state/federal participation. The act was amended in the late 1970s to give states greater control over offshore activities.

The amendment, numbered 8(g), is what gives coastal states a “fair and equitable” share of the money from offshore development. The 1986 settlement gives Louisiana 27 percent of the money made from the 8(g) area of the continental shelf.

Louisiana voters approved a constitutional amendment to establish a trust fund for education from the 8(g) funds. The Louisiana Education Quality Trust Fund requires that the money be spent for educational purposes.

BESE is constitutionally mandated to allocate funds for any of the following purposes:

• To provide compensation to city or parish school board professional instructional employees;

• To ensure an adequate supply of superior textbooks, library books, equipment and other instructional materials;

• To fund exemplary programs in elementary or secondary schools designed to improve elementary or secondary student academic achievement or vocational-technical skills;

• To fund carefully defined research efforts, including pilot programs, designed to improve elementary or secondary student academic achievement;

• To fund school remediation programs and preschool programs;

• To fund the teaching of foreign languages in elementary and secondary schools;

• To fund an adequate supply of teachers by providing scholarships or stipends to prospective teachers in academic or vocational-technical areas where there is a critical teacher shortage.

Nowhere in those stipulations does it say that BESE or DOE may arbitrarily give contractors educational equipment purchased with 8(g) (read: public) funds. But then, the wording is sufficiently ambiguous. Maybe they can.

Of course, there is that wording that the contractor (TFA) may retain equipment purchased with 8(g) funds in the event its contract with the state is terminated only so long as TFA provides assurances “that the equipment will be used for educational enhancement.” (Emphasis ours.)

But if the TFA contract is cancelled, TFA would no longer be teaching in Louisiana.

So where would equipment purchased with Louisiana funds be used “for educational purposes?”

Mississippi?

Texas?

With this administration and this Superintendent of Education, who knows?

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Kostelka says he is serious about elected superintendent; Jindal sends in the clown, gets comeuppence from Regents

Posted in BESE, Education, Governor's Office, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, LSU, Politicians, Public Records, Regents, Retirement, Veto on March 28, 2013| 30 Comments »

Sen. Bob Kostelka, R-Monroe, wants people to know he’s serious.

He has already pre-filed SB 41, which calls for a constitutional amendment to be placed on the ballot which, if approved, would make the state superintendent of education and elective position as opposed to the current appointive one.

Kostelka also wants it understood that he wants current Superintendent John White to go.

He says he has seen enough of bloated contracts granted to politically-connected firms. He has seen his fill of contracts like the one that teaches kids how to play at recess. He has heard quite enough about contracts awarded to PR hacks to work out of their homes in other states for outlandish figures like $12,000 per month.

Most of all though he has grown weary of trying to obtain information and records from the secretive Louisiana Department of Education—and repeatedly encountering a brick wall of resistance.

And he is more than a little concerned about the approval of vouchers for schools which have no classrooms, no teachers and no desks—like New Living Word in Ruston.

And while he didn’t say so, he seemed to take some bit of pleasure in knowing that his bill has come under fire from Gov. Bobby Jindal’s chief apologist, Jeff Sadow.

Kostelka claim that the bill would make the superintendent answerable to the people instead of a rubber-stamp Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) was described by Sadow as a “curious mix of ignorance and illogic.”

Sadow chose to fall back on the argument that most of the BESE members are already elected and “answerable to the people,” apparently choosing to ignore the fact that most of the elected members’ seats were bought by out of state contributions from such people as Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, the Walton family and K-12.

Sadow also says Kostelka seems to have forgotten the “policy-making mess” that existed under the elected superintendent structure that existed prior to 1988. In saying that, Sadow appears to be overlooking the ever-evolving “policy-making mess” that is indicative of today’s DOE under a superintendent who doesn’t seem to have a clue where he intends to go or what he intends to do when he gets there.

“People like Mr. Sadow say I want to return to old-time politics,” Kostelka said. “To that, I would have them look at the political contributions to the BESE members and then explain to me what has changed under the present system.”

“They say my bill would cost the state the expense of another election, but it wouldn’t. I’m calling for the election to be held in the fall of 2014 at the same time as the Congressional elections, so there would be no additional costs. If approved, the elected superintendent would take effect with the 2015 gubernatorial election and White could leave with Jindal,” he said.

Kostelka is well aware that he has run afoul of the petulant Jindal and is certain to incur the governor’s wrath. His punishment could range from a loss of committee assignments to vetoes of key projects in Kostelka’s senate district. All one has to do is harken back to last year’s session when Jindal vetoed a major construction project in Livingston Parish after Rep. Rogers Pope and Sen. Dale Erdy had the temerity to buck Jindal on legislative matters important to the governor.

If that isn’t old-time politics, we don’t know what is.

But Jindal has proved beyond any doubt that he is not above such tactics.

But, at long last, those tactics appear to be coming back to bit him in the backside.

He has demoted legislators, fired a BESE member, an LSU president, doctors, various department and agency heads, appointed legislator buddies (Noble Ellington, Troy Hebert, et al) to six-figure deadhead jobs and in at least one case—that of Hebert—that appointment appears to be a major embarrassment to the administration.

But even after all of that, nothing compares to the damage done to his political stock as the recent dust-up with the Board of Regents.

Send in the clowns

As is his M.O., Jindal attempted to distance himself from the action—perhaps as a means of attempting to maintain deniability, a ploy that has consistently served him badly—by dispatching an emissary to do his dirty work. In this case, it was Taylor Teepell, brother of Timmy Teepell who seems to be running his OnMessage political consulting operation from the governor’s fourth-floor offices in the State Capitol.

What was Taylor’s mission? Nothing less than to demand the firing of Commissioner of Higher Education Dr. James Purcell. Purcell, you see, committed the unpardonable sin of criticizing Jindal’s repeated cuts to higher education. There is no run for dissention on Team Jindal.

But Taylor Teepell got a major surprise. Regents Chairman W. Clinton “Bubba” Rasberry, Jr. sent Teepell back to Jindal with a message: “Dr. Purcell works for the Regents.”

Whoa. Herr Jindal is not accustomed to such spunk from his subordinates. The governor does, after all, appoint the Regents members and he expects all appointees to toe the line, not draw a line in the sand.

Of course, Jindal could fire the entire board and replace the recalcitrant members with more compliant sycophants. But his brazen attempt to oust Purcell for the sin of independent thinking probably did more harm to Jindal than anything else he has done in his five-plus years in office. This attempt, coming as it did on the heels of three major court reversals of his education and retirement reforms and the word last week of a federal investigation into a contract with the Department of Health and Human Resources, has left him politically crippled.

And his blatant, quixotic pursuit of the presidency would be laughable were it not such a pathetic sight to behold. It somehow makes him look even smaller, more the little boy, in his ill-fitting suits.

Seeing his presidential aspirations slip away raises yet another spectacle that he would probably rather no one would know about. When he encountered occasional crises during his tenure as head of the University of Louisiana System, rather than facing the problems head-on, his solution of choice was to retreat to his office where he is said to have played video games virtually non-stop.

One must be wondering what video games he prefers these days. League of Legends, perhaps?

As one observer recently said, the Jindal waters appear to be circling the drain.

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Louisiana DOE hires top dollar out-of-state appointees who control kids’ education but who’re not registered LA. voters

Posted in BESE, Charters, Education, Governor's Office, Public Records, RSD, Vouchers on March 13, 2013| 19 Comments »

Gov. Bobby Jindal was adamant during his campaign for governor about stemming the outflow of Louisiana’s brightest college graduates from the state.

To show his commitment to keeping Louisiana talent at home, he promptly brought in several out-of-staters to fill key roles. Most prominent among those was Paul Vallas of Chicago by way of Philadelphia to head up the Recovery School District (RSD) and then as Vallas’s successor, John White of New York.

Jindal subsequently shoved Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek aside in order to promote White to head up the Department of Education (DOE).

So much for that rosy bit of political rhetoric from Jindal.

Now White himself has brought in a host of non-residents whose job it is to decide how nearly 700,000 public school students in Louisiana will be taught, what they will be taught, where they will be taught, when they will be taught and even who will teach them.

And LouisianaVoice has learned that five of those, including his Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Staff, a Deputy Superintendent, and one who, alternately, has been called “Deputy Superintendent,” “Director,” and “Director of the Office of Portfolio,” are not even registered to vote in Louisiana.

A fifth, Hua T. Liang of New Orleans, is an administrator with the Pride College Preparatory Academy in New Orleans, a former charter taken over by RSD. His salary is $110,000 a year.

Chief of Staff Kunjan Narechania, https://louisianavoice.com/2013/02/20/doe-emails-reveal-secretive-programs-ties-to-gates-rupert-murdoch-and-fox-news-network-agency-in-general-disarray/ she of the email to White informing him that Charlotte Danielson of the Danielson Group of Princeton, N.J., was “being a pain again” over DOE’s decision to use only five of 22 components of Danielson’s teacher evaluation system, came to DOE from Chicago but has neither registered to vote here nor has she registered her vehicle, which still carries Illinois plates, in Louisiana, thus depriving the state of vehicle registration fees.

Her qualifications for serving as Chief of Staff to the Louisiana Superintendent of Education at a salary of $145,000 include a stint as Vice President of Design, Teacher Support and Development for Teach for America (TFA), the billion-dollar organization bent on taking over public education nationwide and staffing the nation’s schools with teachers with only five weeks’ summer training.

But, hey! That’s a strong recommendation; John White, after all, came from TFA.

Likewise, Deputy Chief of Staff Nicholas Bolt ($104,000), http://www.educationpioneers.org/what-we-do/alumnus-bio?cid=0034000000U6gC4AAJ an alumnus of Education Pioneers, came from the New York City Department of Education and resides here now, helping to determine the fate of the state’s education system but, like Narechania, has neither registered to vote nor removed his out-of-state tags in favor of a Louisiana plate.

Then there is Michael Rounds, the Deputy Superintendent who is being paid a cool $170,000 a year. https://louisianavoice.com/2012/11/06/nothing-but-the-best-for-doe-john-white-hires-170000-deputy-central-to-kansas-city-32-million-bid-controversy/ Like his boss John White, Rounds is a 2010 alumnus of the Eli Broad Superintendents Academy which critics say turns out superintendents who use corporate-management techniques to consolidate power, weaken teachers’ job protections, cut parents out of the decision-making process and introduce unproven reform measures.

The academy, founded by billionaire businessman Eli Broad, offers a six-weekend (not week, weekend) course spread over 10 months. There are no qualifications that students have any experience in education—just that they have a bachelor’s degree.

Rounds resigned his Kansas City position a year ago following an investigation by a local television station into bid irregularities involving a $32 million renovation project for Kansas City schools—only to turn up as one of the top officials charged with day-to-day decisions impacting our school children. And he doesn’t even vote here.

But Rounds’ prior employment record pales in comparison to the career track our old friend David “Lefty” Lefkowith of Los Angeles. https://louisianavoice.com/2012/10/10/dave-lefty-lefkowith-more-than-a-motivational-speaker-hes-a-political-operative-looking-for-privatization-dollars/

No one knows precisely what Lefkowith’s actual title is, but he is paid well for whatever it is he does. He is listed as a Director, but also has been identified as a self-proclaimed Deputy Superintendent and Director of the Office of Portfolio. One of his primary responsibilities is to push DOE’s Course Choice program but he has cut a wide swath through the upper tier of political power in the state of Florida.

Working with the now defunct Enron Corp. several years ago, he attempted, along with an associate of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to corner the water marketing rights in the state. Following that, he became a motivational speaker through his company, The Canyon Group.

He went straight from a $35,000 contract with DOE to his new status as employee.

But Lefkowith is not only a non-voter in Louisiana; he doesn’t even choose to live here.

Unlike Deirdre Finn, https://louisianavoice.com/2012/09/25/education-loading-up-with-badly-needed-pr-types-at-six-figures-meanwhile-charter-school-vultures-are-circling/ a former deputy chief of staff for Jeb Bush, who works as public relations hack for the department—but from her home in Tallahassee, Florida—at $12,000 per month, Lefkowith does work in Baton Rouge but resides in Los Angeles and commutes back and forth, making some wonder how he affords to do that because, even at his $146,000 salary, commuting each weekend to and from Los Angeles by air is a far cry from the short interstate drive from Gonzales or Denham Springs or U.S. 61 from St. Francisville.

But except for Lefkowith, one still might expect the others to at least register to vote here.

That doesn’t seem to be asking too much considering the fact that these people have waltzed into Baton Rouge to take over one of the two largest state agencies (DHH being the other) so they can dictate the educational fate of our children—and teachers, many of whom have more years of classroom teaching than these carpetbaggers have been living.

The very fact that they have chosen to ignore this very foundation of democracy reveals their character and their motives. This isn’t about the children or education, never has been; it’s about fortunes to be made from public educaton. Rupert Murdoch said it all when he said public educaton was a $500 billion market waiting to be exploited. http://www.nationofchange.org/rupert-murdoch-us-education-system-1318783996

Still, one would expect that members of an oligarchy would have the decency to at least pretend to be sufficiently civic minded to register to vote in the state they care nothing for but which they’ve taken over by decree.

Yes, one would expect that.

But one would be wrong.

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