Leonie Haimson tells the story here about her discovery that the New York City Department of Education was about to award a multi-million dollar contract to a tech company that had been previously been involved in scandal. When you read this account, you will understand the importance of citizen vigilance. Who else but Leonie Haimson would lounge around on a lazy Sunday afternoon reading the list of DOE contracts due to be voted on that week? That is why you should contribute to her organization, Class Size Matters, which operates on a tiny shoestring (I am a member of the board) and allows Leonie to play an outsize, unpaid role in the city, state, and nation. That shoestring is so small, it wouldn’t be enough to close an infant’s shoe. Help Leonie continue to fight for students.
She writes:
Last February, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I was perusing the list of DOE contracts due to be voted on that week by the Panel for Educational Policy. Among the long list of contracts, I noticed a proposed contract for equipment and internet wiring worth $1.1 billion over five years, extendable to nine years at two billion dollars. I had never seen a DOE contract that large before.
She googled the name of the company:
I was astonished to discover that this very same company had been involved in a kickback scheme, robbing DOE of millions of dollars just a few years before, according to a report from the Special Investigator’s office. This widely reported scandal subsequently sent Ross Lanham, a DOE consultant, to jail.
I immediately blogged about my discovery, and promptly alerted Public Advocate Tish James and Council Member Helen Rosenthal, as well as members of the media.
On Monday, the very next day, DoE officials started getting lots of calls from reporters. Later that day, the PEP Contract committee was due to meet at 5 pm at Tweed, the DOE headquarters. I was sitting with a bunch of reporters in a room in Tweed, waiting for the meeting to begin when the reporters began getting emails from the DoE officials, announcing that that in the last 24 hours, the contract had somehow been “re-negotiated” and reduced by nearly half a billion dollars – with no change in the terms.
It was still going to be a ridiculously high $635 million over five years, extendable for four more years at over $1 billion. The fact that nearly $500 million could be cut out of the contract over night was even more evidence of how inflated the contract had been. When the Contracts committee met, surprisingly few members asked any questions about it, except for Robert Powell, the Bronx appointee and head of the committee….
Juan Gonzalez in the Daily News provided even more details about the original scheme that had defrauded DOE of millions. He pointed out that the company being awarded the contract had been the high bidder among three companies, and that the man who was still CEO of the company, Gregory Galdi, had set up a real estate company with Ross Lanham that was dissolved only after Lanham’s arrest.
At the subsequent PEP meeting on Wednesday evening, Helen Rosenthal and I pleaded with Chancellor Farina and the PEP members not to allow this unconscionable contract to be approved. The Chancellor was obdurate that “due diligence” had been done and that awarding the contract would allow NYC kids to be “put in the future” while now they’re “struggling in the past.”
The DOE official in charge, David Ross, argued that the contract had to be rushed through in order for the city to have a chance of winning $100 million in federal E-rate funds – without mentioning that the DOE had been cut off from this program for the last five years because of the very same scandal that had sent Ross Lanham to jail.
I made this point when I had my two minutes to speak , and argued that by awarding a contract to this very same company, the DOE was almost sure to be barred from any reimbursement from the feds. I also said that with a fraction of the amount, the DOE could double the number of schools to be built and significantly relieve school overcrowding.
Laura Zingmond, the Manhattan PEP member, responded that there was “plenty of money” to go around for both building more schools and awarding this contract. Though some members expressed reservations, the PEP approved the contract 10-1, with only Robert Powell, voting no. More on this disappointing vote in my blog and in Schoolbook….
Then in March, a few weeks after the vote, the city cancelled the Custom Computer Specialists contract, the first time this has ever happened in the history of the DOE. Possibly officials were concerned about how the NYC Comptroller and other oversight agencies would have questions about this egregious contract….
Juan Gonzalez reports that after DOE rebid the contract and broke it into several smaller parts, the same work and equipment will cost city taxpayers far less: $472 million over five years, $163 million less than the renegotiated amount and $627 million less than what Custom Computer Specialists was originally supposed to receive before Tish James, Helen Rosenthal and I protested. Assuming that the city is also now far likelier to receive $100 million in federal E-rate funds, we may have helped save the city $727 million.
I’m wondering why someone didn’t Google this firm before Leonie did. That would have saved a lot of time and money. Also troubling was the fact that this firm had no shame or compunction in bidding again on another DOE contract. Wow! In another time and place things were different.
Leonie is a hero for her tireless fighting for students and public education.
In this instance, she not only saved the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars but, even more importantly, forestalled and brought to the public’s attention the race to monetize student data.
This is so depressing. I’m so glad Leonie was on the case. Why would Laura Zingmond just ignore the issues? And who at the DOE is approving these things?
I hope the city controller investigates. How does this happen?
Contrary to DOE statements, apparently very little due diligence was done. SO: Who is getting fired for incompetent contracting? Who got kickbacks and how much? Who is going to jail?
And when was this story splashed across the front page of the NYTimes? I wonder who was going to be “benefiting” from this particular bonanza. I am particularly disappointed to hear Farina’s reaction.
I contacted the NY Times reporter as well as others. She didn’t report on the story before or after the vote; or after the city cancelled the contract; or since the rebid was made. I guess it wasn’t important enough to report for the “paper of record.”
Leonie deserves accolades of praise for her diligence and eagle eye. Any sneaky profiteers better watch out!
Wow! Good job, Leonie Haimson, Helen Rosenthal, Tish James, Juan Gonzalez and others who spoke up. Shame on Farina and the others who went along with this scam.
YAY Leonie!
The Union rarely supports whistle blowers in NYC unless contributors.
Here is what I discovered from my recent testimony to the Education Committee of the NYC Council:
Honored Chairman and Council Members
of the Education Committee
of the New York City Council:
November 23, 2015
It is pleasure to return to this Committee after a long hiatus as an advocate for school indoor air quality. One of the items mentions for this hearing on struggling schools is the “physical well being” of the students.
Learning can be influenced by environmental factors affecting the health of a student, particularly with damage to the nervous system by environmental toxins. The visual system is the most sensitive part of the human body controlled by the nervous system and such damage can affect the ability to read. Such “visual convergence” problems are rarely investigated or diagnosed, but these “accommodative spasms” lead to the labeling of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and other reading difficulties.
I have [attached] a copy of the Conclusions and Recommendations of the Weston Report, which promoted the disengagement of the Vapor Extraction System at my former school, PS 7 in Elmhurst, Queens. This school was built on a severely contaminated site and it became the victim of an “out of sight, out of mind” regulatory system. This may also apply to all schools that are within one block of a State certified spill site.
Throughout the previous administration, numerous schools were built on such sites and it is difficult to determine if there is any follow up monitoring. One industrial hygienist with the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) was stunned that there would be no future monitoring protocols at my school.
In an attached email from Clare Barnett of the Healthy Schools Network,
We learn of a “Rube Goldberg” set of protocols to monitoring the engineering of a school with the obvious exclusion of actually monitoring the air quality.
She states:
“Dear all/ in 1997 NYS with Shelley Silver’s leadership enacted a comprehensive law
that requires- among other items- that all public schools in NYS make public annual visual inspections of schools as well as 5-year inspections. Inspections must include bldg systems associated with IAQ- roof, walls, windows, heating etc
But NOT vapors or chem spills which require testing, not visual verification.”
In response to the work that I was doing, as outlined in my [attached] letter, published by the labor newspaper, The Chief, in its Labor Day edition, and my termination as a teacher, former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn submitted my name under her recent “Teacher Whistleblower Law”. This investigation languished during the previous administration, but received new life under the current administration.
After being unable to rebut any information from my 140 page report after a six month investigation, the Department of Investigation would not investigate my claim under Speaker Quinn’s Law [attached] and indicated that it was “untimely”. This is the proverbial child seeking mercy as an orphan after killing his parents.
Recently, the Office of the New York State Comptroller submitted my whistle blower case to the City Comptroller’s office through its Intergovernmental and Community Affairs Department in August, where it is again languishing.
If the Committee is serious about soliciting testimony, for some at a great expense, to protect our schools, my experience over the past ten years should not occur again.
This may be the first, and possibly the last, teacher to appeal through your own legislation designed to protect children (and teachers).
http://susanohanian.org/show_letter.php?id=1835
Very truly yours,
Joseph Mugivan
Advocate for School
Indoor Air Quality.
Union support for truth tellers? Ehe, ehe LOL
How do you imagine tens of thousands of teachers lost their jobs? The union turned a deaf ear, and because the grievance process represented the legal process of civil rights int he workplace…. teacher lost.
I wrote this in 2005, on my own blog, which gone
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
It was 7 years after I discovered the failure of the union to protect me was THE Process…. and I was a famous and celebrated teacher http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
It is still on going in LA, the second largest school system in the nation
http://citywatchla.com/8box-left/6666-lausd-and-utla-complicity-kills-collective-bargaining-and-civil-rights-for-la-s-teachers
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/lausd-and-utla-collude-to-end-collective-bargaining-and-civil-rights-for-teachers-part-2.html
And the reason that nothing has changed with Madam Farina, is because she was THERE as a principal during the time the process began in NY, and grasps that there is no accountability under th law for what administration does.
. How do you think THIS happened to the largest school system in the nation’s 15,880—all of which are being taken down!.
The people in the UFT at this very moment, are an entrenched bunch who enable the status quo!
That’s what the NYCDOE is all about…
taking as much money as possible out of the classroom and giving it to consultants and testing companies
Farina truly shows here how nothing has changed in the NYC DOE under DeBlasio. What a disappointment!
I was shocked as you are to see my name associated with those comments. Here’s the problem. I never said it and I don’t know why Leonie Haimson lied. This is a matter of public record. You can view for yourself my comments at the February 2015 Panel for Educational Policy Meeting (the one where the vote took place) here: http://www.learndoe.org/pep/22515/ Skip to the 4 hour 6 minute mark. I also spoke a few minutes prior at the 3:45 mark. I never spoke to Leonie about this nor was I ever interviewed by the media about this. The only public statements I made regarding this vote were at the PEP meeting referred to above. If I am mistaken, can someone please point out when I have ever said that there’s ” ‘plenty of money’ to go around for both building more schools and awarding this contract”. I never said it, nor anything that could be interpreted to mean the same because I have never believed that.
-Laura
I never said the statement that Leonie attributes to me. This is a matter of public record. You can view for yourself my comments at the February 2015 Panel for Educational Policy Meeting (the one where the vote took place) here: http://www.learndoe.org/pep/22515/ Skip to the 4 hour 6 minute mark. I also spoke a few minutes prior at the 3:45 mark. I never spoke to Leonie about this nor was I ever interviewed by the media about this. The only public statements I made regarding this vote were at the PEP meeting referred to above. If I am mistaken, can someone please point out when I have ever said that there’s ” ‘plenty of money’ to go around for both building more schools and awarding this contract”. I never said it, nor anything that could be interpreted to mean the same because I have never believed that.
-Laura Zingmond
*I attempted to post this earlier, but it never appeared in the comments. My apologies if there are duplicates of my statement in the comments. Please feel free to delete the duplicates should they eventually appear in this thread. Thank you.
Laura: Diane sent me your comments. When I urged the PEP members (including you) to reject the contract, I offered many reasons to oppose it: 1-how huge it was; 2- the fact the DOE cut the amount in half in the last two days since the media storm erupted showed how inflated it was to begin with, 3- it was going to a company that had been implicated in fraud, 4- the excuse the DOE was using to rush this through for federal E-rate funds was weak – especially as we had been suspended from the program in the first place because of the very same scandal that this company was involved in. I ended by pointing out that with a portion of these funds, or $125 M per year, we could address the overcrowding in our schools by doubling the seats in the capital plan.
I went back to the tape to review what you said afterwards. Here is a quote ( from 4.06 of the tape):
“I’m a firm believer in technology in schools, I say this as a parent of a kid when she was in a middle school in a class of 38 kids for 3 years, there is a huge building crunch & need for more space but in 2015 its not either or. If the e-rate reimbursement is likely, it would be a shame to miss out on this.”
What else did you mean by the statement “it’s not either or” if not to imply that there is enough funding to address both school overcrowding and spend over $600 million on this technology contract? If that’s not what you meant, did you vote for this because you think expanding the use of technology is more important than addressing school overcrowding and class size, or for another reason?
Since the DOE saved between $163 M and $727 after they were forced to rebid this contract, would you support that at least that amount be added to the underfunded capital plan and/or be used to reduce class size?
thanks Leonie
Here is my reply to Leonie’s comments which I posted on her blog. It’s late and I should have been clearer that at I do not think the city will have enough funds to build all the new schools we need without full engagement from Albany as well as a better plan for the use of current underutilized space. My original reply below:
Leonie, thank you for sharing my exact words this time. I still take issue with your deliberate choice to represent false words as a direct quote as well as represent what you believed was the implied meaning of my statement as my actual statement. As for my “either or” comment, I believe we have to move forward with building and acquiring more space for schools as well as making sure that all current school buildings have sufficient band-with and the infrastructure to accomplish that. No, I don’t think we have plenty of money for both and that is not the only logical interpretation of my statement. At that meeting or anytime since I have neither been dismissive of the need for more schools nor pollyannaish about how much money is available to fund capital expansion. I accept that you view the vote as “either schools or technology” but I don’t. I do think Albany needs to make good on the CFE funds it owes NYC, which would go a long way to reducing clsss size across the city. I also think the city needs to apply more funding for new schools even if Albany continues to be delinquent in its duty to carry out the ruling of the highest court in NYS. We must build more schools, but I don’t think it’s right that we have new schools outfitted with the most up-to-date fixtures and technology, while we let other schools, especially those in very old buildings languish with poor internet access and often inadequate power supply. I am happy to talk to you about this more offline. Best, Laura
This is terrific. There are many other examples, probably on a daily basis of this kind of waste. But I need to remind everyone – THIS IS NOT THE CITY’S MONEY! This is taxpayer money. All of the city’s money comes from the taxpayer. The $100K jobs coordinating various public offices that proliferate each time there is a new mayor are a waste of our taxpayer money. The money paid to developers/contractors who take advantage of the laziness of School Construction Authority lawyers, violating contracts and demanding more money, holding new schools hostage, is another waste of TAXPAYERS money.