DISD official put on leave as consultant problems examined

09:27 AM CDT on Sunday, March 18, 2007

A top Dallas school administrator helped a close friend obtain $40,500 in district consulting work last school year, never disclosing to her bosses that she and the consultant had lived together since 1995…. A committee of Dallas school administrators has been examining how the district hires and uses consultants and other "professional service" providers. Among the group's findings:

• Employees sometimes failed to put consulting contracts out for competitive bids, a possible violation of federal procurement regulations.

• The district inadequately screens consultants and does a poor job of evaluating their work.

• Consultants are given little guidance on the district's long-term goals and recent reform efforts.

• Several consultants were "overused" having obtained multiple concurrent contracts with several schools and departments….

Every school year DISD spends an estimated $29 million on "professional service" contracts. Much of that pays for hiring people such as lawyers, engineers and lobbyists. About $11 million goes to academic consultants, such as curriculum writers, mentors for teachers and after-school program managers, many of whom once worked for the district. Federal grants pay for most of the academic consultants…. When district leaders began examining the deals, they found a system in need of reform:

• There was no centralized monitoring of consultant hiring, and the contracts were rarely subject to competitive bidding.

• Hundreds of former employees have returned to the district as private consultants, raising questions about patronage and conflicts of interest.

• A loose budgeting process allowed administrators to tuck away money for consultants without justifying the expense.

• Several consultants had multiple contracts at different schools, all running concurrently, with no central tracking of how much the district was paying in total….

"We recognized this [rampant use of consultants] as a problem months ago, and we're working on it," said Superintendent Michael Hinojosa. "The deeper we dig, the more we're finding."….

Employee-vendor relationships have been under scrutiny ever since the summer of 2005, when The News reported that DISD's then-technology chief routinely used, for free, a sport fishing boat linked to the CEO of the district's largest computer vendor…. [S]ince October 2002, more than 400 district consulting deals have gone out to former employees… The value of those contracts exceeded $3.7 million….

Generally, anytime a district spends more than $50,000 in one year on the same thing – pencils, for example – it must solicit competitive bids from vendors…. Most consultants, however, are hired under the heading of "professional services," a category with vague purchasing rules…  State rules exempt such services from bidding.… "It's a very gray area," said Rita Chase, an auditor with the Texas Education Agency. "What one person might be doing in one district could be a professional service, [but it] might not be in another district."

For years, most academic consulting services in DISD were not put out for bids. Instead, individual schools and departments were allowed to hire consultants as long as they had the money to spend and their supervisors agreed. Only contracts over $50,000 needed school board approval….  Rooting out which contracts are problematic, or were given out as patronage, can be difficult, especially in the fuzzy world of academic consulting…. [C]onsultants… are often hired on reputation, or by their connections to professional organizations and former employers.

Kent Fischer And Molly Motley Blythe, The Dallas Morning News, March 18.


See the attached study.