Baldrige Award, Bought and Paid For

As I mentioned in a previous post I was at the Central Office last Wednesday (7/15/09) to inspect I-SS records. In addition to the invoices from JSA, I have also asked to inspect any consulting contracts entered into by the system between 2002 and the present. Most of those were basic contracts such as for architectural designs and the like.

However, there was one very interesting contract. There was a contract with Brennan Worldwide in Winston-Salem, NC. In that contract, I-SS agreed to pay Brennan Worldwide a minimum of $36,000.00 to assist with the 2008 Baldrige Application Project. Kay Fulp, I-SS Chief Financial Officer, signed the contract on Oct. 11, 2007. The objective of the contract was stated as follows: provide consulting, facilitation and writing expertise to support the I-SS in development of a 2008 Baldrige application that optimizes the evidence and effectively moves the district toward their goal to achieve a site visit and a value added feedback report.

Note that I said a minimum of $36,000.00 was to be paid to Brennan Worldwide. The contract stated that the fee of $36,000.00 would be for 18 days of consulting services and that any additional days required would be at the rate of $2,000.00 per day. There were no invoices with the contract so there was no way of knowing how many, if any, additional days were required. I plan on asking for those invoices.

Wait, there’s more. On the Brennan Worldwide web site, under the section titled What our clients are saying about us, Dr. Holliday is quoted as saying "The Baldrige application can be a very daunting task. Our organization utilized the Fast Track approach to develop our application. Thanks to Maryann Brennan’s support and insightful feedback, I-SS scored at the top 6% of all Baldrige applications in 2007 and was the only education organization to receive a site visit." Therefore, not only was Brennan Worldwide hired to help with the 2008 Baldrige Award application, they were also hired to help with the 2007 application. For some reason I-SS did not make that contract available for inspection. I wonder how much was paid that year? I will ask for that information as well.

I-SS has hired all these Baldrige ‘experts’ to work in the Central Office and still they have to hire an outside consultant to prepare the application for this glorious Baldrige Award. Remember I-SS was judged to be the best of the eleven schools that applied for the reward.

More Baldrige Expenditures

This past Wednesday (7/15/09) I had another appointment to view school records. Of course I had to arrange the appointment with the I-SS attorney in Raleigh. It is a hassle to schedule appointments this way, but at least I am getting a better response to my requests to inspect school records. There was no observer in the room with me this time. Again, I spent much of the time reviewing invoices from Jim Shipley and Associates (JSA). I inspected some other documents as well and I will write about those in a later post.

Last time I looked at the JSA invoices dated from August 2003 to June 2005. In that two-year period, I-SS paid JSA $90,739.97 for Baldrige materials and training. This time I inspected the JSA invoices dated from July 2005 to May 2007. In this two-year period, I-SS paid JSA $114,008.40 for Baldrige materials and training.

Included this time were payments to have Brenda Clark provide training and consulting for a total of 14 days at $2,050.00 per day and payments to have Marty Moore provide training and consulting for a total of 22 days at $1,800.00 per day. There was even a payment to have Jim Shipley provide training and consulting for 2 days at $2,050.00 per day. Of course these individuals had to travel to Iredell County in order to provide this training. Thus, in addition to these daily rates, I-SS paid the travel expenses for Ms. Clark to make 7 round trips, for Ms. Clark to make 9 round trips, and for Mr. Shipley to make 1 round trip.

As in the previous two years, a number of I-SS administrators also traveled to Florida for Baldrige training. There was a registration payment of $1625.00 to JSA in May 2006 for five administrators to attend a two-day training session. And, there was a registration payment of $600.00 to JSA in April 2007 for three administrators to attend a different two-day training session. Since the travel expenses were not paid to JSA there was no invoice indicating the cost to send these administrators to Florida for the training.

I-SS is in the process of firing 65 teacher assistants. I think that these expenditures show that most, if not all, of these positions could have been saved if the school system was not spending an extraordinary amount of money to force students to endure the consequences of continuing the I-SS implementation of the Baldrige plan. As I mentioned before, there are thousands of school systems in this country achieving significant successes without using the Baldrige method.

Brenda Clark, Consultant or Employee or Both?

In a previous post I mentioned that I-SS had hired Brenda Clark as a consultant, through Jim Shipley and Associates, and that she was later hired as an I-SS administrator. It turns out that Brenda Clark was already employed as an I-SS administrator when they hired her as a consultant. According to the invoice from Jim Shipley and Associates, Brenda Clark was hired, at the rate of $1,000.00 a day, for a two-day JSA training session that occurred on August 14 and 15, 2007. However according to the I-SS organizational chart, that was updated on July 18, 2007, Brenda Clark is listed as I-SS Chief Quality Officer. So, while already paying her a very generous salary as an I-SS administrator, I-SS turns around and pays her a thousand dollars a day as a consultant. Who in his right mind would approve of this? Oh, that’s right, Dr. Holliday approved it.

Viewing Documents

The I-SS administration is up to its same old tricks. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Janey Munday and I had made an appointment with Mrs. Wike, I-SS Financial Officer, to view a number of the School’s financial documents. Janey and I went to the Central Office yesterday (Thursday) to see the documents. The first item we saw was a note that was presumably from Mrs. Wike. The note was to inform us that not all of the requested documents would be available for viewing. The 2007-08 audit report and the invoices from Jim Shipley and Associates were provided. However, only some of the consulting contracts were made available. In the note it was relayed that the staff pulled all the contracts they could during the time they had to work on this task.

The database indexes that I have been requesting were unavailable. We were informed in the note that the index is currently incomplete and that after consulting with 25 other school districts and municipalities the Central Office could find no other entity that has the index completed and available. In addition it was stated that the district is currently working with legal council and NC Dept. of Cultural Resources, Archives and Records division to complete the work necessary to fulfill the legal requirements of the database index. I asked for a copy of the database indexes two months ago. State law and I-SS policy both state that the indexes are to be available to anyone requesting public records. Why is the administration just now starting to work on getting this information together?

In viewing the audit report I could find nothing out of the ordinary. Of course, I am not a CPA. I was hoping to find some indication as to how much I-SS spends on central office administrative costs but it seemed like that information was comingled with all the other budgetary data. I did request that they provide copies of some of the pages so I could look over the information again. The consulting contracts that were available were mostly architectural contracts. The few other contracts seemed relatively minor.

The most interesting information was what Janey found contained in the invoices from Jim Shipley and Associates (JSA). JSA is a big supplier of Baldrige information, supplies, and services. In the last two years I-SS has spent some $20,000.00 with JSA. Some of it was for supplies, but I-SS also arranged for JSA to have Brenda Clark provide consulting services for 2 days at $1000.00 per day and to have Marty Moore provide consulting service for several days at $1800.00 per day. I-SS also paid for their travel expenses. Since that time Brenda Clark and Marty Moore have been hired as I-SS Central Office administrators. Dr. Holliday does like to hire his Baldrige cronies even if he has to create a new administrative position to do so.

Janey and I plan to go back to the Central Office next Thursday to view the documents that were not available yesterday as well as some additional invoices from JSA. I wonder what excuses the administration will have at that time.

This post was written by Paul Klaene.