Another Technological Boondoggle By Bloomberg That Is Going To Cost The City Millions

Want to know why the DOE couldn't find seats for incoming kindergartners with special needs for 2011 and now may have to pay for private school for those kids instead?

Because the computer program the DOE uses - a program that costs over $54 million - sucks:

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott is blaming the Department of Education's $79 million overhaul of special education programs for costly delays in finding seats for disabled kindergartners.

The agency missed its June 15 deadline for finding slots for about 2,500 kindergartners with special needs - and now the city could be liable for the kids' tuition in private schools.

Speaking at Tweed courthouse yesterday, Walcott pinned the holdup on the agency's switch to a new, Web-based system for tracking students with disabilities, called the Special Education Student Information System (SESIS).

"As a result of the transition to a computer system, those delays are there," said Walcott, referring to the new computer system that the Education Department paid Virginia-based MAXIMUS corporation $54.9 million for in 2009.

At the time, the agency also set aside another $23.7 million to implement SESIS over the next five years. The total cost of SESIS works out to about $600 for each disabled child currently enrolled in the city's public schools.

The program is supposed to ease the schools' delivery of services for disabled students by providing a system for tracking students' needs, but some teachers say it's riddled with problems.

They say they never received proper training, schools don't have enough bandwidth to run it properly, and they wait up to two hours when they call the program help line.

"It's impossible to know how many kids throughout the city aren't getting services because of problems with SESIS," said Julie Cavanaugh, a special education teacher at Public School 15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

"It's not functioning properly - there's a serious flaw in the design," said Cavanaugh, adding that it's taking her twice as long to create records for students with disabilities using the new system.

Officials authorized schools to use emergency funds - essentially overtime - to pay for teachers to try to find seats for the incoming kindergartners on evenings and weekends.

Kids who didn't get seats are entitled to a private education paid for by the city under a 1988 legal ruling.

Tuition at approved private schools can exceed $30,000 per year. The city already spends about $100 million to educate about 4,000 kids in this situation.

Who signed off on using a new computer program to track students' needs that has serious design flaws?

Chancellor Klein did.

Here is the press release that MAXIMUS, the company that provides the shitty program to the city, put out in 2009 when they got the contract.

Here is what Klein said at the time (as quoted in the MAXIMUS release):

In a separate release issued yesterday by the New York City Department of Education, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein commented, “The new Special Education Student Information System represents a much-needed upgrade in how we perform vital special education activities, and demonstrates our continuing commitment to improving outcomes for our students with disabilities.”

How's that vaunted upgrade in how the DOE provides vital special education activities working not that they've handed over $54+ million to MAXIMUS?

About as well as you'd expect when you hire a crooked company convicted of Medicaid fraud.

Here is that story from back in 2007:

Monday the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Maximus, Inc., both announced via press releases that the Reston-based government contractor had reached an agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington D.C. and the Justice Department's Civil Division.

Maximus, Inc., is a well-known government service company that provides consulting and program management services. In this case, the company had a contract with the District of Columbia's Child & Family Services Agency (CFSA) as a reimbursement consulting firm for CFSA's foster care program. After investigation initiated by a whistle-blower's federal civil lawsuit against Maximus, Inc., it was determined that the company had caused CFSA to submit claims to Medicaid for foster child services that had not been provided.

The civil lawsuit was filed by a former Maximus, Inc., division manager under the False Claims Act. A review was conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services that determined CFSA could not support 35 percent of its claims. As a result of that investigation, Maximus, Inc., paid $12.15 million, of which $4.93 million went to the whistle-blower.

The parties have now entered into a deferred prosecution agreement, a civil settlement, and a corporate integrity agreement to resolve the matter. Per the agreements, Maximus, Inc., admits responsibility for the actions of their employees, including a former company vice president, and will reimburse the government an additional $30.5 million. Further, the government will not file any criminal charges, but reserves the right to do so if Maximus, Inc., fails to comply with the agreements over the course of the next 24 months.

This sounds like EXACTLY the kind of company Bloomberg and Klein would hand millions of dollars to and it also sounds EXACTLY like the kind of company that would provide a computer system that does less than advertised and makes the work of providing special education services more difficult.

Just like IBM and Wireless Generation with ARIS, SAIC with CityTime and now MAXIMUS with SESIS, the Bloomberg administration has time and again wasted millions of dollars handing out boondoggle contracts to crooked companies and conducted little to no oversight of these companies as the projects have gone over budget, over time, and provided much less than promised.

This latest mess could cost the city tens of millions of dollars in extra expenditures. Under the law, they will have to provide private educations for the thousands of incoming kindergarten students with special needs who have not gotten admitted to a public school because of the SESIS mess.

As the Daily News reported, the city already spends $100 million to send 4,000 students to private school.

If they have to add another 2,500 to that list, you're talking at least $60 million in additional costs.

But the contract with MAXIMUS?

That's got another three years to go with two option periods for additional work.

Nice work if you can get it.

The Wireless Generation Contract With The DOE Needs To Be Investigated

Now that an outside consultant hired to bring Internet access to NYCDOE schools has been arrested for stealing $3.6 million and two major DOE vendors, I.B.M. and Verizon, were implicated in the scheme to defraud the city, it is high time somebody takes a closer look at the DOE contract former NYC schools chancellor Joel Klein signed with Wireless Generation, the connection Wireless Generation has to one of the implicated companies, I.B.M., and just how it is that Klein is now working for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. after Murdoch bought Wireless Generation.

As Gotham Gazette noted today:

The Times is reporting that a former Department of Education consultant has been charged with stealing $3.6 million from the city. Federal prosecutors say Willard Lanham persuaded subcontractors to overbill the city for their work and then kept the difference for himself.

Fernanda Santos writes, “Verizon and I.B.M., the largest of the vendors involved in the projects, played a role in the scheme and profited from it, according to the city’s special commissioner of investigation, Richard J. Condon.” Verizon said it would “return any inappropriate profits.”

Lanham, who reportedly already made $200,000 a year, supposedly used the money to buy fancy cars and Long Island real estate. He has denied any wrongdoing. The crime allegedly occurred between 2002 and 2008.

The projects involved were supposed to provide internet access in city schools. The case — assuming the charges are true — involves a number of issues that continue to prove extremely nettlesome for the Bloomberg administration.

First, of course, is its ongoing problem with tech contracts: most notably, the City Time computerized payroll system and the efforts to upgrade the 911 announced he would conduct audits of two Department of Education tech projects: the Achievement Reporting and Innovation System, popularly known as ARIS, which tracks student performance, and the Innovation Zone or iZone, the department’s initiative to reshape city schools using on line learning and other technology, among other techniques.

In another echo of the Lanham case, the concerns about ARIS also involve IBM. In the latest case, Condon has said, IBM shifted consultant among subs-contractors in an effort to hide Lanham’s scam from the education department.

As for ARIS, the Department of Education hired IBM to develop the system to track student achievement in 2007, spending some $80 million on it. Despite the investment, many schools don’t like it and have opted to buy another system. The city, however, is sticking with ARIS and plans on testing a new version of it, Gotham Schools has reported.

In the meantime, IBM hired a subcontractor, Wireless Generation, to develop the ARIS system. Wireless Generation continue to work on ARIS> Now, though, it is owned by News Corp. News Corp. now employs Joel Klein, who championed ARIS’ development during his tenure as schools chancellor. Klein, of course, also was chancellor during the time that Lanham allegedly was ripping off the city.

Despite Klein’s departure, the department’s penchant for technology remains. Facing spending cutbacks in other areas, this department’s capital budget seeks to boost spending for technology in general — wireless, hardware, cables — and for the iZone, the department’s initiative to reshape city schools using on line learning and other technology, among other techniques

Liu also has launched an audit of the Zone. Some critics have questioned whether, during a time of proposed layoffs and cutbacks, the city should be moving ahead on iZone when, they say, little evidence exists that such tech initiative actually help children learn.

The disclosure today is likely to fuel doubts about any increased tech spending by the department.

Less tech spending, no layoffs, but more purchasing of handcuffs - because the more investigators look into these contracts, the contractors themselves and just how the money is being doled out and what it is being used for, the more crookedness that is being revealed.

No one has seriously looked at Klein and Wireless Generation yet, but just how did the former schools chancellor get to sign all these contracts with Wireless Generation, then get to run the online K-12 for-profit education division of News Corp. after Rupert Murdoch bought the company?

Holy cow, that deal sounds so fishy on the face of it that it begs investigation.

And so does Klein's role in all of this.

Leaving aside the temerity of the DOE and the mayor to promote all this technology spending in the same year that there are going to be teacher lay offs for the first time in 30+ years (that I will deal with tomorrow in another post), the Wireless Generation contract CANNOT be allowed to stand as is without investigation.

Did Cathie Black Get Severance Pay From The DOE?

Cathie Black worked for 95 days as chancellor of the New York City school system.

For most of the days, she was hidden away in her office in Tweed - hidden from the public so that she wouldn't make any more egregious faux pas mistakes and hidden from the Tweedies who apparently scared her with all their ed talk.

When Bloomberg fired her two weeks ago, there was no talk about how much money she might have been given to go away.

Now State Senator Ruben Diaz has FOILed to find out just how much money, if any, Bloomberg handed her to leave Tweed:

Bronx Democratic State Senator Ruben Diaz released today the content of a Freedom of Information Law request for information regarding the salary, benefits and other compensation that Cathie Black received during her time as chancellor of the New York City public schools, including any benefits or compensation she is slated to receive now that her tenure as abruptly ended.

Writes the Rev:

Records Access Officer
NYC Department of Education
52 Chambers Street, Room 308
New York, New York 10007

To Whom It May Concern:

This letter is a FOIL request for any and all information regarding the entire salary, benefits, and other compensation that New York City Schools Chancellor Cathie Black has received or will receive, including any severance or retirement benefits.

Should there be any portion of this request that is denied, please state the reasons for denying my request. A prompt response to my request is mandated by statute.

Respectfully,

Senator Reverend Ruben Diaz
900 Rogers Place
Bronx, New York 10459
(718) 991-3161

Needless to say, the Bloomberg administration is anxious to move on from the Cathie Black fiasco, and surely don't appreciate pols who continue to wish to hang it around their necks.

If Bloomberg gave her one thin dime in severance pay when he is proposing thousands of teacher layoffs, especially after she received $3.3 million to step down from the IBM board in March of this year, especially since she spent less than 100 days in the chancellorship and made mistake after mistake in that position, especially since you're not even eligible for unemployment money when you work so few days at a job before being let go, he needs to be called to account for it - publicly.