Does Jonathan Want Vallas’ Pelt?

Former State Rep. Jonathan Pelto, an engaging political analyst, is like a one-man riot squad when it comes to Superintendent of Schools Paul Vallas, the turn-around education maven who spent time overseeing schools in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans prior to Bridgeport. Jonathan, a Vallas cynic, has recently devoted the lion’s share of time commenting about Vallas from his platform at www.jonathanpelto.com. A dynamic intellectual thread has emerged on Pelto’s site that includes his commentaries, a response from Vallas and a rejoinder from Jonathan. Check it out. Here’s the latest from Pelto.

The illegally appointed Bridgeport School Board is meeting tonight. One of their agenda items is a discussion about extending the City’s contract with Paul Vallas. Reportedly, board members want to sign a multi-year contract with Vallas in order to prevent the democratically elected board that will soon take office from conducting their own review of whether Vallas is the most appropriate person to lead Bridgeport’s schools.

But the Vallas contract is just part of a web of contracts and deals that have been signed or will be signed locking down Bridgeport’s options for the future.

When Paul Vallas recently presented his “Good Schools Budget: 2013 Budget and School Improvement Plan” it included a vague reference to a company called the Public Consulting Group (PCG.) His presentation read, “PCG Group is auditing the district’s Medicaid reimbursement process. PCG has an outstanding reputation for assessing and improving the process in order to obtain optimal reimbursement for eligible students. Any additional revenue obtained by the district will be applied to offset the cost of out-of-district tuition for special education students.”

What Vallas didn’t reveal was that he had provided PCG with multi-million dollar contracts when he was the CEO of the Chicago School System and again when he was the CEO of the Philadelphia Schools. PCG even features the Chicago and Philadelphia projects on its website.

In fact, in Philadelphia, the PCG “audit” ended with a recommendation that the school system purchase PCG’s own proprietary software packaged called Easy IEP.

As Bridgeport’s guidance counselors and teachers now know, a memo recently came from the Vallas Operation informing staff that the Bridgeport Schools were shifting from their existing special education software called Clarity to one called … EASY IEP.

The memo didn’t explain why Vallas had chosen to make this big shift, it just instructed teachers and guidance counselors that all data needed to be inputted into the new software by June 30th.

Here in Connecticut, public entities are supposed to put contracts, especially for expensive items like major software systems, out to bid and then bring together a broad-based team of users to identify what is really needed and which product would best meet those needs.

But not Paul Vallas.

With no broad-based process and apparently little to no input from the people who are going to use the new system, the Vallas team dumped the existing “Clarity” software package for the one called Easy IEP.

Vallas’ action raises a number of questions;

First, after checking with a number of Bridgeport’s special education teachers, there appear to have been no major problems with the Clarity system, certainly none that would require an immediate and expensive shift to a completely new system.

Second, even if Bridgeport was going to make a change in software systems, there doesn’t appear to have been consideration of an alternative package called IEP Direct, a system that is used by many towns across Connecticut. It would be far more likely that any incoming guidance counselors and teachers would have already been trained on using IEP Direct, which, in turn, would have saved Bridgeport time and money. IEP Direct also provides a system that is specifically customized for Connecticut.

Third, while PGC is certainly a well-known consulting group, especially in the “education reform” community, any time consultants recommend that the best solution to a problem is to purchase a product that they own, extra due diligence is required. Vallas and PGC did this in Philadelphia and now they did it again in Bridgeport. Yet there has been very little discussion in a public setting about why this was the most appropriate course of action.

Finally, another question that remains unanswered is who authorized the hiring of PGC and who is paying their bill?