State Opens Investigation into MLK Building Sale
From the Seattle Times and boy, these reporters pull no punches after they explain how Bush offered 3 times the money ($9.7M leased or $3.75 purchased) as First AME church who offered $2.4M (mostly in taxpayer dollars). The reporters lay out the oddities:
• The district staff changed the way it handled and evaluated offers for the building, which pushed the church's proposal to the head of the pack.
• Then-Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson shot down The Bush School's high offer, at the same time urging voters to pass a $48 million levy.
• One former district employee told The Seattle Times that her boss, Fred Stephens, director of the district's property division and an influential First AME congregant, was determined as early as 2007 to help the church get the school property.
• The district did little to investigate the accuracy of the church's proposal — while closely scrutinizing and ultimately rejecting a similar, competing bid from another community group.
Meanwhile, First AME made grand claims about its plans for the 1.9-acre site.
The story goes on to explain that even 7 months after the sale, First AME has just one tenant. They have no summer school program in place, just a summer day-care program run by another agency. The church is also backpedaling over neighborhood use of the playground, citing liability concerns.
I didn't know this but in spring 209, the Legislature had put aside $1M for a nonprofit to buy the school. At that point, the district opened up the bidding process.
The article also brings up issues surrounding former Facilities head, Fred Stephens.
In early 2007, months after the school was shut, Stephens called a meeting with two employees, telling them, "We have to get that property into the hands of the church," according to Eleanor Trainor, a former capital-projects community liaison who was at the meeting.
(I remember Eleanor and she was a smart cookie. It was loss when she left the district.)
Another familiar player comes into the mix - facilities legal counsel, Ron English. He says he verbally asked Fred Stephens to recuse himself because of Fred's long-time ties to First AME. Naturally, there is no record because it was face-to-face. You would have thought English might think to do this in writing and cc someone.
English also did something the district had never done before:
In an unprecedented move, English posted the bids online for anyone to see. English then invited all the bidders to "refine" their proposals.
CCC made no changes, but First AME beefed up its proposal. It eventually included cooking classes and a computer lab, which mirrored CCC's proposal.
The CCC (Citizens for a Community Center) noted that by then several e-mails had been cc'ed to Fred Stephens. English said the info in those emails was public so it was okay. (If Fred was out of the loop, he should have been out of the loop and HE could find the info himself. I'd bet that the conversation between Fred and Ron included the words from Fred, "keep me informed.")
Here's where it gets interesting for Mr. English:
The next month, English concluded that CCC and First AME, as low bidders, did not meet the requirement to provide 50 percent of the space for youth programs or social services. Therefore, The Bush School's high bid was the best choice, according to a draft analysis, which he prepared.
But Bush never got the building. English said he can't remember why.
He can't remember why? It's his job to know why.
Then, in spring 2010, another legislator, Adam Kline, along with two others, secured another $1.5M for a non-profit to buy MLK. So it went back to bidding except English changed the formula.
This time, however, English went by a different formula and determined that First AME's proposal offered the most support for youth education, even though the church was the lowest bidder.
Asked by The Times how he made that call, English said some of his analysis involved guesswork. He couldn't explain how he verified the accuracy of the groups' claims of support for youth education.
Yet, English challenged the CCC proposal and held it to different standards. For example, he questioned the group about some youth programs it planned to offer — and disqualified one that included helping adults. English acknowledged he did not fact-check key components of the First AME proposal.
And this as well:
The sales agreement requires the owner to use half the property to support youth education for 40 years or risk financial penalties. English said the district does not keep tabs on property owners, such as First AME, to see if they use the buildings as promised.
What!? If these requirements are key to the sale, and to a sale at a lower amount than the market will pay, the district should be keeping track of what happens.
This is real money. I can't believe the Board lets this stuff happen.
The story has over 100 comments which is a large number for any story
Thank you to Stu for this alert.
• The district staff changed the way it handled and evaluated offers for the building, which pushed the church's proposal to the head of the pack.
• Then-Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson shot down The Bush School's high offer, at the same time urging voters to pass a $48 million levy.
• One former district employee told The Seattle Times that her boss, Fred Stephens, director of the district's property division and an influential First AME congregant, was determined as early as 2007 to help the church get the school property.
• The district did little to investigate the accuracy of the church's proposal — while closely scrutinizing and ultimately rejecting a similar, competing bid from another community group.
Meanwhile, First AME made grand claims about its plans for the 1.9-acre site.
The story goes on to explain that even 7 months after the sale, First AME has just one tenant. They have no summer school program in place, just a summer day-care program run by another agency. The church is also backpedaling over neighborhood use of the playground, citing liability concerns.
I didn't know this but in spring 209, the Legislature had put aside $1M for a nonprofit to buy the school. At that point, the district opened up the bidding process.
The article also brings up issues surrounding former Facilities head, Fred Stephens.
In early 2007, months after the school was shut, Stephens called a meeting with two employees, telling them, "We have to get that property into the hands of the church," according to Eleanor Trainor, a former capital-projects community liaison who was at the meeting.
(I remember Eleanor and she was a smart cookie. It was loss when she left the district.)
Another familiar player comes into the mix - facilities legal counsel, Ron English. He says he verbally asked Fred Stephens to recuse himself because of Fred's long-time ties to First AME. Naturally, there is no record because it was face-to-face. You would have thought English might think to do this in writing and cc someone.
English also did something the district had never done before:
In an unprecedented move, English posted the bids online for anyone to see. English then invited all the bidders to "refine" their proposals.
CCC made no changes, but First AME beefed up its proposal. It eventually included cooking classes and a computer lab, which mirrored CCC's proposal.
The CCC (Citizens for a Community Center) noted that by then several e-mails had been cc'ed to Fred Stephens. English said the info in those emails was public so it was okay. (If Fred was out of the loop, he should have been out of the loop and HE could find the info himself. I'd bet that the conversation between Fred and Ron included the words from Fred, "keep me informed.")
Here's where it gets interesting for Mr. English:
The next month, English concluded that CCC and First AME, as low bidders, did not meet the requirement to provide 50 percent of the space for youth programs or social services. Therefore, The Bush School's high bid was the best choice, according to a draft analysis, which he prepared.
But Bush never got the building. English said he can't remember why.
He can't remember why? It's his job to know why.
Then, in spring 2010, another legislator, Adam Kline, along with two others, secured another $1.5M for a non-profit to buy MLK. So it went back to bidding except English changed the formula.
This time, however, English went by a different formula and determined that First AME's proposal offered the most support for youth education, even though the church was the lowest bidder.
Asked by The Times how he made that call, English said some of his analysis involved guesswork. He couldn't explain how he verified the accuracy of the groups' claims of support for youth education.
Yet, English challenged the CCC proposal and held it to different standards. For example, he questioned the group about some youth programs it planned to offer — and disqualified one that included helping adults. English acknowledged he did not fact-check key components of the First AME proposal.
And this as well:
The sales agreement requires the owner to use half the property to support youth education for 40 years or risk financial penalties. English said the district does not keep tabs on property owners, such as First AME, to see if they use the buildings as promised.
What!? If these requirements are key to the sale, and to a sale at a lower amount than the market will pay, the district should be keeping track of what happens.
This is real money. I can't believe the Board lets this stuff happen.
The story has over 100 comments which is a large number for any story
Thank you to Stu for this alert.
Comments
Every day, our sacrifice and decision is validated when I see the sorry state of Seattle Public Schools. I want to support public education, and feel it is essential to a strong society, and I do. But I cannot support this District's administration—from downtown to the Board.
Problem is, I don't see any solutions beyond a true revolution of some kind. I am hoping this article and investigation will finally open the eyes of the general public to the very serious problems Seattle has.
SolvayGirl
Wayne
Thank you Seattle Times!
The amount of money the district lost by not selling it to the Bush School ($7.3 mil) dwarfs the amount lost in the Pottergate scandal ($1.8 mil). So if heads rolled for Pottergate, heads should roll for this too.
Fred Stephens is once again a key figure in a major scandal (why is he still working for the Comm. Dept. & Locke?)
This is yet another scandalous part of Goodloe-Johnson's legacy. Everyone should have been suspicious when she justified the sale by saying "community" is more important than cash (when did she ever care about community?). See: Maria Goodloe-Johnson, Despite Budget Shortfall, Favors Community Spirit Over Cash in Selling Martin Luther King Elementary
This is yet another failure by the current school board to question SPS admin. Instead, the board once again rubber-stamped a very bad proposal from MGJ. (And they want to be reelected?) Did a single board member ask a single question about why SPS was choosing the lowest bidder at the same time it was slashing at our kids' schools and RIFing teachers?
Meanwhile we have had ed reform leadership at SPS (including MGJ) and at the state level who have wanted to turn all the necessary tricks (charters, merit pay, union-busting) to make our state qualify for "Race to the Top" money from the Obama administration, which would only have been worth less than $100 per student, when right here with the MLK sale, MGJ and co could have wrangled $7.3 million for our district. None of this makes any sense or cents.
Where was the media when all of this was happening? This Times article is good as far as it goes, but it's more than a little late. This deal never passed the smell test and should be revoked. Where were Varner and Shaw when all this was happening?
Chris Jackins is right: SPS has a terrible history of underselling its properties.
Melissa or Charlie, can you add TFA to the key words of that thread, so that when the Times eventually picks this story up too (ha ha), they can easily connect the dots, especially regarding all the very telling UW emails you obtained?
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=28765366&postID=5600042058263972155
I urge the rest of readers on this MLK thread to put your "investigation" hats on and read the most recent TFA stuff, too.
What would we do without this blog!
-skeptical-
and one may find a connection here.
The Board is working hard on getting back the trust of the public and its employees. Cough! Cough! Cough!
Students take another shot for Central Admin.
Agreed, which begs the question, how do we keep this from happening again?
As with the Potter affair, I think simple promises of better oversight are not sufficient. We need some significant institutional change.
I'm not sure what that would be, but clearly we need an honest broker to vet these deals. Maybe the people (SPS) who write the criteria for the sale should not be doing the evaluation as well?
Or maybe the district should just stop selling property.
-HELLO Goodwill and private school!
For God's sake, how many times will the district be embarrassed by this kind of thing?
How can this district EVER get on track when it's constant issues like this one that seem to drive the conversation?
How is it, like the Martin Floe incident, that the district NEVER steps back and says, "How will this look? Does it pass the smell test? What will be our response to any feedback/blow-back?" It's like they are tone-deaf.
Had he done all of these things, he still would not be in violation of the District's Ethics Policy. That's how narrow and weak the Ethics Policy is.
Clearly, things need to change on many fronts at SPS - replacing the Board is without question - I can only hope that yet another widely publicized poor Audit result will shake the leadership enough to actually DO something about it - it's clear from the comments on the Times they are losing levy votes right and left. What does it take to open their eyes that just booting MGJ out the door isn't enough?
waiting for the other other shoe to drop..
"To try to get to the bottom of the controversial sale of Martin Luther King Elementary School, The Seattle Times obtained hundreds of documents and more than 1,000 of Fred Stephens' emails from the Seattle school district. Officials said they could retrieve emails only back to January 2009.
The state auditor's staff, however, can cast a wider net. It is sweeping up and reviewing emails for School Board members, former Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson and all employees in the facilities department. The auditor's efforts do not require the district to individually review each email for possible redactions, as it did over the past two months with The Times' public-records requests"
"The sale of MLK was the first test of a revised School Board policy, one that allowed it to sell an empty school to the low bidder if the bidder agreed to set aside at least 50 percent of the building to support youth education or social services."
When did that happen? Whose idea was it? That and the legislative money suggests an elaborate plan with a lot of players.
"not fact-checking key components" is a way of life for the Seattle school board. I on several occasions did the fact checking for the school board on flawed School Board Action Reports submitted to the Board by the Administration. The net result of my work was "total disregard for the facts submitted" by at least 4 school board members on every occasion when it came time to vote on proposals.
The Board also chose to ignore Meg Diaz when it came to decision making as well.
There is an SPS tradition of ignoring evidence and choosing to do whatever "whim" dictates.
"To improve a system requires the intelligent application of relevant data."
-- thus the SPS is really short on improvement but long on spending. (Same can be said for most of what comes from Arne Duncan ... Race to the Bank .. No Vendor Left Behind.. myriad of testing that will accompany the Common Core State Standards)
-----------
HUGE CASE in POINT .... NTN $800,000 Cleveland STEM contract .... and the whole funding fiasco surrounding the Cleveland STEM option / New Student Assignment Plan.
There are so many pieces of deception in this fiasco it is hard to tell where to start in explaining the various levels of irresponsible and illegal activity.
Current School Board President Sundquist gets the "Special Recognition Award for extraordinary deception" ... He thanked the community for bringing errors made in the original approval done in February to the attention of the Board ...... He gave this thanks only after the community spent $240 to file an appeal of the Board's original approval on NTN SBAC #1. --- It took legal action to get Steve to notice facts....
Then came SBAC NTN #2 ... the one based on a document that masquerading as the original memo sent to the Board by Eric Anderson.... The School Board Action Report NTN #2 came from CAO Enfield and MGJ ... just like SBAC #1. .... In this appeal of NTN #2 as usual the documents submitted to the court as required by the appeal were never certified to be correct, this happens every time. ..... But in NTN #2 the documents submitted contained the BOGUS Anderson memo on which the School Board Action Report was based. This constitutes fraud (Class C felony forgery)... Dr. Enfield was an author of the Action Report and was the School Official that submitted the Bogus Document to the Court.
All of this was reported to the School Board, which did nothing..... in fact the Board voted 6-1 to make Enfield interim-superintendent having full knowledge of this forgery.
Charlie is absolutely correct. These four directors, Sundquist, Maier, Carr, and Martin-Morris should not be reelected. In fact they should not even be filing for reelection this week.
These four also regularly disregarded evidence and gave bogus explanations for their votes on several "rubber-stamping" approvals. "not fact-checking key components" is a way of life for the Seattle school board.
I thought state law required at least 3 years worth of emails ..... It is now June 2011.... Looks like emails need to be available back to at least June 2008. In fact why would the district toss email records at all. With providing all those laptops for Cleveland STEM are they unable to afford hard drive storage with back up for emails?
Yes, I am pleased to see the ST reporting this. But they are only doing so because of the SAO investigation. They had plenty of independent information to report on the fishy nature of this sale and they make themselves look good by saying how they got all these documents and emails, but really, would they have said anything were it not for the SAO report? Seriously, would it have compromised the SAO investigation if they had written one editorial connecting this to the Pottergate folks and questioning the sale?
Maybe some of the incumbents can be discouraged from running for re-election.
Regarding emails, I have run into the same BS, including tampering with To: From: fields etc. The district is required to preserve records for the Superintendent and her "executive management team" according to the State archival requirements:
On pg 6
WV: disms
You can't expect change until some individual or group of individuals get caught in an act for which they can be held criminally liable. If those people are prosecuted and found guilty, you can count on the school system "straightening up" by imposing new rules and regulations that make almost everything more difficult and time consuming to accomplish. Then, two or three years later, when the heat has died down, the hanky panky will begin again. I sure wish I could predict that a new board would make difference, but it won't.
The Favorite One
http://www.seattleschools.org/area/policies/h/H02.01.pdf
a reader
Let's keep hammering the Board angle. The review and vote by the Board was the one and only daylighting of the transaction. The Board review of the deal was when informed and critical eyes were supposed to review it from the community's perspective. They didn't do their job.
--a reader --
From FY2008 audit working papers
"Wow, SPS engages in typical left wing, 'race and social justice' scamming and all the liberals here think it was Gates/TFA/Arnie Duncan who f@rted."
OK, I'll bite. My Clif notes say:
"White people making money to the detriment of poor & minority children. People of color getting assets to the detriment poor and minority children."
Sounds like equality for grownups to me.
For me, there are two sources of humor in the anonymous post
First, the suggestion that any kind of scamming by the District is tolerated here - "left wing 'race and social justice' scamming" or any other type. It really amuses me that anyone thinks this blog is filled with District apologists.
Second, the fourth-grade timidity over writing the word "fart". As if we would censor it for being too vulgar for our delicate audience.
Actually, there's a third source - concern over the comment getting deleted for the word "fart" but no concern about the comment getting deleted for breaking our one and only rule.
I don't know what will happen with the Families and Education Levy (I plan to vote for it) but I have no hope left that the District won't be involved in any number of sordid mismanagement swamps between now and then. They will. They refuse to manage.
My only small consolation is that this particular steaming pile is, in fact, left over from MGJ. While I have no reason to think that any of the slimies who pulled it off (other than Mr. Stephens, MGJ and Don Kennedy) are gone, and that the ones remaining wouldn't hesitate to do it again -- it still helps a little that this is part of the OLD damage (as opposed to NEW damage that may be being created under Dr. Enfield).
ken berry
Harium wanted the sale to go to CCC.
All other board members voted "yes" to First AME,
Tina
I know Linda Shaw and Lynne Varner and like and respect them. I sometimes pass info onto to them in hopes that something might get written. That I sometimes find their work late or lacking, well, it's mostly true.
I have often stated that other people, like Chris Jackins, the quiet but firm district watchdog who was here long before me, raised issues on this one.
The Times is nearly always late to the party. There are people who raise the red flags to both the Times and the Board and nothing happens until they decide it's important. Sorry but it's true.
And NONE of this turned at HAIR at the ST -- UNTIL the SAO decided to audit the deal for irregularities. And you are concerned that we are not all bowing and scraping gratefully at the ST's feet for exposing this? It would NEVER have been looked at, but for the audit.
Yes, I am happy they finally covered it. No, I am not impressed by the timing, or by the fact that it took an SAO audit to get it covered.
I don't think they have covered it well at all -- MGJ's and her spouse's involvement with the church; the fact that in 2008 (after the school closed, but before the bidding process commenced) Stephens may have authored the changes to the policy that used to require sales to the highest bidder, which had the effect of permitting his church to come in, submit a weak, cheap, flabby, unsubstantiated bid that cost the District millions, has never benefited a single child (since the church has reneged on every program promise), and has benefited NO ONE except the church itself.
Precisely.
& re Ron English? He has practiced CYA for years, even before he came to SSD ( & I expect even before he was at Wppss).
Know yerself out.