Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
Federal authorities are reported to be investigating the manner in which the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) handled a multimillion dollar bid whose purpose was to hire a consultant to oversee the Jefferson County School District during its transition to independence after five years of rule by a South Florida-based charter organization.
The Tampa Bay Times reports that federal prosecutors in Gainesville have requested “scores of documents — including correspondence between school officials, charter school lobbyists and former top leaders in DeSantis’ education department” to determine how the FDOE “may have steered a contract to help run the school district toward a former GOP state representative and colleague of former Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, a top education ally of the governor.”
The federal subpoena, which the Times and Miami Herald obtained by a public records request, reportedly does not mention Corcoran, who is now interim president of New College of Florida in Sarasota.
The subpoena, however, names Jacob Oliva, formerly the FDOE K-12 chancellor and now secretary of the Arkansas Department of Education; Melissa Ramsey, former FDOE vice chancellor for strategic development, who has since resigned; and Suzanne Pridgeon, FDOE commissioner for finance and operations.
The incident under scrutiny is one that the DeSantis administration promised to investigate last year when it surfaced, but that it never did, according to The Times. Or, if such an investigation was conducted, the results have never been made public.
The focus of the federal investigation is a plan that the FDOE hatched in 2021 to have a consultant firm oversee the school district for three years after it regained control of the schools from Somerset Academy Inc.
Somerset, a private South Florida-based charter organization, was given control of the schools in 2017 because of students’ poor academic performance and the district’s overall financial woes. Somerset’s stated goal was to turn around the schools and improve students’ general academic performance, a mission that it never really fulfilled.
The plan originally was for Somerset to operate the schools for five years and then return them to the district. In 2021, however, near to when the transition was supposed to take place, the FDOE came up with a new plan to have an outside consultant oversee the district for another three years.
At the time that the FDOE was contemplating a consultants’ services, its representatives were giving local school officials mixed signals, saying on the one hand that the district might require further outside assistance during the transition, and on the other intimating that the district would be able to go it alone if it prepared an appropriate enough transition plan.
The controversy came to light when the Times/Herald revealed two instances in which the FDOE had attempted to solicit bids to oversee the district’s transition period from “vendors with ties to the DeSantis administration and Corcoran” or the FDOE itself. According to the FDOE plan, the district was to pay for the consultant’s services from the $4 million that it was slated to receive from the federal government in coronavirus relief funding.
The alleged bid-rigging involved a short-notice request by the FDOE that produced only one respondent. This vendor was MGT Consulting, a Tampa-based company whose founder, Trey Traviesa, was a former GOP state representative with ties to Corcoran, according to The Times. MGT’s bid to help the district during its transition was nearly $2.5 million.
At the time, reports published in the Miami Herald suggested that the bid had been “tailored specifically to MGT, and that the company was given prior knowledge surrounding the project’s criteria.”
MGT, for its part, claimed that it had gotten involved at the request of FDOE staff, according to news reports at the time. Meanwhile, the FDOE employee who had drafted the bid proposal told investigators that the model for the bid had come from a proposed agreement between MGT and the FDOE. The employee also allegedly said that Oliva had provided the model document.
Noteworthy, on Nov. 1, 2021, a week before the state opened the proposal for bids, the FDOE hosted a transition plan meeting in Tallahassee that included School Superintendent Eydie Tricquet, a Somerset representative and the head of MGT. It also included charter lobbyist Ralph Arza, a former legislator whose brother and sister-in-law worked at Somerset in Jefferson County.
Interestingly, on Nov. 8, 2021, the day that the request for big quotes was issued, Tricquet told the school board that state officials had already informed her that MGT had been selected and had a contract. This was seven days before the Nov. 15 deadline for the submission of the bids on the contract.
MGT ultimately did not get the contract. Soon after, however, the FDOE rebid the service when a company formed by two of its senior officials and the chair of the State Board of Education bid on the lucrative contract.
The two FDOE officials were Oliva and Ramsey. Both these individuals had in fact been advising school officials here on the transition process. The State Board of Education chair and third member of the newly formed company was Andy Tuck, a Central Florida citrus grower. Their company, formed in August 2021, was called Strategic Initiatives Partners (SIP). Its bid for the contract was $1.8 million for a year of work.
When the scandal came to light, the FDOE’s inspector general initiated an internal investigation of SIP to determine if its bid involved a conflict-of-interest. In the course of the investigation, Ramsey and Tuck resigned their posts and Oliva, who was cleared of wrongdoing, remained with the FDOE. The investigation, however, never looked into the alleged irregularities with MGT’s bid, according to The Times reports. And ultimately the FDOE dropped the idea of a consultant under pressure.
Federal authorities now, The Times reports, want to know exactly what transpired in the meeting involving MGT Consulting, Tricquet, Somerset representatives, and Arza.
All the while that the FDOE looked for a consultant for the transition, its team of Oliva, Ramsey and Pridgeon, then deputy commissioner of finances and operations, were advising the school district on the transition and promising to help it formulate a transition plan to regain the schools.
In August 2021, the FDOE team brought long-awaited news that the transition was expected to proceed, and that some components were already in place, including the hiring of Jackie Pons as transition principal. The district’s finances and fund balance were also in good shape, Pridgeon reported. And Somerset was aware of the transition and on-board with working to help facilitate the change, Oliva said.
The team’s abiding message was that the school board and administration still had much work to do to ensure the transition. Meaning that a vision plan would have to be developed, a budget established, policies set or updated, and a great many other details accomplished in order for the State Board of Education to approve the changeover.
If the necessary steps failed to take place, it could well be that Somerset or another like entity would continue to operate the schools, Oliva said. But even if the transition steps were taken, it might still require a gradual process that would entail the hiring of an external consultant to oversee the district in the interim, he said.
Oliva promised both to keep the school board abreast of the transition’s progress and to be brutally honest if the district failed to meet the expectations. He stressed that the district, Somerset and FDOE would have to work closely together to ensure the transition’s success.
Ramsey echoed Oliva’s points, stating that it was time for the development of a transition plan that the FDOE team could take to the state board.
“We are the liaison to make sure that you have a plan that is successful,” Ramsey said. “We will steer you straight.”
Summarized Oliva: “If this board isn’t comfortable with the plan that the FDOE, Somerset and the district leadership comes up with, you need to tell us. We need to be arm-in-arm and in total fidelity on this.”
And that was the last time that the FDOE leadership team visited the school board, despite repeated invitations from Tricquet. Indeed, it became something of a joke whether the FDOE would ever return, as every time that the team was scheduled to come, it would cancel at the last minute.
The next time that the school board heard directly from the FDOE was when the agency presented it with a done deal in the form of an Invitation to Negotiate (ITN) on consultant’s contract at the start of 2022.
The proposal called for the FDOE to pay for the hired consultant through Sept. 30, 2022, at which time the district would have to assume the cost of the service from its $4 million in federal coronavirus dollars.
That’s when the proverbial stuff hit the fan, triggering complaints from legislators and an internal investigation by the FDOE.
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