Outrage at $700,000 unused school study

Parents and citizen advocates yesterday expressed outrage at news that the Philadelphia School District spent $700,000 on a management audit that then was left unread by top officials for nearly a year.

"It's pitiful that they lost $700,000 and they haven't read the report. Make it available to us and maybe we can make sense of it," said the Rev. Leroi Simmons, a Germantown minister who volunteers at Germantown High School.

Gov. Rendell's spokesman, Chuck Ardo, said the governor, too, was concerned by the handling of the audit, suggesting it offered support for the creation of a managing director's position to oversee finances and operations. Last month, Rendell said his budget secretary Michael Masch could serve in that role.

"This entire episode simply highlights the need for more stringent oversight," Ardo said. "This will once again make him think about the issue."

District spokeswoman Cecilia Cummings said School Reform Commissioners and interim chief executive officer Tom Brady were reviewing the report, which the district again refused to make public. The district's legal counsel is considering The Inquirer's request for the document.

At issue is the results of a study that was commissioned in 2005 by the School Reform Commission.

The study was conducted by Noreen Timoney, a management and organizational consultant and wife of former Police Commissioner John F. Timoney, and Evergreen Solutions, a Florida-based consulting firm.

The consultants produced the report and provided other work products from the study to the district after the commission stopped funding their work last November. By that time, the cost to the district - $541,000 for Evergreen and nearly $156,000 for Timoney - was equal to the salaries and benefits of 13 beginning teachers.

Despite the time and money spent on the project, no top district officials seemed to have taken time to review the results.

But parents and advocates say the district should release any reports generated by the project.

Greg Wade, president of the Home and School Council, the district's parents group, said the district has stopped him from spending district funds on doughnuts and coffee for parents who attend meetings as volunteers. Yet, hundreds of thousands were spent for a project that has gone nowhere, he said.

"They basically threw $700,000 away, because nobody really knows what's going on with this report. It just makes you sick to your stomach," Wade said.

"It's about time they realize that we're the real stakeholders. They seem to think it's their little private business. It's not a private business by any means."

Jacqueline Barnett, Mayor Street's education secretary, defended the School Reform Commission, saying that the report probably got lost in the tumult of last fall when a $73.3 million deficit was discovered. The district endured further turmoil in the spring and summer when top district administrators, including former CEO Paul Vallas, left and Commission Chairman James Nevels resigned.

Of the report, she said: "We should look at it and be informed by it."

Timoney had said in an interview last week that she found the district's management and operations disorganized.

Jerry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, said the district should release the report.

"Why would you spend that kind of money and keep it a secret?" Jordan asserted.

"That money would have gone a long way toward assuring that hundreds of children would have had a better opportunity to be educated in a classroom with smaller class sizes."

Parent Gerald Wright, a member of Parents United for Public Education whose children attend John S. Jenks School in Chestnut Hill, said the district needed to take a closer look at its contracts and make sure it is getting its money's worth.

"The surprising thing to me was that so much money could be spent before anyone decided to take a look at it," he said. "The fact that we still don't know what that bought us is another part of the problem . . . Who does the quality assurance?"

Simmons, of the Germantown clergy, said he has faith in the newly appointed commission chairwoman Sandra Dungee Glenn.

"I'm just so hoping that the ship is not so far out of the way that she can't steer it back," he said.

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