Watching the leadership folks at Hartford Public Schools work raises the question, are they really this dim-witted or are they trying to hide the real story?  While the latter part of this question has its moments of justification, there is a healthy dose of both in most things processed behind the scenes at HPS.

The latest bit of convenient incompetence occurred at the Board of Education’s unscheduled Teaching & Learning Committee meeting this past week.  Prior to shredding logic, truth, justice, and the American way in attacking the meeting’s agenda, Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez announced HPS’ New Coke, a new “pilot” process for bringing contracts before the Board.

Based on feedback from Board members, such as Member Browdy who leads the Board in a lonely fight for accountability, the Superintendent announced that rather than using the standard attention diverting PDF slide show to present proposals from outside third parties looking to take advantage of urban school district bank accounts, she and her central office minions have created a “Proposed Contract Summary” template which will provide for “an easier and transparent” (yes, she said the word “transparent”) sharing of “key” information with the Board about the contract being proposed.

The initial unveiling of this new template then occurred as the three members of the Board attending the meeting were propagandized about the whys of approving a contract for a group called “Partners for Educational Leadership (PEL).”  Please click this link to open a PDF of the Proposed Contract Summary presented to the Board for this contract proposal.  I’ll wait.

The template presents some basic and “key” information in an easy-to-understand table with sections labeled as Contract Purpose, Reason for Contracting, Financials, and Vendor Selection, to name just a few.  Looks good, said Gilligan to the Skipper.

But then we turn to page two and HPS’ leadership MO snatches away our good feelings like a high schooler’s mother announcing she will be chaperoning his first date.

In the section ostensibly included to show how the vendor’s success (or failure) will be measured and labeled “Measures,” and described as “What will be monitored to determine if objectives are being met (include both the measures and the targeted improvement),” to which the Superintendent stated contains “key data points,” there are four instances where the vendor’s performance will be measured based on a certain percentage measurement of how participants are taking to the program.

That’s fine and dandy, the issue is that in each of the four instances a specific percentage is not entered, they are blank!  For example: “___ % of participants who feel prepared to take on the role of a first-year principal…”  This, according to the Superintendent, represents a “key data point” in determining the vendor’s success.  Tell us, what percentage of participants are you expecting to report favorable feelings?  I can see it now, a member of the Superintendent’s team will stand before the Board and issue their standard response to data requests, “We don’t have that with us, but we will get it to you.”  This is like a carpenter on a ladder hollering to his assistant on the ground, “cut me ___ inches off of that 2x4.”  This construction crew will never make Angie’s List.

Looking further into this contract proposal template, we see no past data concerning the vendor’s work with HPS or from work with other school districts through which the Board could feel positive about approving this contract.  There is a section labeled “Vendor Experience” and described as, “What prior successful experience does this vendor have meeting similar objectives.”  The information here matches the verbal measurements of success given by PEL’s Executive Director Richard Lemons (who shares a Yale employment connection with Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez).  Lemons stated that PEL has “pretty strong evidence” of success, they have received “incredibly high reviews” from districts, and they have “documented improved practices” from districts.  “Pretty strong,” “incredibly high,” and “documented” are great adjectives but they do not tell us how many inches to cut off that 2x4!  Just cut off a “little bit” and we’ll be good to go.

Incredibly ridiculous.

This lack of data transparency included in this Proposed Contract Summary which the Superintendent stated is built for the purpose of “transparency,” continued with the contract summary for the next item on the agenda, a contract continuation for the group Revisions Learning (RL).

Although, as stated by the Superintendent during the meeting, RL has been receiving contracts from HPS for services to further student achievement at Hartford High and/or McDonough Middle over the last 4 years, there is not one shred of data included in the Superintendent’s little Proposed Contract Summary to show past performance (if you saw that data, you would understand why it’s not being shown during a sales pitch for another contract).  However, included in the section labeled “Stakeholder Engagement,” the Superintendent does tell us that “2 parents wrote letters of support when ReVISION Learning contract was first approved.”  Two.  Great.  And, based on this Proposed Contract Summary and its “transparency” of “key data points,” so called, the Superintendents states that Revisions Learning will be coming back for contract renewal for the next three years.

All of this data-less transparency becomes more of an incredibly ridiculous joke when the Superintendent presents information for the third item on the agenda, the acceptance of funds for Hartford’s Adult Education program.

Now, the Adult Ed program is required by state statute and the funds are approved and directed to the program by the state, the Board’s approval is not necessary, but they are informed of the process.  However, the Superintendent also used the new Proposed Contract Summary template for this presentation as  away to inform the Board.  And I can’t stop laughing.  Low and behold, there we are, past data on the Adult Ed program!  Data showing how many graduates they have had in each of the past 5 years!

Of the three Proposed Contract Summaries presented to the Board at this meeting, the only one which provided past performance data was the one which past performance was not necessary to the presentation!  Where the Board’s discretion is required to approve or disapprove of a contract with a vendor, no past performance data is included!

When the meeting’s participants “popcorned” around the Brady Bunch squares in the Zoom meeting window to introduce themselves, the Superintendent introduced herself as “the proud Superintendent of Hartford Public Schools.”  Proud, like Captain of the Titanic proud.