As summer melts over Hartford Public Schools, some students are home hanging their new diplomas on the wall, whether they be deserved or underserved.  Other students are home and not thinking about school, which is what many do during the school year.  Other students are anticipating participating in the plethora of summer “enrichment” programs offered by numerous HPS partners.

Each summer, Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez writes checks to various non-profits/for-profits in or around the city to provide summer programming to Hartford students.  These programs focus on such things as emotional development and wellness, college/career exploration, students transitioning to high school, credit recovery (“Sometimes Ten Months Just Isn’t Enough”), and some where along the way the words math, reading, and science are at least mentioned.

In 2023, HPS handed out eight board of education approved contracts totaling more than a half-million dollars to organizations tasked with giving Hartford students a “summer experience.”  In 2022, more than a quarter of a million dollars was board approved for six partners to engage Hartford students over the summer.  The individual summer contracts approved over the last two years range from $48,100 to $150,000.  Board approval is needed for any contract which meets or exceeds a $50,000 threshold (the $48,100 contract was awarded to Catholic Charities in 2022 but approved by the board en masse with the other 2022 contracts.  This is the only summer contract approved by the board over the past two years for less than $50,000).

Each year before final board approval, the district prepares a slide-rich presentation for the board which contains a lot of rhetoric and a little detail about the reason for and scope of the summer programs.  The board is told that each contract awardee participated in the city of Hartford’s RFP (Request for Proposal) process through the “Planet Bids” web portal.  A search of that system returns the RFP bid process for the 2022 summer program contracts (#6092) and for 2023 (#6146).

There was no RFP bid process for providing summer programs for HPS students for the summer of 2024 found through the search of the Planet Bids portal.

On July 12, 2024, Torres-Rodriguez’s little online “Superintendent Update” newsletter announced the beginning of this year’s summer programming.  In that announcement it states that community partners The Village, Camp Courant, OPMAD (Organized Parents Make a Difference), and the Boys and Girls Club will be providing this summer’s enrichment programs.

These four local partners have received board approved contracts to provide summer programs to Hartford students in each of the previous two years (HPS documents do not show a contract awarded to the Boys and Girls Club when the others were approved by the board in 2022).  The Village has received board approved contracts of $50,000 and $70,000 for 2022 and 2023 respectively; Camp Courant, $50,000 and $75,000, OPMAD, $50,000 and $150,000, and the Boys and Girls Club received $63,000 in 2023.

Four outside vendors providing summer programs to HPS students in 2024 have participated in a city run RFP process in 2022 and 2023 and have each received board approved contracts worth over $50,000 individually over the past two years.  There was no RFP process for HPS’ summer enrichment programs this year.  There has been no board meeting on HPS’ pending 2024 summer programs.  There has been no contract presented to the board for approval for the vendors who will be providing the 2024 summer programs, yet the superintendent reports that they are providing those services.

Why wasn’t there an RFP process run for HPS summer programming this year as was done in each of the past two years?

Are the charitable organizations which provide the summer programming being charitable and charging HPS less than what they have over previous years, thereby avoiding board approval?

Has OPMAD, which was paid $150,000 for summer programming last year, given HPS a nearly 70% discount and charged less than $50,000 for summer programming this year?

Or is Torres-Rodriguez ignoring board approval and writing out checks worth more than $50,000 to outside organizations?

These are questions state and local auditors ought to be asking of HPS.

As an aside to the questionable financial shenanigans involved in these summer programs, collaboration with outside partners is a vital piece of the Student Assistance Program (SAP) model.  In 2010, Torres-Rodriguez co-authored a report on the results of an SAP study.  In it, it is stated that “there is little research on SAP implementation and whether SAPs function as intended.”  

During a May 4, 2023 HPS board meeting concerning the summer program issue, Board Member Walker raised a question to which he received an incredible answer.  Mr. Walker wanted to know if students who attend the summer programs are tracked into the next school year’s first semester to show that the summer learning has had some effect. 

Ms. Nuchette Black-Burke, then Chief Outreach Officer for Family and Community Partnerships at HPS (Black-Burke is no longer being listed as being part of the superintendent’s cabinet), speaking for the superintendent, replied that although there has been some discussion on how to do that, the district has not come up with a system to track learning growth by those who went through summer learning programs.   So, while Torres-Rodriguez co-authored a study 14 years ago that said there was little data to prove the effectiveness of SAPs, she contracts with SAPs today without having a system in place to track the effectiveness of the SAPs.  My head is spinning, how about yours?

And with that, summer melts over Hartford Public Schools.