Our Piece of the Pie (OPP) is a Hartford non-profit with $8 million in annual revenue (nearly 10% of that pays the salaries of five OPP executives).  Lifelong Hartford resident and career non-profit executive Hector Rivera is the CEO of OPP and current Hartford city council member Amilcar Hernandez is the group’s financial director.

OPP operates Opportunity Academy (OA) in Hartford.  OA is an “alternative education” school where students choose “how they learn” and decide “what their assignments are about.”  OA provides personal growth, academic, and workforce programs to district school students, 17-years old and older, who have fallen off the rails, are disengaged, and fixin to be lifelong wards of the state.

A few members of the illegitimate Hartford Board of Education met recently to feign responsibility for vetting contracts handed out by Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez and Hartford Public Schools to outside partners and to lay the groundwork for approving a $660,000 contract to OPP for the “administrative” and “tuition” costs associated with HPS sending up to 75 “students” to OA.  With this new contract, HPS will have paid $3.4 million to OPP over the last 5 years.

Questions arise as to who is getting a piece of the OPP pie and to the funding of that service after HPS Chief Operating Officer Davis-Googe offered some informational comments during the meeting.  Davis-Googe stated that not all of the “students” referred to OA from HPS are actual students of HPS.  She said that some “students” who are not enrolled at HPS are referred to them by OPP; “some of the students enrolled have not been in school at all,” stated Davis-Googe.  HPS then registers the “student” as a student of HPS so that the “student” can now attend OA on HPS’ dime.  Speaking as a member of Torres-Rodriguez’s inner cabinet, Director Liliana Cuevas stated that some of the HPS referrals to OPP are “students” from other countries.

Since the state funds school districts using a formula that includes the number of students enrolled in the district, we should inquire as to whether the non-enrolled students mentioned by Davis-Googe are counted as part of HPS’ student enrollment number when state funding is being figured.  The state funds HPS to the tune of $13,000 per student.  HPS funds OPP to the tune of $8,000 per “student.”  If “students” are registered at HPS solely to get into OPP programming, and if these “students” are counted toward state funding, HPS is benefitting to the tune of $5,000 per “student.”  Is HPS defrauding the state when it reports enrollment numbers?  Is HPS picking up the tab for a non-profit to re-engage the disengaged when that cost should be borne directly by the city and/or state?

Moving away from the nasty financials of this contract, we look at data provided by the superintendent which gives a little information concerning the HPS/OPP partnership effect on student success. 

Over the last five years, OPP has welcomed 595 “district” students into the OA program.  OPP claims that after choosing how they want to learn and what their assignments will focus on, 81% of OA students graduate.  Torres-Rodriguez stated that OA graduates 75% of students.  Data provided by the superintendent shows that over the last three years, 68% of OA students eligible have graduated.

The superintendent’s data shows that over the last 5 years, the average GPA of a “student” entering OA is .88.  After rigorous program-based and online Edgenuity instruction and learning (with some real live teacher intervention) at OA, the average “student” GPA climbs to 2.98.

Despite OPP’s stated purpose to drive “students” into post-secondary education or into the workforce, no SAT scores are given, no data on the number of students going on to college is given, and no data on the employment of OA graduates is given (or asked for).

Despite the superintendent stating that attendance rates of OA “students” being one measure of success of the partnership with OPP, no attendance numbers are given (or asked for).  Without explaining the comment, OPP Senior Director of Youth Engagement Girard Dawes stated during the recent BOE meeting, “we look at attendance differently.”  Thus, this measure of success is nothing but a wet noodle measure of success, being defined subjectively depending on the weather.

Summing up HPS’ attitude toward data of any kind and toward the great work of OPP, HPS Chief Davis-Googe stated during the meeting, “there’s something about that work that doesn’t live on paper.”  And that is how Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez will describe her tenure as superintendent of Hartford Public Schools.

The BOE will vote to approve the OPP contract at their Regular Meeting on September 17th.