AUBURN, Maine — A $300,000 grant the state Department of Education awarded to local schools on April 21 has been rescinded because another school district appealed the process, DOE spokesman David Connerty-Marin said Monday.
Auburn School Department’s loss of the $300,000 grant will mean there will be no expansion of a summer and after-school program for disadvantaged students in grades K-2 this summer, Superintendent Katy Grondin said.
“It’s disappointing,” she said. “We had already done a lot of planning, a lot of work serving the K-2 population.” No grant will not affect existing after-school enrichment programs for students in grades 3-10, Grondin said.
Connerty-Marin said the situation is unusual.
Recently the department found itself with $1 million in federal 21st Century Community Learning Center funds, and decided to award the money to districts allowing them to expand existing student enrichment programs.
When the request for proposals went out, it should have said that districts that have not made annual yearly progress in test scores, and have high numbers of Title I, or disadvantaged students, would get extra points in the bidding process. But the request for proposals did not say that, Connerty-Marin said.
A Bath program that did not get funding contended “the scoring had been done improperly, and filed an appeal,” Connerty-Marin said.
After reviewing the wording of the request for proposals, and checking with the Maine attorney general’s office, the department agreed the process was flawed, and is now considering how to award the money.
The department may start over and send out new requests for proposals.
“Our goal is to get the money out as quickly as possible,” Connerty-Marin said. “We’re not happy with how this played out.”
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Are there no ‘Check and Balance’ processes in our State Departments ????
Mistakes, whether small or large just keep happening. Could it be that Department Managers just do not double check their staff’s work?? Causing delays or inaccuracies which cost the tax payers more $$$ in payroll dollars. In small business, too many mistakes would not be tolerated. Its costly!
Top management appears to be as corrupt as they can be.
Why are state taxpayers funding after school programs for anyone?
So the unamed other school district personnel had no clue that grants are awarded first, and often solely, to entities that have a demonstrated record of achievements. The state is very very wrong in rescinding the money, and they should give it to the Auburn school district as it was an awarded grant.
They should not support the “We were too ignorant to figure this out,” mentality.
I find the terms used here rather odd. It sounds far more like a business contract for construction or services than what it was – an education grant. RFP’s?
Give the money to Auburn.
Isn’t Auburn the same school system that just dumped 200K on iPads for five year olds? If this is where Superintendent Katy Grondin thought the money was going to be growing on trees then she might want to go picking in a different orchard and stay the heck away from the local taxpayers. We all thought the ipads were a pretty dumb idea to begin with.