PORTLAND, Maine — Two state lawmakers are taking the Maine Department of Education to task for rescinding nearly $1 million in grant money that had been awarded to four districts, a decision one local school official said tarnishes the department’s credibility.
State Sens. Lois Snowe-Mello, R-Poland, and Nancy Sullivan, D-Biddeford, urged Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen in a joint letter Wednesday to rethink the decision to withdraw the awards.
But state education officials say their hands are tied in the matter and that a flaw in the grant program documents, found after the awards were made, rendered the round of awards “not legal.”
School officials in Portland, Biddeford, Fryeburg and Auburn were told by the state in late April they had been chosen to receive money from the 21st Century Awards program. The program distributes federal grant funding to enrichment programs for low-income and underperforming schools.
“Once our districts were awarded the funds, both our programs announced the awards to our communities and began the process of preparing for the summer and fall programming,” the letter from Snowe-Mello and Sullivan read. “Through no fault of their own, nor the students they serve, a month after the award letters were sent, our sites received an email at 4:59 p.m. on Friday, May 18, informing us that the awards were being vacated, despite the fact that ‘the scoring was done accurately.’
“Disappointingly, the two of us had to hear the news second hand,” they continued, “no one from your office contacted us to explain what was happening, despite the immediate affect the department’s decision had on hundreds of our constituents.”
The senators added that grant awards cannot be rescinded unless there was a “violation of state law” and that the public was not given an opportunity to discuss the withdrawal of funds before the decision was made to pull the money back.
But Department of Education spokesman David Connerty-Marin said one applicant that did not receive an award, a partnership between the Riverview Foundation and the Bath-area Regional School Unit 1, argued it was unclear whether bonus points would be awarded to districts based on Title I status.
“One applicant — out of 16 who were not awarded funds — arguing that something was unclear when they had multiple opportunities to ask for clarity, simply does not appear to be sufficient cause for making such a drastic decision,” the senators wrote. “Regardless, the lack of clarity cited would not have prevented eligible applicants from applying.”
Federal Title I status is determined by the number of free or reduced-price lunches a school distributes to its students, an indicator of the income levels of families in the school’s area.
Connerty-Marin said that department officials discovered after further review that — while the program was widely promoted as taking Title I status into consideration for scoring — Title I references inadvertently were left out of the legal request for proposals documentation, which was used in the official application scoring process.
Connerty-Marin said the disconnect between what the department announced for qualifying criteria and what the program’s legal documents read caused the State Purchases Review Committee and attorney general’s office to decide the round of awards was “not legal.”
“We had no choice but to withdraw the awards, because the RFP itself was flawed,” Connerty-Marin said. “The language of the RFP did not reflect either the intent or what was said publicly about how it was going to be scored.”
The department spokesman also noted that no school programming at any of the applying districts will be taken away because of the gaff, but proposed new programs will not be able to begin as intended.
He added that the state does not lose the nearly $1 million in federal grant money and the department plans to combine that funding with another $1 million due to be received July 1 before issuing another request for proposals in the program, this time with about $2 million available to distribute.
Connerty-Marin said the department apologizes to the four districts who now will have to reapply for the money without any guarantee they will receive awards again.
“Obviously, they had strong applications before and they have strong chances” to win, Connerty-Marin said.
“We certainly have nothing to gain by having rescinded it,” Connerty-Marin said. “We had no choice. We can’t base awards on a flawed legal document.”
Jeff Porter, assistant superintendent of the Biddeford School Department, wrote to Sullivan in an email Thursday the ordeal has “tarnished … the credibility” of the Department of Education.
“How do we know that future applications will be taken seriously? How do we know if future awards could be arbitrarily rescinded without warning? The state must act with fidelity and integrity in its workings with school districts,” Porter wrote. “This event has jeopardized the ability of the Department of Education to work effectively with districts. This decision undermines the element of trust districts must have in order to carry out their responsibilities and obligations to students.”
It seems that the Dept of Ed is guilty of incompetence. Does that surprise anyone? They’ve been over-ruled by the legislature for the most part on their agenda to weaken public education. Of course this couldn’t possibly be any form of retaliation. Bowen is out of his depth and his inadequacy as an educational leader is becoming more and more apparent. But he is good enough at regurgitating MHPC/Tea Party ideology so that LePage will never cut him loose.
Sounds like there is a skunk in the woodpile.
The Republicans have no interest in advancing education. The more educated people are, the more likely they are to employ reason and science in their decision-making–and the GOP is utterly divorced from reason:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-just-say-it-the-republicans-are-the-problem/2012/04/27/gIQAxCVUlT_story.html
Someone needs to look into this Riverview Foundation. A private foundation that’s partnering with an RSU is supposed to be sufficient enough to stand on it’s own. That it’s competing for State fund’s sound’s some kind of wrong. As far as Bowen’s kid’s are concerned, is it a real surprise that they’re running around unsupervised, making up and changing reg’s and process’s whenever it suits them ? The mere fact that this whole process was suddenly stopped, in mid-stroke no less, because someone’s philosophical source didn’t get access to fund’s that they lost out on, legitimately, tells me that both ‘the source’s internal funding isin’t as stable as they would like everyone to believe (Gee is MHPC and ALEC’s funding running out of gas ?), and, that they are pushing someone else’s agenda to get that funding and the access to the public educational system that they otherwise can’t get access to for whatever reason. Anyway you look at it, this whole thing is being manipulated by Bowen’s kid’s and whoever they actually work for.
If the Legislature wants to start asking question’s then this might be a good place to start. It’s also time for them to repeat their stand-up in the Budget process and tell Bowen “Hey, let the process run it’s full course and let the money go”. If RSU-1 want’s to cry foul ball, fine. Let them and provide a resolution the next go ’round. But this constant circle jerking is doing nothing more than keeping the entire ‘System’ from working and preventing any real educating from happening. And isin’t that the purpose behind the whole thing in the 1st place ?
The dept. claims “a flaw in the documents”, but what about saying ‘Our employee, Mr. XYZ, screwed up. It is our fault for lack of oversite of Mr. XYZ’s work. As in private business, we will make good on our commitments and this employee and his managers will be disciplined or fired’? I thought our Gov. was going to make sure that state government operated more like a business? Too bad he can’t get his own shop in order.
Perhaps the previous heads of the Education Department and the corrupt middle management carried over from that time, as stated by our governor, holds the responsibility here. Steve Bowen knows what he is doing, and he has the best interests of our schools at heart.
Sorry but this RFP for these grants came out in Jan 2012 and was due back on 3/23/12. Not sure who to blame but can’t blame the previous heads of the Education Department.
Maybe it just took a while for the orders to come down from the Heritage Foundation.
Sir, the only ‘interest’s’ that Bowen has are for those politician’s and special interest group’s he works and pushes their private agenda for (beside Paulie and Company) and those he’s going to go work for once he leaves. Bowen’s agenda from Day One has been perfectly clear; to subvert the education system and replace it with a private, for pay school system that does nothing more than educate our kid’s according to whoever pays the bill’s belief system. In short, pay-to-play and screw the public trust and responsibility. No, from what I’m seeing here Bowen’s kid’s are out trying to manipulate the Grant Award Program so that some special interest group can sneak in and try to either siphon off money that’s needed for our kid’s education to some private ‘slush fund’ or to use it to fill them with some ‘Leave it to Beaver’ stereotype nonsense. Either way, the money is never gonna’ be used for what it was supposed to be used for.
And if there is any Federal money in this Award Program then it’s gonna be pretty clear to anyone who has an ounce of smart’s more than a brick that this whole thing is being politically manipulated, not managed. And political manipulation of awarded federal funding, at any level, is an automatic invatation to the Fed’s to come in and start nosing around for fraud and misappropriation of fund’s. Folk’s , thats JAIL TIME. Now, who want’s to be first on the Otisville Express ?
A longstanding goal of Republicans is the elimination of public education. Cutting funding directly is one way of doing this, which this story is about. A new strategy is to advocate policy changes they assert are “reform”, when in fact it is a roundabout way of eliminating funding. Beware the language of Republicans versus the policies themselves.
So many comments from so many liberals–wonder what one does with the rest of his/her time–