RECORDS REVEAL: "TRUST", "RUBBER STAMP" GUIDE ROCKWOOD'S SCHOOL BOARD AS IT SPENDS YOUR TAX DOLLARS.
VOTE FIRST, ASK LATER
At its public meeting On October 7, 2021, Rockwood's school board unanimously approved a no-bid contract proposal worth $16,800.00.
The next day, an administrative secretary sent this email, stating that board president Jaime Bayes wanted to know more "about what that program is."
The email:
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| Email requesting information about a contract proposal that was already approved by Rockwood's Board of Education (BOE). |
The contract proposal was for a motivational speaker providing leadership/empowerment sessions for students.
Bayes apparently didn't know about the program even though this was the second time she and the rest of the board voted to approve it. Their previous vote was the year before.
The total cost for the two was $27,300.00.
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| The contract Rockwood's School Board president asked about, after the fact. It was unanimously approved Oct. 7, 2021 |
"TRUST"
Not asking questions before they vote may be more common among Rockwood's school board members than you think. Voting is generally a formality on the board because due diligence is theoretically already done by the departments that submit or vet the items on which the board votes. More than one person has told us that the board "trusts" that contract proposals are "good to go."
"RUBBER STAMP"
One former board member told us "I felt like a rubber stamp" and that questions were sometimes discouraged.
The way the board operates is particularly timely right now, with the school board election happening Tuesday. One current board member is running for reelection: Lynne Midyett. Midyett has been on the board since 2016, and she voted yes on the approved proposals you're about to see.
RECORDS REVEAL REASONS TO DISTRUST
Purchase orders, invoices, bill lists, contracts and proposals, and, most of all, emails from within Rockwood's purchasing department, tell the story of what happened with purchase proposals before Rockwood's school board voted on them.
WHAT HAPPENED
Failure to follow required purchasing procedures, apparent policy violations, vendors with special treatment (one got a mid-year contract added after talking to an administrator about her "maybe being paid a bit more"), repeated questions about when their payment was coming, a request for $30,000 upfront on diversity wall murals, and an "emergency approval" request made to the superintendent at the time...after failing to get the school board's approval before committing too many of your tax dollars.
All the proposals were later approved anyway, by Rockwood's school board.
All of them were no-bid, "single source" vendors.
All of them came from the same place: Rockwood's Student Services Department.
All of it was under the supervision of the same guy: Dr. Terry Harris.
HARRIS?
Harris is Rockwood's former, embattled, Executive Director of Student Services, which oversaw the district's Department of Educational Equity and Diversity. Harris resigned in January, after submitting no-bid, controversial proposals that were rejected by the board this past October. Among the rejected proposals is the one Jaime Bayes asked about, above. It was designated as a single source vendor, even though other companies also provide student empowerment sessions.
The contracts from Harris' departments tend to be a certain type in Rockwood, that is prone to less district oversight. Those are the focus of this post. More detail a little later.
For more about the rejected contract proposals and his resignation, see our previous posts:
PROPER PROCEDURE
Depending on the dollar amount, purchasing procedure in Rockwood generally works like this:
Submit a requisition (request).
If it's accepted, you'll get a purchase order (permission to buy the goods or services).
Once those are in place, the purchasing department can pay invoices (the bills) from the companies, for their good or services.
An invoice should be the last thing Rockwood's purchasing department sees in a transaction, but, it was the first thing the department saw, over and over, as Harris and his department made purchases without following district procedures. We're not auditors, but, we saw at least 10 obvious examples documented through emails and/or records among the 6 companies we looked at. All 6 had multiple no-bid contracts through Harris and his department.
Rockwood's Chief Financial Officer, Paul Northington told us, "any purchase that doesn't follow Rockwood policy or procedures is an unauthorized purchase."
Rockwood policy 3170 says, "Under no circumstances may employees use district funds to make unauthorized or personal purchases."
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UNAUTHORIZED PURCHASES
DIVERSITY WALL MURALS: PERMISSION GIVEN AFTER THEY WERE ALREADY PAINTED"Work dates" listed on purchasing department documents show Harris had a mural at Ballwin Elementary started, and completed, before the requisition was ever approved by the purchasing department. The requisition leads to a purchase order, so there was no purchase order when the work was done.
He didn't wait for approval at Woerther Elementary, either. He had the mural started before the request for the purchase order was approved.
Both are against purchasing department procedure.
The work date and approval date discrepancy was noticed by a secretary in the purchasing department. Here are the attachments she included in a routine email she sent about the proposals that would be going to the board for approval the next week.
APPROVED ANYWAY
We don't know if anything was said to the school board, but, the proposal for these murals got a unanimous yes vote, 8 days later, during the April 11, 2019 meeting.
They were submitted with 3 other murals in the works from the same company, and because the total amount exceeded $7,500, the board's approval was required.
What if the board had voted no?
Good question. It was too late. Those murals were done. And, Rockwood already paid for them.
It's worth noting that by the time the board approved the proposal, Rockwood had already paid the mural artist $10,860.00. That's according to bill lists found on Rockwood's website:
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| As seen on Board Docs, Bill Lists for 6/21/18, 2/7/19, and 2/21/19. |
Harris discussed what happened in an email to Rockwood's Chief Financial Officer as he appeared to try to persuade him to pay for a mural at a third building, before going to the board for approval.
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| Terry Harris email says mural jobs already done; please pay, despite my department's missteps. |
It appears the CFO wasn't persuaded. There's no record of that payment, and it ended up on the proposal that was approved on April 11th. If he had paid prior to the board's approval, it likely would have been a violation of the policy that says the board has to first approve expenditures over $7,500.
We should note: the schools that got the murals were happy with the work. The relationship appears to have ended in June of 2021, when the mural artist requested a $30,000 deposit for 12 more murals that would cost $60,000.00.
The purchasing department said it couldn't justify such a large deposit.
Many companies paint wall murals, but, this one, Cbabi Originals, was designated as the "single source" of that service on the contract proposal. It was awarded a no-bid contract.
YOGA: INVOICES...AGAIN, THE FIRST THING INSTEAD OF THE LAST THING
In the top portion of the email thread below, the coordinator of purchasing informs her boss that there was no purchase order for yoga classes.
She had forwarded the bottom portion of the thread, from the secretary for Terry Harris, who informed them that yoga sessions at multiple Rockwood schools were totaling more than $7,500.
We don't know what Rockwood's school board knew about that email or other emails pertaining to the yoga classes.
But, the board unanimously voted yes to approve the yoga proposal at its February 6, 2020 meeting.
Many companies teach yoga. Yet, the proposal was again approved with a "single source" vendor status. Evolution Yoga was awarded a no-bid contract.
ADDITIONAL POLICY VIOLATIONS?
Bill Lists on Rockwood's website show, between April and November 2019, the district had paid Evolution Yoga $10,320 before the school board approved the proposal. According to Rockwood policy 3170, that's not allowed.
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| policy 3170 |
Additionally, Rockwood policy 3170 says employees may not artificially divide purchases to avoid bidding requirements. In other words, they can't submit them separately to stay under a total of $7,500 and avoid needing the board's approval.
It appears that's what Terry Harris and his department were trying to do with Evolution Yoga.
The administrative assistant to Terry Harris emailed him and wrote, "...we wanted to keep her services under $7,500, as to not have the need to go to the BOE." (BOE = Board of Education/school board).
It mentions plans for $37,000 worth of yoga classes, and, also mentions that (once again) there is an invoice but no purchase order.
SHOULD HAVE KNOWN
Harris and his department should have known better. The purchasing department is on record explaining the rules to Harris and his administrators at least twice, formally, including that employees shouldn't divide purchases.
The first explanation we saw was in this email from 2016, which also outlined the steps they should follow when making purchases:
URGENT: EMERGENCY APPROVAL REQUEST
The explanation was part of what appeared to be an urgent reaction in 2016 to a discovery that purchasing procedures weren't followed.
A request for an Emergency Approval explains that purchases for two companies shouldn't have been divided and, when combined, ($13,000 and $17,000), the jobs were over the $7,500 amount, which required board approval.
Subsequent emails showed the emergency request was dropped in favor of waiting for a later school board meeting.
ANOTHER BOARD APPROVAL
At that later school board meeting, the board unanimously approved the proposals for both companies.
Here's the vote from the October 20, 2016 meeting.
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| 2016 |
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| 2016 |
One of those companies is Sisters Helping Each Other Reach A Higher Height (SHERAH). If the SHERAH name sounds familiar, it may be because it's another of the three Terry Harris, no-bid, controversial, contract proposals that were rejected by Rockwood's school board when it was up for renewal this past October.
CONNECTIONS IN THE SCHOOL BOARD'S CULTURE OF "TRUST"
The connection SHERAH's owner had to Terry Harris is documented in our previous report. You can see it here.
It's a connection that is also shown in emails, where she apparently talked to Terry Harris about increasing the amount of money Rockwood was paying her.
Shante Duncan referenced "getting paid a bit more" in this email she sent during August of 2021:
CONNECTION LEADS TO MORE MONEY
The dollar amount on her next contract proposal rose from $15,000 in 2020 to $28,000 in 2021 and more sessions were added.
In fact, a few months later, Aisha Grace, who worked under Terry Harris, even submitted an extra mid-year contract to the board, for even more sessions and even more money for Duncan.
Yes, the school board approved it.
SIDE NOTE
Curiously, despite an uproar in the news media about how badly Harris' rejected programs were needed in the schools, Aisha Grace had to try to find students interested in the new sessions she added:
PURCHASING DEPARTMENT ROLE
Believe it or not, it's not just Rockwood's school board that relies on "trust."
Rockwood's purchasing department relies on it as well, to a degree. Administrators told us if a purchase request is related to student or teacher learning (guest speakers, student empowerment, diversity training, etc.), the department "trusts" that the department head requesting it knows whether or not it's needed. The purchasing department only looks at whether the money is in the budget.
BIDS ARE IMPORTANT
Getting 3 bids for jobs helps clarify whether a purchase is the best quality or price. But, Terry Harris and his administrators frequently avoided getting bids by designating their proposals as "single source" vendors, which IS allowed by Rockwood policy.
(A quick check last year of roughly 50 contracts from them showed only 4 weren't single source.)
The single source designation (which means that's the only company that provides that good or service) is supposed to be approved first, and on paper, it looks like it was. But, remember, Harris and his administrators were hiring companies before the purchasing department even knew the purchases were in the works.
LESS OVERSIGHT
All of this means that purchases of items like toilet paper and trashcan liners get more oversight than what Rockwood students and teachers are taught.
Toilet paper and trashcan liners require bids and there are objective ways to tell if they were good purchases. There appears to be no objective evaluation of the murals, the yoga classes, or the student empowerment sessions.
CONSEQUENCE FOR UNAUTHORIZED PURCHASES?
Rockwood doesn't talk about employee discipline, but, regulations under policy 3170 say employees may have to pay for purchases that aren't authorized.
RESIGNED
All 3 people involved in submitting the above contract proposals have resigned. They are Terry Harris, Aisha Grace and Brittany Hogan. In news reports, racism has been referenced as the cause.
Aisha Grace is defending a DWI charge from last summer. A plea hearing is scheduled for May 17th. Brittany Hogan is suing Rockwood for not protecting her from what she calls racist harassment.
GOING FORWARD
In just the handful of contract proposals mentioned in this post, $116,490 (your tax dollars) was spent after what appear to be uninformed school board votes.
Uninformed is key.
Prior to last October's controversial vote, school board members may not have known what was going on behind the scenes. That changed when it came out that Harris had been on the board of one of the companies that was rejected. Three board members still voted yes again anyway, on those contracts: Jaime Bayes, Keith Kinder, and, Lynne Midyett.
School board members can change district policies.
Vote accordingly, on April 4th.
Conservative parents and teachers are voting for Tom Dunn, Trisha Katzfey and Rich Wierzba.
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EDITOR'S NOTE
We didn't show emails from company owners that asked when they'd be getting paid to avoid the appearance that it's unreasonable to ask for money that's due. The emails were relevant to our research because not following purchasing procedures caused the delay in payment.