Birks Paid ​“Volunteers” On The Sly

Three consultants who led Superintendent Carol Birks’s transition team, supposedly as ​“volunteers,” all received secretive payouts from the school district in the months after submitting their reports.

One received $9,000 for leading meetings for three days. One received $9,998 for writing job descriptions for six days. A third was hired part-time to coach principals for an undisclosed amount.

Those payments are revealed in new documents the Independent obtained through the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act.

The school district itself still has not produced any records, despite several weeks-old requests for the consultants’ contracts. But the city budget director provided invoices this week detailing how two consultants were paid.

Superintendent Birks said that she did not see a problem with hiring her transition-team leaders to consult and coach for the district.

“I do not see any conflict as people have suggested. There is no direct benefit to me. These people are leaders in the field of education who have done work around the country with other school districts,” Birks said. ​“My first priority is to enlist the support of people who I think bring the best expertise to the children of New Haven.”

A year ago, Birks brought together a 73-person transition team to study the big issues facing New Haven’s school system. She split them up into five groups that would each review data, conduct focus groups and make recommendations in a final report that centered on inequities throughout the district.

Much of that work was done by the team leaders — four district employees and nine outside experts — who drafted the report’s five sections.

Since then, three of those outsiders were handed school business in unusual arrangements that skirted public disclosure. Rather than signing contracts that would have been reviewed by the board’s Finance & Operations Committee, the district paid them through purchase orders or hired them as part-time employees, avoiding any oversight or public notice.

$1,666 A Day To Write Job Descriptions

In July 2018, the district paid $9,998 to the Urban Schools Human Capital Academy, a consultancy in the Washington, D.C., suburbs that employs Susan Marks, Norwalk’s former superintendent, who co-led the transition team’s Talent Management and Development Committee.

Marks did not respond to an email on Thursday afternoon seeking comment.

Birks brought in Urban Schools Human Capital Academy after the district sent termination notices to over 1,110 part-time employees, like secretaries, bus monitors, and art instructors, that were later rescinded.

For six days last summer, two consultants from Urban Schools Human Capital Academy helped Human Resources Director Lisa Mack analyze part-time positions to determine their ​“necessity [and] future status,” wrote job descriptions ​“for repurposed or newly designed positions,” and created a draft plan for filling them, according to the invoices.

Through purchase orders, Urban Schools Human Capital Academy was paid in two lump sums of $4,999 each, just short of the threshold in city procurement rules that would have required Birks to seek out competitive bids.

Still, Birks said she thought the money was well spent. ​“We did not get quotes at that time,” Birks said, but ​“for two people, with other expenses like travel, I don’t think that’s expensive, no.”

$3,000 A Day To ​“Build Capacity”

In November 2018, the district also paid $9,000 to the Transformative Solutions in Education, a consultancy in Boston run by Michele Brooks, who co-led the transition team’s Family and Community Engagement Committee.

Brooks did not respond to a call and an email on Thursday afternoon seeking comment.

For three days last fall, Brooks assisted the Department of Youth, Community and Family Engagement with ​“capacity building efforts,” according to the invoice. To do that, Brooks led two ​“strategic planning” meetings with staff at the district’s Meadow Street headquarters and one ​“parent feedback” meeting at Betsy Ross Parish Hall.

At the time, the department’s chief, Gemma Joseph-Lumpkin, was out on maternity leave.

Darnell Goldson, the board’s president, said in an interview Thursday morning that he didn’t understand why a consultant was being paid to facilitate staff meetings. He said that the Department of Youth Family and Community Engagement has both a supervisor and deputies who could have stepped in during Joseph-Lumpkin’s leave.

“To bring in these experts to run meetings? That’s even more concerning,” he said. ​“If they had direct student involvement, I might have been more open to it.”

Why couldn’t Deputy Superintendent Ivelise Velazquez have organized the two strategic planning meetings?

“We’re in the learning profession. I don’t know if you have worked in a school district before, but you get technical support. It’s not uncommon to get facilitators to help around visioning and thinking,” Birks said. ​“It’s not like [Velazquez] couldn’t do that, but she has a lot of responsibilities. For some time, the direct supervisor was not in the district.”

Through a purchase order, Transformative Solutions in Education was paid a lump sum of $9,000, which Birks said Deputy Superintendent Velazquez signed off on.

Birks said she thought the district got a good deal.

“For someone at Michele’s professional level, that’s a very fair rate,” Birks said. ​“I don’t think that’s excessive for a well-trained professional who does this level of work nationally.” She added that, because of Brooks’s experience starting Parent University in Boston, which was the basis for a similar program in New Haven, the district considered her a ​“sole-source provider” and did not compare rates with any competitors.

Birks also said she did not know why the payment ​“did not go through the traditional pathway” of a contract. ​“I didn’t try to do anything wrong,” she said. ​“I don’t know why there would be scrutiny.”

$??? To ​“Coach” Principal

Finally, John Ramos, Birks’s former boss in Bridgeport who co-led the transition team’s Equity and Access Committee, was hired as a part-time employee to coach an elementary school principal, Wexler Grant’s David Diah.

Ramos did not respond to a call and an email on Thursday afternoon seeking comment.

Mike Pinto, the district’s chief operating officer, said on Thursday night that he couldn’t find a contract for Ramos or his consultancy, Equity and Excellence Imperative.

Birks said she was unaware of how much Ramos had decided to charge and how many hours Ramos had spent at the school. She added that Ramos recently decided to turn down whatever payment he’s owed.

“He has not been paid to do that work,” Birks said. ​“Once it was brought to his attention, he said that if it’s going to be a problem, he’s enjoying the work and he doesn’t want anyone to perceive that anything was done improperly.”

How To Hide Payments

Until recently, the Board of Education didn’t know about the three deals. That’s because Superintendent Birks structured the payouts in a way that wouldn’t need their approval or even show up in their biweekly reports detailing all the latest contracts and hires.

(One other transition team leader’s contracts with the district were publicly disclosed. Fay Brown, a Yale Child Study Center director who co-led the transition team’s Learning and Teaching Committee, received a $9,300 contract in December 2018 and $50,000 contract in February 2019 for the Comer School Development Program. Both those contracts were vetted by the board’s Finance & Operations Committee.)

Goldson said he was ​“astounded” that Birks had directed money to transition-team leaders in a process that he called ​“out of the norm.”

“We made it clear that we were very concerned with the way that it appears transition-team members were essentially writing their own contracts. They were giving recommendations for changes that they then won contracts for. I can’t imagine why anyone would think that’s appropriate,” Goldson said. ​“I am more than uncomfortable with it; I am astounded by the lack of vision that the superintendent did not see that this could be perceived as a conflict.”

Goldson said the board is still waiting on Superintendent Birks to produce a list of all the district’s purchase orders from the last nine months, which the Finance & Operations Committee requested last month.

“I’m wondering how many more are going to pop up before we get to the end of this,” he said.