A grand jury report clearing the Cobb County School District of any criminal wrongdoing relating to procurement practices wasn’t mentioned by the Cobb Board of Education this week.
Neither board members nor Superintendent Chris Ragsdale brought up the topic at their monthly work and voting sessions Thursday.
But some public commenters did, urging compliance with grand jury recommendations to increase school board oversight into how the district awards contracts for goods and services.
The grand jury met in late June to hear the results of an investigation by the Cobb District Attorney’s Office after questions were raised about Cobb school district purchases of COVID-related equipment.
The procurement documents presented to the grand jury were from 2015-2021 and for contracts awarded to companies owned by a late Cobb business owner, David Allen.
They included a $12 million contract for UV sanitizing lights by one of Allen’s companies, ProTek Life, that eventually was cancelled after a malfunction at a school.
The grand jury, in its May/June report released earlier this week, said a review of procurement documents “show a clear pattern of rewarding some contracts outside of” district policy, but those were mostly with resellers and not sole source providers.
The report doesn’t specify which contracts fell into that category; the grand jury concluded that since the Cobb school district is exempt from state procurement law outside of construction contracts, “no criminal violations have been found.”
The panel recommended that the district conduct a peer review of contracts exceeding $20,000 and have the school board approve contracts higher than $50,000 before they are awarded.
The grand jury also suggested that the Georgia legislature consider “changing state procurement law to include county boards of education” and that a grand jury conduct an annual review of the Cobb school district, as grand juries do for other public agencies.
The grand jury also concluded that “there is substantial evidence that the Cobb County School Board has not been operating as a well-functioning school board” that has affected procurement policies and procedures and has resulted in “insufficient transparency among board members, employees, and the stakeholders within the district.”
You can read the grand jury report by clicking here.
Stacy Efrat, an East Cobb resident who’s a leader of a school financial watchdog group called Watching the Funds Cobb, read from the report during her public comment period.
“The board and district leadership are trying to fool the public,” Efrat said. “Don’t take my word for it. Read the report. This was not an exoneration. This was a call for change based on the limited jurisdiction that the grand jury has over school district policies.”
Catherine Pozniak, a Democrat who is running against Republican board chairman David Chastain in November for the Post 4 seat in Northeast Cobb, urged the board to make all contracts subject to board approval.
She said the report concluded that “no one’s locking the bank vault at night. [Cobb schools] response is ‘Well, no one’s stolen from us yet.’ ”
“This report is a canary in the coal mine, and this board would be absolutely irresponsible if it did not take immediate action.”
On Friday, East Cobb News contacted Chastain for comment, but he has not responded.
East Cobb News also contacted the district, which issued a statement about the grand jury report that was also provided to other media outlets:
“We appreciate the grand jury explicitly rejecting false allegations of criminal wrongdoing by the District and its staff. We also echo their recognition of the transparency with which the District’s procurement staff operates.”
The district further stated that “some of the grand jury’s misunderstandings appear to come from a retracted report from one of the District’s accreditors.”
That’s a reference to Cognia, the district’s accrediting agency that reversed the findings of a special review that it conducted last year.
Cognia’s initial findings included concerns about how purchasing and resource allocation policies were being followed in the district.
But in addressing the school board in March when he announced the reversal, Cognia CEO Mark Elgar said that “people may disagree” with how the money is spent “but that’s not evidence that the policies weren’t followed.”
In its statement this week, the district said that “it is unusual that the grand jury would directly quote and rely upon an accreditation report that has been publicly rescinded by the issuing organization, because the report was directly contradicted by evidence presented by the District.”
It also thanked the grand jury for noting the availability of procurement information available on the district’s website.
“The District takes seriously its obligation to be a good steward of public funds and is confident that all District purchases follow state and federal law, Board policies, as well as all applicable procurement processes, standards, and best practices,” the district statement said.
The statement further noted that the Cobb school district is one of four in the country to receive the Accreditation for Quality Public Procurement Departments, a distinction it has held since 2003.
The district also employs four of 896 individuals worldwide who are certified procurement specialists by the National Institute of Governmental Purchasing, Inc.
Allen, who died last year, also was the owner of AlertPoint, which had been the Cobb school district’s emergency system vendor for the past five years. A former AlertPoint employee has been indicted for bid-rigging in his position as a procurement officer in a Florida school district.
Ragsdale announced last month that the Cobb school district is changing its crisis system vendor for the coming school year.
In February 2021 all high schools in Cobb were put on a brief Code Red lockdown. After initially saying it was due to a false alarm, the district said the incident was a deliberate cyber attack on the AlertPoint system and called in the Cobb Police Department to help investigate.
The Cobb school district’s statement did not make any mention of other grand jury recommendations relating to the school board.
Those include a review of the board’s Code of Ethics “to develop, implement, and monitor a plan of accountability that holds each board member individually and collectively responsible for improving public perception of board leadership, district leadership, and ensures adherence of all board members in effectively and efficiently executing their established roles and responsibilities.”
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