05/08/2018
ATTN: HERE IS A TEMPLATE LETTER TO SEND TO IKE LEGGETT AND MEMBERS OF THE BOARD!!!!
Dear Mr. Leggett and Members of the ICB Board;
I’m writing to solicit your intervention in a recent decision to replace Wayside Elementary School’s beloved non-profit childcare company, Farmland Child Development Center (CDC) with the for profit business, Kids Adventures. CUPF (Office of Community use of Public facilities) and school officials conducted the selection process.
Not only was the process which arrived at this decision, rife with violations, all listed below, of Regulation 6-17AM that governs the selection process, Kids Adventures, the provider selected for Wayside, recently had employees arrested for child molestation at Carderock Elementary and second degree assault.
Here are the links to the news articles:
https://www-washingtonpost-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/local/public-safety/police-arrest-after-school-program-worker-for-touching-10-year-old-girl/2017/10/05/a505f67c-aa2b-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html?amp_js_v=0.1&usqp=mq331AQGCAEYASgB =https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&prerenderSize=1&visibilityState=prerender&paddingTop=54&p2r=0&horizontalScrolling=0&csi=1&aoh=15251424982425&viewerUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Famp%2Fs%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Famphtml%2Flocal%2Fpublic-safety%2F
http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Beat/2017/Program-Employee-Allegedly-Inappropriately-Touched-Girl-at-Potomac-After-School-Program/
http://www.thesentinel.com/mont/news/local/item/5903-two-arrested
http://wjla.com/news/local/police-after-school-teachers-aide-robbed-assaulted-in-takoma-park-es-parking-lot
CDC has provided before and after care to the families of Wayside Elementary School for 28 years. Their staff is caring, kind and responsible. Their SSL Volunteer Program is largely staffed with CDC alumni, who want to give the current students the same kind of fun experience that they had. The program conducted by CDC is unique and enriching. My children attend CDC. They are safe and happy.
It is unacceptable that a process designed to select a childcare provider to safeguard the well-being and safety of our children should result in the replacement of CDC with Kids Adventures, who did not get their contract renewed at Carderock ES because their employee molested a child at that school. No investigations into the background of Kids Adventures or any of the other candidates were conducted during the selection process for Wayside. Kids Adventures also requires all parents to pay their legal fees if any disputes are raised, to send their children on mandatory field trips, and to accept any and all schedule changes without question. This information is in their registration form. CDC has never forced parents to submit to such terms.
It is clear that CUPF, whose purpose is to oversee the rental of public facilities for events, is not equipped to manage the selection process for child care providers for Montgomery County’s elementary schools. The Wayside process was rushed and secretive and did not provide parents with a reasonable opportunity to participate. There is an ongoing lawsuit by another long-serving non-profit child care provider which was put in a similar position to CDC following a flawed CUPF-administered selection process.
The County must vacate this process and maintain our current pre/after school provider at Wayside until such time as a fair bidding process can be organized and executed for the benefit of all children of Montgomery County.
I look forward to your immediate response. We want to protect our children. Wayside is holding Kindergarten orientation next week. Would you want your child in the hands of a company whose employees molested a child and have been part of a group that maced and beat up another Kids Adventures employee in a parking lot?
Think about it.
Please act to keep our children safe.
Thank you,
--Simone Nicholson
Concerned Parent and Member of the CDC Board of Directors
VIOLATIONS OF REGULATION 6-17AM
FIRST OBJECTION:
IN VIOLATION OF SECTION 5C OF THE REGULATION, THE COUNTY
FAILED TO PROVIDE PARENTS WITH A REASONABLE OPPORTUNITY TO PARTICIPATE IN THE PROCESS
In selecting a childcare organization for the Wayside community, Section 5C of the Regulation requires the County to provide parents with a reasonable opportunity to provide their views during the selection process and, furthermore, requires the County to make a "Public" announcement about the contract bid process. Here, both requirements were wholly ignored. The vast majority of CDC families do not recall receiving any such notice. Furthermore, no “public” announcement was made. Indeed, little, if any, effort was made by the County to provide CDC families with a meaningful opportunity, let alone, a reasonable one, to provide their input. The County’s non-compliance with these requirements flies in the face of both the black letter requirements of the Regulation as well as its underlying purpose—namely, to craft a transparent and inclusive process to select the best qualified childcare provider for our children. The County’s failure to devise a process that allowed for, contemplated and, indeed, encouraged community members to participate meaningfully in the selection is both deeply troubling and contrary to the Regulation. On this basis alone, we respectfully urge the County to vacate the prior decision of the County and repeat the process in a manner that complies faithfully to the applicable laws.
SECOND OBJECTION:
IN VIOLATION OF SECTION 5C OF THE REGULATION, THE COUNTY FAILED TO COLLECT TIMELY FEEDBACK FROM THE SCHOOL COMMUNITY
Section 5C of the Regulation further required Wayside to collect and provide meaningful feedback from the entire "school community" within the six month period prior to the bid announcement. In other words, the Regulation makes it crystal clear that the Selection Committee must have been provided with feedback from the “school community” for, at minimum, a six month period of time. Again, the County fell woefully short of adhering to these standards. The electronic survey utilized by the County to obtain limited feedback from the community was not released until late October 2017. The decision to reject CDC’s bid was made less than six months later in early April 2018. As such, contrary to the Regulation’s requirements, the Selection Committee had access to—at best— only four or five months worth of data in making its decisions.
Second, contrary to the Regulation’s requirement that feedback be collected within six months of the bid announcement, the County only commenced collecting feedback from the community a few weeks before the announcement was posted on the CUPF website on November 15, 2017. It is reasonable to presume that the County’s dilatory delay in collecting feedback was not only in violation of the Regulation but it dramatically reduced the amount of data available to the Selection Committee in making its decisions.
Third, as noted above, although some parents were aware that an electronic survey was being performed, this small subset of the Wayside community does not, and cannot, under any common sense definition of the word, be deemed the equivalent of the entire “school community.” Not all faculty were asked for their input. No support staff were reasonably surveyed. And no meaningful group of parents were pro-actively encouraged to offer their views.
THIRD OBJECTION:
IN VIOLATION OF SECTION 5G OF THE REGULATION, THE COUNTY’S FORMULATION OF PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS WAS INADEQUATE
Section 5G of the Regulation requires that Wayside’s principal provide CUPF with the “program requirements” for a provider at least 30 days prior to the Bid Announcement. In this same subsection, the Regulation explains that the Selection Committee must consider certain elements in its program requirements. The Regulation’s plain language suggests that the Selection Committee should play an important role in formulating these “program requirements.” But, in this instance, the Bid Announcement was released in the fall of 2017. The Committee, however, was not fully trained until February 5, 2018, and only met for the first time on March 5, 2018. Thus, contrary to the Regulation, the “program requirements” were formulated by the County in a vacuum with no input from the community or the Selection Committee.
Furthermore, the substance of the “program requirements” and the identical questions that were posed during the interviews were inadequate in addressing the core concerns and needs of the Wayside community. For instance, not one question was asked during the interviews about:
(i) what (if any) due diligence or background investigation was conducted by the childcare organization of its employees;
(ii) what (if any) employees had any history of criminal conduct or substance abuse;
(iii) what (if any) employees were terminated from other schools or childcare organizations in the past;
(iv) what (if any) employees were the subject of court restraining orders or had a history of violent behavior; and
(v) what types of complaints have parents made about the organization and its employees in the past.
As you may know, on March 16, 2018, Steven Katz, a substitute teacher at Wayside, was arrested for sexual abuse of a minor. The arrest occurred just days after the Selection Committee first started meeting and less than four weeks before the Selection Committee interviewed its first candidates. Understandably, news of this arrest shocked the entire Wayside community and underscored the vigilance that our community and its public institutions must maintain in protecting our children. In disclosing news of this arrest to the Wayside community, Superintendent Smith pledged in an email that, “The safety of every student in our district is our top priority and a responsibility that we do not take lightly.” Like Dr. Smith, Wayside’s Principal Donna Michela stated in an email to the Wayside community that, “Providing our students with a safe learning environment is our top priority.” Yet, in selecting a childcare organization for the Wayside Community and its children, none of the candidates were questioned at their interviews about the aforementioned safety and background issues detailed above.
Had the community been permitted to participate more meaningfully in this process, it is beyond question that parents and community members—consistent with Dr. Smith’s views— would have insisted that these types of critical safety issues and questions be included in the interviews. Because, however, the community was excluded from this process, critical questions impacting the safety of our children were never asked during the interview process. While the Wayside community is extremely familiar with CDC and its personnel, the new For-Profit organization selected by the County and its personnel are strangers to our children. As such, the CDC community remains deeply troubled that the County has seen fit to impose a childcare organization on the Wayside community without implementing an adequate screening process to ensure the safety and well-being of our children.
FOURTH OBJECTION:
IN VIOLATION OF SECTIONS 5K AND 5N OF THE REGULATION,
THE COUNTY’S CONSIDERATION OF NON-DISLCLOSED STANDARDS DURING THE SELECTION PROCESS WAS IMPROPER
Under Regulation 5K, the Selection Committee was required to evaluate bids based exclusively upon the standards explicitly outlined in the County’s solicitation. To be sure, Regulation 5n reiterates that bids will be scored based only on the "advertised scale." However, in a letter tendered to Wayside parents by the school on April 22, the County acknowledged that bids were evaluated based on a host of additional factors, including MSDE licensing regulations, national accreditation standards and Maryland Excels. Because these requirements were not adequately disclosed in the County’s solicitation, it was wholly improper and contrary to the Regulation’s plain terms for the County to evaluate childcare bids on terms that were not fully and adequately disclosed to CDC or its competitors.
FIFTH OBJECTION:
THE PROCESS WAS HANDLED IN AN EXCESSIVELY RUSHED FASHION
As explained above, the process from start to finish was unnecessarily rushed. Given the impact that the Committee’s decisions would have on the safety and welfare of dozens of our community’s children, the Committee should have been afforded greater time to deliberate. The Selection Committee was neither selected nor fully trained until February 5, 2018. It was not until this time that the committee members were provided with multiple bid proposals and the task of evaluating each proposal by the “program requirements” set by the County. In less than 28 days after receiving these materials, the Committee met for the first time on March 5, 2018. Less then ten days later, certain candidates were invited for an interview. After the candidates were interviewed on April 5, 2018, the Committee—within four days— managed to make their final decision impacting the lives and safety of our children.
Furthermore, despite Section 5(n)(2)’s provision providing committee members with the option of making site visits at childcare organizations, not a single site visit was performed by the County during this entire process.
SIXTH OBJECTION:
THE PROCESS WAS HANDLED IN AN OPAQUE, SECRETIVE FASHION
The process was also managed in a secretive and non-transparent manner. The Selection Committee’s mandate and the County’s mission undoubtedly impacts directly (i) the safety and welfare of our children as well as (ii) the stewardship of valuable public resources and assets. This is a public trust, and there is no reason that it should be executed in secret.
To this day, the identities of the Selection Committee remain a secret. The process by which the members were selected are a secret. Facts relating to the qualifications and diversity of the Committee are a secret. The deliberations of the Committee were held in secret. To the extent that any portion of the Committee’s meetings were open to the public, those sessions received de minimus publicity and no notice of such meetings were sent form the school. And, although the County was permitted to select up to nine members to serve on this important Committee, only seven member were selected (without any explanation).
Moreover, in selecting Committee members, not all of the requisite constituencies who were entitled to be represented were included. Specifically, CUPF’s November 15, 2017, letter announcing the rebid process represented that Committee members would be selected from the community, parents, the school and the PTA leadership. But, no member of the PTA leadership was included on the Committee.
Finally, at the conclusion of this opaque process, the County selected a for-profit organization owned by three individuals with ties to the County to takeover childcare services at Wayside. Contrary to Section 7-109 of the Maryland Education Code, which mandates explicitly that the County “[s]hall give priority to nonprofit childcare programs for use of public school facilities before and after school hours,” (such as CDC), the County selected a For Profit organization.
Pursuant to Section 5 of the Regulation, Selection Committee members must sign and execute certain disclosure forms, including assurances that they would execute their duties in a fair and impartial manner. Likewise, Section 5v requires the County to preserve and maintain certain records relating to this process for three years. It is both prudent and appropriate to tender requests under the Maryland Public Information Act to CUPF and MCPS to receive and obtain all discoverable materials, records, communications, notes and emails relating to this process as well as the identities of the Selection Committee members and the process by which the Selection Committee members was selected. . .
SEVENTH OBJECTION:
COUNTY’S FOR PROFIT SELECTION RAISES SERIOUS ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS
The selection of this For-Profit Organization by the County raises serious questions as to the wisdom of their choice. For instance, the registration agreement requires all parents (without exception) to submit to the following terms:
· If parents raise any disputes with this organization, these families are liable for the new organization’s legal and attorney fees, (see paragraphs 6 and 7);
· Parents are required to send their children on mandatory field trips for additional fees without any choice in the matter, (see paragraph 8); and
· Parents must accept that the organization may change their schedule for any reason including “schedule changes” in the sole discretion of the new organization (paragraph 13).
EIGHTH OBJECTION:
PROCESS MAY HAVE VIOLATED MARYLAND OPEN MEETINGS ACT
The Maryland Open Meetings Act, generally, requires public bodies to meet in public and to give fair notice to the public of such meetings. The process by which certain meetings (or portions thereof) were closed and/or open calls into serious question the County’s compliance with the Maryland Open Meetings Act. Under the Act, even for meetings that are closed, the public body must disclose in the minutes of the next open session, what was actually discussed. No such minutes have been disclosed. Furthermore, “reasonable advance notice” of such meetings should have been provided and a “closing statement” must be made public—neither requirement was satisfied.
CONCLUSION
ALTHOUGH ANY ONE OF THE OBJECTIONS SET FORTH ABOVE CONSTITUTE SUFFICIENT GROUNDS TO WARRANT VACATING THE COUNTY’S PRIOR DECISION, THE CUMULATIVE WEIGHT OF THE MULTIPLE SERIAL REGULATORY VIOLATIONS PERPETRATED BY COUNTY OFFICIALS IN MISMANAGING THIS PROCESS WARRANTS VACATING THE COUNTY’S EARLIER DECISION
Public Safety
Police arrest after-school program worker for touching 10-year-old girl
https://www-washingtonpost-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/local/public-safety/police-arrest-after-school-program-worker-for-touching-10-year-old-girl/2017/10/05/a505f67c-aa2b-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html?amp_js_v=0.1&usqp=mq331AQGCAEYASgB =https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&prerenderSize=1&visibilityState=prerender&paddingTop=54&p2r=0&horizontalScrolling=0&csi=1&aoh=15251424982425&viewerUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Famp%2Fs%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Famphtml%2Flocal%2Fpublic-safety%2F
http://www.thesentinel.com/mont/news/local/item/5903-two-arrested
http://wjla.com/news/local/police-after-school-teachers-aide-robbed-assaulted-in-takoma-park-es-parking-lot
