Breaking: Another $2.37M to Company of Wife of BOE Member. No BOE Discussion. Not Duly Advertised. Not put out for Bids. @mocoboe @mcps

9/8/22 UPDATE:  The Montgomery County Board of Education approved this $2.37M payment today.  The Board President confirmed that the Memorandum shown below was not accurate.  There were no bids and KID Museum was not the lowest bidder. 

More details to follow.  

Original blog post from September 6, 2022:  Breaking: Another $2.37M to Company of Wife of BOE Member. No BOE Discussion. Not Duly Advertised. Not put out for Bids. @mocoboe @mcps: Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland

  

On September 8, 2022, the Montgomery County Board of Education will unanimously approve another payment to the company founded and run by the wife of Board of Education member Scott Joftus.

The payment will be made on the CONSENT AGENDA meaning the item will not have a discussion by the Board of Education.  The matter is considered to be trivial and not worthy of a presentation, justification or discussion.  

The memorandum from Superintendent Monifa McKnight does not disclose that this procurement involves a company founded by, and run by the wife of a sitting Board of Education member.  

The memorandum does not state the name used by the company, instead the memorandum uses the corporate name for the company.  The corporate name is not familiar to most County residents. 

The memorandum says the procurement has been duly advertised.  It has not been advertised.

The memorandum says the procurement was awarded to the low bidder.  It was not awarded to the low bidder because there weren't any other bidders.  

IF this procurement had been duly advertised the memorandum would cite the BID NUMBER as is seen for all other contracts. There is no bid number.  In the space for listing the number of bids received the notation is N/A for not applicable.   

With this payment to the KID Museum, the Board of Education will have diverted $5,675,962 dollars of Operating Budget funds to this private company since 2018.  That's money that could have been spent on public school teacher salaries, support staff, classrooms etc...  Instead, those public school funds have gone to a private company without oversight or accountability to the public. 

The company founded by and run by Board of Education Scott Joftus' wife is MOCO KIDSCO, Inc.  That company does business as Kid Museum in Bethesda.