Today: BOE & Superintendent Handing $4.7M to Electric Bus Vendor in addition to existing $140M+ EV Lease Payments

Updated at 3:15PM for clarification:

On today's Board of Education Agenda, we see that Superintendent Thomas W. Taylor has presented the Board of Education with a Resolution to hand $4.7M to a company that doesn't have a contract with MCPS. 

The $4.7M is grant funding from the EPA's Clean School Bus program and under Superintendent Taylor's Resolution, MCPS won't see a dime of that funding. This grant money will not offset any payments from MCPS for the electric bus leases. The Grant will be passed through from EPA to Highland Electric.  

MCPS is still on the hook for the full lease payments for this year without any credit for the EPA Grant.

Superintendent Taylor's Resolution states that the Grant funds will be used per the contract between MCPS and Highland Electric. 

MCPS doesn't have a contract with Highland Electric.  MCPS has a contract with a company called HET MCPS, LLC.  And the only contract with HET MCPS, LLC that has ever come before the Board of Education was signed in 2021 and expired in 2022.  

The 2021 MCPS contract with HET MCPS, LLC called for 326 electric school buses to be delivered by 2024.  

Today's Resolution from Superintendent Taylor seems to suggest that he has extended the contract multiple times or entered into a new contract with a different company without notification to the Board of Education or the public. 

The Resolution notes that the $4.7M will go to a vendor and not to MCPS.  MCPS will not be given a credit for this grant and their annual lease payments will still be due. 

Superintendent Taylor throws in a sentence about how this transfer is "presumed" to have been part of the contract.  

Is he referring to the contract signed in 2021 that expired a year later?  Or is he referring to a new contract that he has signed without Board of Education approval or public notice?  

The original 2021 contract that was supposed to be "budget neutral" has since been shown to require MCPS to spend 28% more for the acquisition of electric school buses.  

Who determined the electric school buses are 28% more expensive than diesel school buses?

CESO, the company that the Board of Education hired to thoroughly audit the MCPS Department of Transportation.  The CESO report was final in January of 2024, and immediately buried by MCPS, never to see the light of day. 

Part 4 of CESO Report, Page 6: 

As usual, the Superintendent has put this Resolution on the Consent Agenda indicating that he already knows the Board of Education will unanimously vote to hand $4.7M over to a company that they don't have a contract with for electric school buses that they are already paying a 28% premium to lease.

It's a good thing the Board of Education doesn't have any budget concerns this year.  Imagine what that $4.7M could do if it was given to MCPS to offset the cost of the $168M electric school bus contract.