Different Public School System, Same Outside Companies Involved: SUPES Academy, ERDI, Digital Promise, League of Innovative Schools, Broad Academy

Baltimore County 2.0: Parents File Suit Against Washington State School District with Baltimore County Schools’ Ties

..Among the school systems’ similarities are superintendents who worked as consultants for controversial education consulting firms, SUPES Academy and the Education Research and Development Institute (ERDI). Both graduated from the SUPES Academy Richmond cohort, two years apart.

Both districts also have connections to Digital Promise, League of Innovative Schools and professional development company, Modern Teacher, whose founder also created the National Center for Digital Convergence (NCDC).

Watts, and at least two Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS) employees have had positions on the NCDC’s advisory board.  BCPS’s executive director for the Department of Innovative Learning, Ryan Imbriale and his wife, director of Enterprise Applications, Jeanne Imbriale, disclosed the positions on their financial disclosure statements, documents obtained by The Baltimore Post.

Some Kent School advocates say they see the relationship between their school district having a Modern Teacher connection, and a superintendent that served on the NCDS’s advisory board, as a clear conflict of interest.

Baltimore County schools has paid out over $1 million to the vendor, which goes by eSchool and various other names, records obtained through a Maryland Public Information Act show. Books by Modern Teacher are required reading for Kent Schools administrators, according to advocates there.

Along with the questionable vendor relations, Mrs. Bettinger said that, with the addition of the Broad Academy where Watts received his superintendent training, that the school system lacks any “evidence that (those companies) bring any type of positivity to our school districts.  I’m not finding a lot of logic and reason in what is happening in our school districts,” she said...

https://thebaltimorepost.com/baltimore-county-2-0-parents-file-suit-against-washington-state-school-district-with-baltimore-county-schools-ties/?fbclid=IwAR2NJcJGq4HdldFFvsNxqgn__gyS0TKUtJT-rPayzCxy0cCU35YF3UkUXw4

MNPS official failed to disclose consulting fees from vendor group #ERDI #PerformanceMatters #Amplify #Gallup #Panasonic @mcps @mocoboe

...ERDI is an industry trade group that pays school officials to sit down with technology companies, giving them feedback on products they hope to sell to those officials.

The group's affiliated companies include eight with whom Dr. Joseph's team has signed contracts -- for more than $17 million.

Back in June, school board member Amy Frogge publicly questioned the administration's ties to ERDI -- and the potential conflicts of interest when district officials take money from the group.

"ERDI's sole purpose is to act as a middleman between school districts and ed vendors," Frogge told her fellow board members...

Ex-Leader of Baltimore County Schools, a Tech Booster, Pleads Guilty to Perjury

A former superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools, the 25th-largest district in the United States, pleaded guilty on Thursday to four counts of perjury related to payments totaling about $147,000 that he received for consulting and speaking engagements.

The state said the former superintendent, Shaun Dallas Dance, had made false statements on his financial disclosure forms “to conceal the nature and extent of his outside business interests and conflicts of interest.” Among other sources of income, the state said, Mr. Dance received payments from a school leadership training company that he had helped win an $875,000 no-bid contract from his school district.

After his financial relationship with that school vendor became known, the state said, Mr. Dance falsely told a Baltimore County Public Schools ethics panel that he had not been paid by the company while it was doing business with the district. He also provided the ethics panel with what the state described as a “sham” service agreement with the company supporting his false claims...

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/technology/baltimore-county-schools-superintendent.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-4&action=click&contentCollection=Technology&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com

Balt. Sun: When disclosing 2016 consulting work, Dallas Dance used company alias rather than firm's name

Former Baltimore County school superintendent Dallas Dance did not have a good track record of reporting paid consulting work as required by the district’s ethics code.
The school system’s ethics panel twice ruled he violated the code by failing to disclose two paying jobs, including one with a firm that had a contract with the district.

The Baltimore Sun reported this month that Dance also failed to report that in 2014 and 2015 he was paid by Education Research & Development Institute, or ERDI. The Chicago company brokers meetings between its paid roster of superintendents and education technology firms that pay to meet privately with the school leaders. Some of the companies had won no-bid contracts with the county school system during Dance’s tenure.
Dance did, however, disclose consulting work for 2016. He did so two weeks after he had announced his retirement on April 18.

But he did not disclose being paid by Education Research & Development Institute or by ERDI. Instead, Dance reported a different name: Dulle Enterprises.

Why the difference?

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/investigations/bs-md-sun-investigates-dance-erdi-20171117-story.html