Isn't that interesting?
MCPS "tried" to get other vendors to bid. They really did. They mailed out solicitations to 56 vendors.
***56***
And just one of those 56 submitted a bid for this $400,000 procurement from MCPS.
Now why would that be?
It wouldn't be that the other vendors have given up even trying to bid on these procurements, would it?
In 2014, the Montgomery County Council issued a report detailing complaints about the MCPS procurement process. Surely MCPS addressed those complaints?
From the October 26, 2021, Montgomery County Board of Education Consent Agenda:
The 21st Century Community Learning Centers are funded by Grants as shown in this January 28, 2021, Board of Education memorandum.
Is the Board of Education action above in addition to the Grant funds that have already been designated for these Learning Centers?
Does the Board of Education know what they are paying Identity, Inc. to do at these Learning Centers?
Again, this item is on the Consent Agenda and the Board of Education approves these expenditures without ever seeing any documentation or contracts associated with these expenditures.
...Figures compiled by head football coach Kurt Frenzen showed adding Sprinturf or FieldTurf would cost $446,000 and $675,000, respectively, over the first 12 years with long-term replacement costs of $200,000-plus and $325,000...
"Now, Mr. Collette and I had a conversation yesterday. And, what you described to me...[sigh]...you didn't say you competively bid. You wouldn't know whether there were any other bidders, cause you told me, correct me if I am wrong, that you negotiated a price directly with Promethean World. And Promethean instructed Dell to sell the product to us at the negotiated price. So you wouldn't 've know if there were any other bidders, because you didn't bid it. You simply went to Promethean and negotiated what you felt was a really good price.
It may be a really good price. I have no ability to judge whether it is a good price or a bad price. But, it is not a bidding process. And, it doesn't give other people the opportunity at the local level to compete with the bid. And, it wouldn't give anybody the opportunity to look at this, and say next time this comes up for bid I know what my competition is and I am going to have to do better..."
My name is Mark Samberg, and I am currently working as the Director of Instructional Technology for the Bertie County School District in Windsor, North Carolina... I interacted with your organization [the Parents' Coalition] recently, regarding our decision to discontinue installation of new ActivBoards in our schools, and instead move to AppleTVs connected to iPads. At your request, I'm providing information on the reasoning behind this decision.
I wanted to start with a little background. Our district is located in rural Northeastern North Carolina. We have approximately 2,800 students, about 90% of which qualify for free or reduced price meals. Through a grant, we were able to install Promethean boards in all of our elementary school classrooms approximately five years ago. Our middle school principal was looking to expand the use of ActivBoards and other interactive technologies in his school, but outfitting his school with boards would cost well over $100,000. This simply wasn't feasible in a district our size. In addition, some of the projectors and boards already in place have started to fail. Absent any new grant funding or initiatives, each ActivBoard that needs to be replaced (at an approximate cost of $5,500) represents about 8% of the total IT budget this year, and if funding cuts hold, would represent about $35% next year. It's simply not feasible to replace even one of these boards when they break. In addition, the projector mounts are proprietary - we must purchase a Promethean short-throw projector should a projector fail. These projectors cost about $1,000 more than a lower-end short-throw projector, and about $1,500 less than a regular ceiling-mount or cart-use LCD projector. Finally, all of our classrooms have standalone LCD projectors, many of which are relatively new.
In addition to the equipment initial cost, we looked at the total cost of ownership. The short-throw projector bulbs that are used by most IWB vendors are very expensive, to the tune of about $300-350 each. Typically, they need to be replaced one per year. I have no data to back this up, but it seems they need replacement more frequently than other projectors. The only thing I have to prove this is my own observation, and there are many other factors that could lead to that. Most newer cheaper projectors have cheaper bulbs.
The two other things that we looked at were usage/pedagogy, and the evolution of the technology. While all elementary teachers have IWBs in their classrooms, most teachers use them most of the time simply as projector screens, and not the interactive capability. In every classroom I ever taught in, I had an IWB as well. Again, much of the time, I used them to project, but usually abandoned the use of the whiteboard in favor of the document camera, again making the board a very expensive projector screen. Also, the board still favors a teacher-centered classroom, and limits interaction to the teacher, or a single student or two. In short, while the IWB definitely has a value-add in the classroom, the cost of the equipment still (in my opinion) isn't worth the return for the percentage of time the boards are used for their interactive capability.
Also, while there have been incremental improvements, IWB technology is almost a decade old. While the IWB has stayed relatively consistent, a whole new generation of technology has emerged in human-computer interaction. Whereas a touch interface was revolutionary ten years ago, it's now commonplace, almost to the point of expectation. Purchasing a whole-system solution like a Promethan Board locks us in such that we can't try new things as easily as technology changes. While the IWB is the most mature technology, Microsoft is bringing the Kinect to education markets (http://www.microsoft.com/education/en-us/products/ Pages/kinect.aspx), a device by a company called LeapMotion is poised to make a huge impact on the human-computer interaction market (http://www.leapmotion.com/), a company called SmallLab learning is bringing a movement-based system to the classroom (http://www.smallablearning. com/) and Windows 8 is going to be designed around touch interfaces, which means that we will be seeing many, many more touchscreen devices in the months ahead.
While all of these products are in the developmental phases, Apple has moved forward with their new solution called "AirPlay" (http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/airplay/?cid=wwa-us- kwg-features-00001&siclientid= 6381&sessguid=18279e0f-07d9- 4d81-a633-0bf8a006fd7a& userguid=18279e0f-07d9-4d81- a633-0bf8a006fd7a&permguid= 18279e0f-07d9-4d81-a633- 0bf8a006fd7a).
By purchasing an iPad and connecting an AppleTV device to our existing projectors, we could wirelessly stream the display of an iPad to the projector. Because we already had the projectors that we could reuse, the total cost for the iPad, Apple TV, and adapter for the projector runs about $700, instead of the $5,000 that the Promethean boards would have cost. There are Apps available for the iPad that allow for you to write on the iPad screen, annotate documents and web pages, display websites, and play videos. These were the major functions that teachers were using the IWB functionality for. Additionally, because the iPad could be streamed wirelessly, teachers could walk around the classroom and use the iPad from anywhere in the room. In classrooms with multiple iPads, multiple students can take turns streaming their devices to the projector for other students to see. So in addition to being a significantly cheaper option, it provided the teacher with much more flexibility.
They can also use the camera in the iPad as a portable document camera, even though they already have document cameras in their rooms. Of course, they still have their laptops and document cameras that they can also connect to the projectors. However, many of the teachers who have tried this haven't needed to connect them for anything - they've done everything from the iPad. If you don't have any projectors in the rooms yet, the total cost to get started would be around $2,500 - still around half the cost of an IWB [Interactive White Board] solution. This would give every teacher a ceiling mounted projector with audio, a document camera, an Apple TV and an iPad, with all of the connectors. The reason it's so cheap is that now each individual component (with exception of the Apple equipment) can be bid separately, and given to the lowest bidder, because each piece is modular. Also, when it comes time to replace equipment, there is no vendor lock-in.
The teachers who have been using this solution so far are loving it, because they can move around their classroom, they get to use iPads, they don't have to calibrate the boards, or do much more than plug and play. There is a disadvantage in that a lot of the pre-made educational materials that Promethean and SMART provide aren't available. There is also a dependence on several different Apps, instead of a "one stop shop". However, these factors aside, this has been a much more cost-effective solution that has provided a much greater benefit to our teachers.
I'm happy to discuss this further and answer any questions that you may have.
Thank you,Mark Samberg
Best of all, we know this means another 120 TONS of crumb rubber dumped into our environment! And, Wootton High School's football field sits right next to a county stream! 120 tons of crumb rubber running off into that stream will make for a great community service project for students. They can get SSL (student service learning) hours for picking the little crumbs out of the stream by hand because the County Council has now declared that the chemicals in crumb rubber are hazardous to our streams and lakes!Am I reading this right, you are paying $8.9 million dollars for 2000 boards? That is insane! You can get the same amount of Polyvision boards for probably half that amount. I wish we had this type of money to just throw away.. This is the reason for bids, you will get other vendors to supply you with competative quotes and also compatable technology. Polyvision IWB's are made in USA, they have open architecture, there is a FOREVER surface warranty, and they are half the price! Please for the sake of the education system, look elseware and bid it out!!!
..."It is rare for a school system that size to sole source technology. Very unusual,"...
This is the second in a three-part series about decisions made by Alexandria Public Schools Superintendent Morton Sherman during his first two years as superintendent. Two months, dozens of interviews and 774 pages of documents acquired via Freedom of Information requests revealed details about upheaval in the central office and Sherman’s long-time use of outside consultants. This series is also being published by the Alexandria Gazette.
By Paige Winfield Cunningham
A long-time friend of Alexandria school Superintendent Morton Sherman has been paid thousands of dollars and shared meals with the Alexandria superintendent on the district’s dime before ever signing a formal contract.
One in a wave of new consultants hired since Sherman came to Alexandria, Bena Kallick was the second highest-paid individual contractors paid during last two years and has recently signed more contracts to hold teacher training this year...
...That personal friendship seems to be reflected in how Sherman has used his district- issued credit card. He’s used the card to pay for more meals with Kallick than with anyone else. Of the 40 meals he’s charged to the card, nearly half have been spent with Kallick and total $895.
Their most frequented restaurant is Alexandria’s historic Morrison House on Alfred Street, where they’ve breakfasted eight times on the district’s dollar. During one of Kallick’s visits last year, they began the day with a $44.06 breakfast at Morrison and ended it with a $103.16 dinner at the Chart House...
...It’s not the first time Sherman hired consultants without signing a contract.
While Sherman was superintendent of the South Orangetown Central School District in New York in the 1990s, he signed a $565,000 contract with Cimple Systems, Inc. to design a district-wide technology plan. The district terminated the contract six months later when Cimple failed to uphold its end of the deal.
The contract had never been reviewed by the district’s attorney and apparently received no formal authorization by the school board....
...Neither Prolman nor Kallick have had to bid for any of their contracts. That’s because while state law mandates competitive bidding on contracts more than $50,000, ACPS either approved their contracts in smaller increments, tacked on additional compensation after contracts were signed or didn’t list a total payment on the contract at all...
