Is the Seattle Schools' Superintendent Guilty of Fraud?

To Whom It May Concern:

It is my belief that the Seattle Schools Superintendent, who is also the secretary of the Seattle School Board, is guilty of violating several state laws.

On February 3, 2010 Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson submitted an NTN contract draft to the Board for approval that did not match the action report. This was an $800,000 contract draft action without competitive bidding that was approved by a 4-2 vote. The District failed to use the process for non-competitive bidding in the award of this contract.

When asked to show the contract to the public the District refused, which violates the law if an exemption from competitive bidding is done outside of the normally prescribed channels. Rather than produce the contract the Superintendent produced a new action report on March 12, 2010.

This new action report referred to a memo written by Eric M. Anderson on January 29, 2010. I received that memo from the office of legal affairs on March 16, 2010, a day after I requested it.

According to legal affairs officer, Joy Stevens, this memo was the memo on which the action report was based, but it was not. The District submitted a different version of the same memo in the evidence to the court. This different version was provided to satisfy an appeal filed on May 7, 2010 of the April 7, 2010 $800,000 NTN contract approval. The version submitted by the district had substantial differences from the memo that I received on March 16, 2010. It is clear to me from inspection of the 3/12/2010 Action Report that the memo I received was not used in the preparation of the Action Report. The Superintendent and the Chief Academic Officer in their preparation of that 3/12/2010 Action Report used a modified version of that memo.

It is my belief that the Seattle Schools Superintendent fraudulently deceived both the public and the Seattle School Directors with her actions.

The above information is true to the best of my knowledge.

Danaher M. Dempsey, Jr.

==========================

Initial Brief filed 10/25/2010 over the $800,000 non-competitive bid New Tech Network contract approved on 4/7/2010.

Here are relevant exhibits K, X, and Y.

Action Report of 3/12/2010
introduced on 3/17/2010
used for contract draft approval on 4/7/2010

Original Anderson memo provided on 3/16/2010

Modified version of Anderson memo in evidence provided 5/21/2010 by the District to the Court.

Direct comparison of 3/12/2010 Action Report and Modified memo.

==========================
The following paragraph was in the original Anderson memo but missing from the different memo version submitted to the court and not present in the 3/12/2010 Action Report:

Since the data is mixed, the primary question is whether Seattle Public Schools believes strongly in the research‐based NTN learning model. Success will more than likely depend on the quality of program implementation. Knowing ahead of time that the NTN model does not guarantee strong results only enhances the degree to which the burden falls on the district and the schools to achieve success.

(Approval of an $800,000 contract, awarded via an illegally presented non-competitive bid of $800,000 for a defective product ... courtesy of Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson.)