School panel scraps study costing $470G

The School Reform Commission has terminated a sweeping organizational review that was never completed, after spending more than $470,000 on it, the

Daily News

has learned.

The review, conducted by Evergreen Solutions of Tallahassee, Fla., was commissioned at a cost of $686,650 to save the district money.

But the reform commission ended the work six months early, in December 2006, citing the district's budget deficit, Linda Recio, Evergreen's president, said yesterday.

As a result, no final report of the firm's findings was produced, and the earlier work - which school officials lost - cost the district more than $470,000.

The district only this week requested duplicate copies of what was given to it months ago, Recio said.

"It's sad for the children of Philadelphia that a report that was done to make improvements in the school district was not even looked at," she said in an interview by phone. "I don't know where it went, or if it got buried."

Helen Gym, a member of Parents United for Public Education, was equally dismayed.

"This is another reason why we need to review these contracts very carefully and make sure they're done in the best interest of the school district," she said. "This is just one in a series of contracts in question."

Commission Chairwoman Sandra Dungee Glenn couldn't be reached for comment yesterday.

Cecilia E. Cummings, a spokeswoman for the district, said she could not confirm that the contract had been terminated for financial reasons.

She said one preliminary report from Evergreen was located at school district headquarters this week, "and the School Reform Commission is looking to see if other documents were submitted."

Evergreen was hired to conduct an organizational review of the school district with the aim of saving money in some 10 departments, including technology, transportation, food service and human resources.

The contract was to run from Sept 8, 2006, through June 30, 2007, at a cost of $562,650, Cummings said. A separate contract for Noreen Timoney, the contract's project manager, was to run from Sept. 29, 2005, to Aug. 1, 2007, at a cost of $124,000, Cummings said.

Timoney, a management consultant and the wife of former Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney, said she had completed a host of assignments and had been paid in full.

"I earned my money, and I'll stand by the work product," she said yesterday.

As for the larger contract, she and Recio said a final report could not be completed because the contract was ended before the work was done.

Recio estimated that her firm had received about $350,000 for work it had done up to December. That included submitting to the reform commission a 50-page preliminary report and a smaller report outlining potential ways to save $150 million, both sent in the fall, she said, and a rough-draft final report sent in December.

"We put together a rough-draft series of reports that would have been turned into a final report if we were given the time," said Recio.

Said Timoney: "As a professional, I don't like to leave a project hanging. But the client has to take the responsibility to recognize what the value of this is.

"We were right in the middle of putting all the pieces of the puzzle together . . . We didn't have all the interviews completed with the various administrators," she continued. "We didn't have the back-and-forth analysis. This was not going to be a typical audit."

This past winter the reform commission voted 3-2 against renewing the Evergreen contract beyond its original June expiration date, although the contract already had been terminated, Recio said.

Former Chairman James Nevels, Dungee Glenn and Martin Bednarek voted to end the contract. Voting in favor of the pact were James Gallagher and former member Daniel Whelan.

"We are still assessing the value of the work," Cummings said of what the reform commission had paid for. *