McGeehan calls for probe of Philadelphia School District contract award

A legislator from Northeast Philadelphia on Wednesday asked the state Department of Education to investigate the Philadelphia School District's award of a $7.5 million, no-bid emergency contract for surveillance cameras.

State Rep. Mike McGeehan, a Democrat, said he had asked acting Secretary of Education Thomas Gluck to determine whether district officials disregarded state procurement rules in a sudden switch of vendors, as reported by The Inquirer on Sunday.

"I have been following The Inquirer's reporting on this, and I have been appalled by the answers coming from the school district," he said. "They have been dancing around the fundamental issues here."

McGeehan said he wanted to know why the administration of School Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman abruptly replaced Security & Data Technologies Inc. (SDT) of Newtown Township with a Philadelphia firm, IBS Communications Inc.

SDT had been doing preliminary work to install surveillance cameras and command control centers at 19 schools termed persistently dangerous.

"Citing 'emergency' work as a pretext to this highly questionable practice, the Ackerman administration further flouted state rules by awarding the contract to IBS . . . an entity not authorized by state rules to perform the work required," McGeehan said.

"The arbitrary and questionable action in the city schools security-camera contract" could hurt future allocations for Philadelphia, he added.