Have you been following the controversy over purged documents at BCPS ahead of a planned audit? It’s pretty interesting:
In March, Ann Costantino of The Baltimore Post reported that “Baltimore County Public Schools may have violated its own ethics policy when it discarded two years of original financial disclosure statements for Ryan Imbriale, the executive director of the Department of Innovative Learning who spearheaded, along with former Superintendent S. Dallas Dance, the school system’s education technology initiative called STAT, for Students and Teachers Accessing Tomorrow.” “Baltimore County schools purportedly ‘destroyed’ financial disclosure docs for key personnel”
Then earlier this month Costantino reported that BCPS had destroyed 2,400 documents related to employee financial disclosures — and that it did so one week after former superintendent Dallas Dance was sentenced on perjury charges related to his own financial disclosures. The file purge appeared to be legal, but the Post article raised questions about the timing. “Baltimore County Schools’ Ethics Department purges nearly 2,400 financial disclosure docs, days after former Superintendent Dance sentenced to jail”
On Aug. 21, the school board passed a resolution by board member Ann Miller that put a halt to the purge until an external audit is complete.
“Motion: The board directs the interim superintendent and all BCPS personnel to immediately cease and desist in the routine or non-routine destruction of any and all school system documents and records until the conclusion of the external procurement audit and until further direction by the board with regard to record retention.”
On Aug. 29, The Baltimore Sun reported that interim superintendent Verletta White sent out a memo telling BCPS staff to stop the destruction of any documents. It included comments from officials who said the 2,400-page purge was routine and not related to the audit. “Baltimore County school board tells administrators and teachers not to destroy records”
Also on Aug. 29, Costantino reported that fears of a paperwork “logjam” associated with the order to save all documents “may be serving to deflect from the actual reason” for the order to preserve documents. “Directive to freeze Baltimore County Schools’ record purges amid procurement audit breeds fear of logjam”
What do you think?
I like it!
This was, and continues to be, an *awful* directive. The Board of Education has instructed every teacher to keep every document, to throw away nothing. Not a hall pass, not the first draft of a lesson plan, we are to keep everything, knowing full well that nobody will ever look at it.
If the Board wanted financial documents, they should have said so. Instead they’ve told thousands of school staff not to throw anything away.
I think the BCPS leadership is not transparent and not honest. We had hoped for an end to this with the exit of Dallas Dance. Alas, not much has changed.
Ann Constantino has accomplished strong investigative reporting on this issue. The Baltimore Sun should cite her breaking stories, especially the article on the massive school district document purge, as well as her exposure of the fraught erasure of recent forms ‘amended’ under a cloud by the current leader of the tech initiative, Ryan Imbriale. Otherwise, the paper of record is biased and incomplete in their coverage.
It can’t be business as usual at BCPS if these documents were never purged previously, and with all of this activity occurring only when such forms have become the focus of criminal and etchics investigations and findings—and under a pending outside audit. Who oversaw the purge? Interim superintendent Verletta White—-cited for an ethics violation for her failure to disclose outside income over four years and who recommended the contracts under question in the audit. Why does White remain at the helm? The school system will not be on solid, non-corrupted footing until new leadership and media coverage is put in place.