NEWS
- Embattled D.C. schools food vendor quits contract, puts pressure on city
- In Surprise Move, D.C. Schools Food Vendor Pulls Out Of Contract
- Senate rejects plan to allow parents to opt out of state standardized tests
Embattled D.C. schools food vendor quits contract, puts pressure on city
The Washington Post
By Aaron C. Davis and Michael Alison Chandler
July 14, 2015
The vendor that provides food services to the D.C. Public Schools has told the D.C. Council that it wants to withdraw from the contract this fall, a sudden and unexpected move that puts immediate pressure on the District to find a new provider for nearly 100 schools.
Chartwells-Thompson Hospitality, the District schools’ embattled food vendor, informed council members Tuesday that it wants to quit the lucrative contract and move on after a large whistleblower settlement and wranglings over allegations of mismanagement.
“Recently it has become clear to us that we are no longer a valued partner to DCPS,” Rhonna Cass, president of Chartwells School Dining Services, wrote in a letter submitted to the council Tuesday morning. “As such, we think the best course is for us to exit the contract and allow DCPS to move forward in another direction.”
Chartwells’s decision shocked council members and left uncertain the city’s path forward for feeding thousands of D.C. students once schools open in late August. During a hearing Tuesday, council members wondered whether they could legally compel the company to provide food service for the coming school year or whether they would need to install a new vendor within weeks.
“We have school kids that will need food, and how do we repair this situation?” said council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large).
The company clarified its intentions later in the day in a follow-up letter to council members, saying that it intends to continue providing food until the school system identifies a new food services operator and that it would be “agreeable” to having the school system hire any of its employees to help with the transition.
“While it is our desire to finalize the transition prior to the fall term, we understand that this may not be achievable,” Cass wrote. “Our joint focus should be the well-being of the students, and we will do our part.”
The largest food vendor for the District’s public school system has been under scrutiny since it agreed to pay $19 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that the company overcharged the city and mismanaged the school district’s meals programs. The agreement was announced last month.
Chartwells admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement and said in the initial letter to the council that it “chose to resolve this matter amicably instead of litigating which would have lasted years and served as a significant distraction to us, DCPS and the District. . . . Our hope was this resolution would allow us all to move past the distractions and return our collective focus to serving students.”
Ann Pendleton, a spokeswoman for Chartwells, said the company is “dedicated to ensuring a smooth transition.”
DCPS officials declined to comment Tuesday.
The $32 million annual food services contract was up for approval by the council just weeks after the Chartwells settlement agreement was announced. Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) asked the council to delay approving the contract so that it could receive a more thorough review.
Council members then sought assurances from D.C. Public Schools that the school system would more closely monitor Chartwells during the coming year and move quickly to rebid the contract to find a new vendor.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s team and the chairman of the council’s education committee, David Grosso (I-At Large), did not contest the contract, citing concerns that the District had no choice but to extend it because the city lacked enough time to vet possible replacements.
The two sides agreed last week that the administration would rebid the Chartwells contract for the 2016-2017 school year, more closely monitor the company’s finances and increase the frequency of student surveys regarding the quality of Chartwells’s school meals.
As Cheh and the mayor’s representatives put the final touches on that deal Tuesday, the letter arrived from Chartwells indicating that it would rather get out of the contract entirely.
“In the face of being held to higher standards, it looks like Chartwells — consistent with poor behavior all along — decides to cut and run,” Cheh said in an interview.
Council members blasted the surprise announcement during the Tuesday legislative meeting, calling it potentially harmful to students and possibly breaking the terms of the company’s contract with the city.
“I am very disappointed in the actions today by Chartwells,” said council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large). “It clearly shows that Chartwells is not putting students first.”
The council adjourned Tuesday for the remainder of the summer. Its next scheduled meeting is Sept. 22, a month into the school year.
Through a spokesman, Bowser (D) said: “While the council is on recess, we will fix this. We will explore all legal options and new opportunities to better serve our children.”
The city schools first contracted with Chartwells in 2008, seeking to save money and improve food quality.
Cass outlined Chartwells’s achievements since then in her letter to the council, saying that the company expanded the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables, and renovated kitchens that were once used to reheat prepackaged frozen foods. She said the company saved the District money, even if it did not achieve “aspirational” cost savings. It said that DCPS was losing $11.6 million annually in 2008, when the company partnered with the city schools. And last year, food losses were estimated at $5 million.
An independent audit in 2012 found that losses in the food services program exceeded $10 million annually in the early years of the contract. In fiscal 2012, DCPS reported a $20 million deficit for food services.
In a complaint that followed the whistleblower lawsuit, the D.C. attorney general alleged that Chartwells knowingly submitted false invoices that the school system paid and used “self-dealing purchasing arrangements” that inflated costs for the District.
Cass denied these allegations in the company’s letter to the council Tuesday. “We vehemently disagreed with the allegations as we viewed that DCPS bore much of the responsibility for the savings deficit,” she wrote.
In Surprise Move, D.C. Schools Food Vendor Pulls Out Of Contract
WAMU 88.5
By Martin Austermuhle
July 14, 2015
he company responsible for providing meals in D.C. public schools surprised city officials on Tuesday by pulling out of its contract, leaving city officials scrambling to find a new provider for meals that will be served to tens of thousands of students across the city in the coming school year.
In a letter sent to members of the D.C. Council on Tuesday morning — the last day before a two-month summer recess — Rhonna Cass, the president of Chartwells, said that concerns raised by legislators over the $32 million annual food service contract had prompted the sudden decision.
"Recently, it has become clear to us that we are no longer a valued partner to DCPS. As such, we think the best course is for us to exit the contract and allow DCPS to move forward in another direction," she wrote.
The company said it would remain in place until a new food provider is identified, a process that could take months.
The letter comes after weeks of discord between D.C. officials and Chartwells, which has held the food services contract since 2008, when the city's school system decided to privatize its food services.
Last month, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine announced that Chartwells and its partner Thompson Hospitality would pay the city $19.4 million to settle a lawsuit filed by former DCPS food services director Jeffrey Mills, who claimed that the companies overcharged the city and provided meals that did not meet expectations or quality standards.
In her letter, Cass said the company had decided to settle the lawsuit "instead of litigating, which would have lasted years and served as a significant distraction to us, DCPS and the District." She also said that some of the problems with the food provided to students and the high costs were the fault of DCPS itself.
The settlement came just as DCPS was finalizing a two-year contract extension with Chartwells, giving legislators an opening to raise their concerns with the contract — and even block it.
Earlier this month, Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) and three of her colleagues filed a disapproval resolution — a measure that would give the Council 45 days to debate and vote on contract extension. In an interview with WAMU on Tuesday afternoon, Cheh said the resolution was a means to bring DCPS officials to the table to discuss concerns with Chartwells and food service more broadly.
That meeting took place last week, after which D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson pledged to Cheh that she would look for a new food services provider for the 2016-17 school year and put in place new mechanisms to monitor the quality of meals being provided to students.
With that in place, Cheh said that she would withdraw the disapproval resolution at Tuesday's legislative meeting, allowing Chartwells to stay onboard for the 2015-16 school year while DCPS looked for a new provider for the following year.
"We were satisfied that we had put something in place that would probably improve the meals that the kids were getting and the service," said Cheh.
But the letter from the company withdrawing from its contract with DCPS upended that plan, leaving city officials scrambling to understand their options moving forward. Some say they may be able to cobble together an alternative for the fall, while others hope that Chartwells will reconsider.
The original letter said that Chartwells would seek to end its service after summer classes were completed, adding a degree of urgency to the search for a new provider. But in a follow-up letter to legislators, Cass clarified that the company would be "amenable to continue to operate somewhat longer if necessary."
"Chartwells is dedicated to ensuring a smooth transition and we have communicated that will continue to work with DCPS until it selects a new foodservice provider. We have always made the health and well-being of the students our top priority and this will continue," said Ann Pendleton, a spokeswoman for the company, further clarifying their position.
Cheh says that regardless of what happens, students will be fed once they return to school in August.
"We'll have to do whatever it is we have to do. This won't be the first time in the annals of government that we have to hurry and get a contract in place or get vendors in place to provide a service. I'm pretty confident that with the vendors that our out there... we'll be able to put something together for the ensuing year," she said.
In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, Mayor Muriel Bowser said as much. "While the Council is on recess, we will fix this. We will explore all legal options and new opportunities to better serve our children," she said.
In her letter, Cass said that she was proud of the work the company had done in providing food services for the city's school system.
"Across the 97 schools in the District we serve nearly 46,000 students daily, which is approximately 8 million meals a year," wrote Cass. "That is a serious obligation and we took it on with real passion and commitment. We are vert proud of our achievements."
But Cheh said she sees the company's move in a different light.
"What Chartwells did by doing this, it simply confirmed in my mind what a bad partner they are," she said. "Seeing on the horizon that they'd be held to higher standards, they cut and run. It's pretty irresponsible of them to take this action."
Senate rejects plan to allow parents to opt out of state standardized tests
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
July 14, 2015
The Senate on Tuesday defeated an amendment to the Every Child Achieves Act that would have allowed parents nationwide to opt out of state standardized tests without putting school districts at risk of federal sanctions.
The chamber voted 64 to 32 against the amendment, proposed by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) amid a backlash against mandated standardized tests. “Parents, not politicians or bureaucrats, will have the final say over whether individual children take tests,” he said.
But Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) — the Republican co-sponsor of the carefully crafted bipartisan bill — spoke forcefully against the proposal, saying it would strip states of the right to decide whether to allow parents to opt out.
“I say to my Republican friends, do we only agree with local control when we agree with the local policy?” said Alexander, who has framed the bill as an effort to transfer power over education from the federal government to the states.
The vote sets up an important difference to reconcile between the House and Senate bills to rewrite No Child Left Behind, the nation’s main federal education law.
Current law requires school districts to ensure that 95 percent of children take the exams, a provision meant to ensure that administrators don’t encourage low performers to stay home on exam day. The Senate bill mandates 95 percent participation of students who are required to be tested, but allows states to decide whether children who opt out are among those who are required to be tested.
But under the House bill, parents who opt their children out of tests would not be counted in the participation rate of any state, effectively removing them from the accountability system altogether. Democrats and civil rights groups opposed that provision, saying it opened a loophole to hide achievement gaps.
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