Especially because one of them was supposed to be free.

The Council of the Great City Schools, a Washington-based nonprofit organization, conducted an October examination of the district’s methods of buying and selling goods and services.

Administrators at the Houston Independent School District now are awaiting a bill from the council – even though Superintendent Terry Grier repeatedly told Texas Watchdog, other news outlets and the public for more than five months that the council audit would cost nothing.

HISD trustees in October approved paying a Houston accounting firm up to $87,500 to also audit the district’s business practices. That evaluation is being conducted now. Final results are expected sometime during the upcoming weeks, school board President Mike Lunceford and district officials have said.

Jason Spencer, an HISD spokesman, told Texas Watchdog last month that the council audit would cost the district taxpayer money. A council review of HISD’s capital facilities program in 2010 came with a price tag of about $22,000 – or roughly a quarter of what Null-Lairson will earn from conducting its current audit.

Peggy Sue Gay, 52, a mother of two HISD students, expressed the same concern and also asked, “Why did the Council of (the) Great City Schools do the ‘high-level management review?’ They have only conducted seven such studies in the past 12 years.”

Gay, who is represented by HISD District VII’s Harvin Moore, added, “I thought this was supposed to be an audit - but it ended up being a ‘high level management review.’”

But Spencer said in an e-mail that “HISD asked the Council of the Great City Schools to review the district’s procurement practices, not to perform an audit. A thorough audit of HISD procurement is under way,” Spencer added, referring to the Null-Lairson evaluation.

He also said, “I’m not aware that we’ve ever used the word ‘audit’ in connection with the (council) review. If we did, we were using the word generically. Again, I don’t specifically recall us using that word. Audits are highly involved and expensive exercises, it would not have made sense for us to expend taxpayer dollars on a pair of redundant audits.”

Spencer said the council’s work “does not meet the technical definition of an audit.”

But immediately after announcing in August that the council would examine the district’s purchasing procedures at a public meeting, Grier called the council inspection an “audit” during an in-person interview with Texas Watchdog.

And Grier, school-board members and other district officials have repeatedly and consistently referred to the council review as an “audit” for more than five months.

Both audits have come in the wake of Trustee Anna Eastman’s call in August that an independent entity evaluate HISD’s procurement processes.

Grier also told Texas Watchdog during that August conversation that the reason why another independent firm would conduct an audit of similar HISD practices was to dispel any doubt the public might have about the council’s objectivity due to both his position on the executive committee and the fact that Chief Financial Officer Melinda Garrett received a council award in 2010.

That award recognized “a school business official who distinguishes himself or herself through service to urban education,” according to a district news release at the time.

Within weeks of Garrett receiving the council award, the council delivered a scathing critique of the district’s capital facilities program.

That 2010 report found substantial financial errors in HISD’s capital facilities program. It also stated that the program had been operating without annual budgets, standard contract forms and budget evaluations.

The review further concluded that the district’s capital facilities program had no set timelines for the completion of projects, and lacked standard guidelines as to how projects would be established, evaluated and completed.

The report also said no tracking existed of amendments to projects that enlarged their scope and price tag, and that district staff had “no understanding of the impact” of such changes on costs.

HISD referred to the 2010 council probe as an “audit,” including mention of it by that term in this press release still available on HISD’s own website.

***

Contact Mike Cronin at mike@texaswatchdog.org or 713-228-2850. Follow him on Twitter at @michaelccronin or @texaswatchdog.

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