Who Remembers EdBuild?

This week, interim District of Columbia Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson will apparently be named to permanently fill the position. Henderson may well be the best candidate for the job, but Mayor Vincent C. Gray, the legally-mandated selection panel that has held only one meeting, and the DC Council still should properly examine her qualifications and background. One item that might make for interesting questioning is her role in and goals for EdBuild, a non-profit consulting company founded in 2005 on whose board Henderson served.

In 2007 I wrote about test score data that suggested that claims by Michelle Rhee on her resume concerning test score gains by her students were likely not true. My article went unnoticed until recently when another blogger discovered the same data and managed to get coverage of the issue by the Washington Post. But, there was another topic about which I wrote back then that might be of similar interest. That is the improbable rise and fall of EdBuild.

The story of EdBuild is one of politically-connected insiders, big money contracts, and the interconnected ties between various players in the education realm. EdBuild was the creation of the Federal City Council (FCC) with financial support from the NewSchools Venture Fund. Neil Albert, who had been serving as Deputy Mayor for Children, Youth, Families and Elders under Mayor Tony Williams, quit that position in October 2005 and became EdBuild's Chief Executive Officer three days later. The Washington Examiner reported that Albert had been lobbying on behalf of EdBuild while still serving as Deputy Mayor.

The FCC was founded by Philip L. Graham, then publisher of the Washington Post. The organization is composed of and financed by 200 of the region's top business, professional, and civic leaders. For years, the FCC had been a strong advocate for mayoral control of DC's public schools. Following Adrian M. Fenty's mayoral primary victory in September 2006, Fenty met with FCC Chairman Terry Golden and was offered $400,000 to assist on education issues during the transition. Victor Reinoso, the FCC's director of education initiatives, would ultimately become Fenty's Deputy Mayor for Education.

The NewSchools Venture Fund was founded by Silicon Valley venture capitalists based on the model of "venture philanthropy" to support "education entrepreneurs." In DC, the fund has supported a number of charter schools as well as Teach for America. Julie Mikuta, a partner in the fund who heads its San Francisco office, was once an elected member of the DC Board of Education.

In December 2006, the DC Board of Education approved Resolution R07-24 which would establish a public/private development partnership between DCPS and EdBuild to manage construction on four DC public schools. As explained in the resolution, this idea originated with an unsolicited proposal from EdBuild which procurement regulations allowed to be converted to a sole source contract. This was rather remarkable given that EdBuild was barely a year old, had no track record to speak of, and -- according to its website at that time -- had only an 8 member staff.

But what EdBuild did have was a ton of inside connections. In addition to former Deputy Mayor Albert, the staff included former school board member Mikuta. The Board of Directors included John Hill, Executive Director of the FCC (who had previously been Executive Director of the Financial Control Board), Jordan Meranus, a partner in the NewSchools Venture Fund, Chris Smith, CEO of Williams C. Smith & Co., Eric W. Price, Vice President of Abdo Development, and -- of course -- Kaya Henderson.

Clearly EdBuild did not have the capacity to manage construction on one school, let alone four. Therefore, the organization likely planned to subcontract out the work. In hindsight, this is exactly the model later followed by Banneker Ventures, Fenty fraternity brother Omar Karim's company. Banneker Ventures used its political connections to obtain sole source contracts for work it mostly contracted out -- keeping a helpful portion of the funds for itself (and also cutting Sinclair Skinner in on the deal). Was EdBuild little more than another Banneker Ventures? That would be a good question for Henderson.

Very little light has ever been shed on what exactly EdBuild was trying to achieve. Clearly it wanted access to the $2.3 billion in school modernization funds that were then in the pipeline. Perhaps this was simply to ensure that the funds were efficiently spent, maybe the money could have been supplemented by funding from NewSchools, or maybe a bunch of well-connected folks wanted to profit from their connections. We may never know.

The reason that we will never know is that DC law required contracts over $1 million to be approved by the Council. After approval by the Board of Education, the EdBuild contract was submitted to the Council, but by that time, it had become controversial. Washington Post Columnist Colbert King discovered that the school system's chief procurement officer had not signed off on the deal, adding to the impression that EdBuild was the beneficiary of insider favoritism. King wrote "[t]he appearance of favoritism and inside dealing can corrode confidence in government. Full and open competition is the better way." Ultimately, the Council did not approve the contract.

EdBuild would quietly fade away. But many of those associated with it prospered. Neil Albert left his job as CEO of EdBuild to become Fenty's Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, eventually becoming City Administrator. John Hill is still CEO of the FCC, but is also President of the DC Libraries. Kaya Henderson left the board of EdBuild when she was selected to be DCPS Deputy Chancellor under Michelle Rhee. Now, Henderson will likely become the DCPS Chancellor. Whatever EdBuild was trying to do from the outside was likely much easier from the inside. It would be interesting to know exactly what that was and Henderson's upcoming confirmation hearings might provide an opportunity to find out.