Procurement controversies -- Atlanta, Georgia schools

Atlanta schools defy bid rules on wireless contracts

the district’s solicitation for bids copied most of its specifications from the catalog of the wireless equipment manufacturer that later was part of the winning proposal.

a contract for wireless Internet equipment — worth as much as $10.5 million over five years — suggests the district is again disregarding local and federal mandates on fair and competitive bidding.

School district officials awarded the work to a company with the fifth-lowest bid and the third-highest overall ranking

School district officials dispute that problems existed in the contracting process.

The district decided last year to rip out old wireless technology in nearly 100 schools and replace it with new equipment. On Sept. 2, officials issued a request for bids.

Already, however, the district had engaged vendors for some of the work: TIG, based in San Diego with an Atlanta branch, and subcontractor Xirrus, a manufacturer of wireless networking products based in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Last August, at the district’s request, TIG provided price quotes on installing Xirrus wireless equipment at seven schools and in the central office in downtown Atlanta. On Sept. 4, two days after the bid request went out, the district issued purchase orders agreeing to pay TIG the quoted amount. In October, school officials sent the company a $387,000 check signed by the superintendent.

Executives with TIG did not respond to numerous requests for interviews. A Xirrus spokesman, John Merrill, said: “As far as I know, everything is completely on the up and up. Everything was scrutinized and was fair.”

In its request for proposals, the district said price would account for 40 percent of bidders’ scores when submissions were evaluated. The next two most important categories, methodology and technical responses, would count for 20 percent apiece. The company’s qualifications would be worth 15 percent, and the final 5 percent of the score would be based on “value-added benefits.”

The evaluators gave the highest overall score to AT&T, followed by Smartwave Technologies and TIG.

But the evaluators took another look at the proposals, the district’s documents show. This time, they awarded no points to any bidder for price.

Only then, with cost disregarded, did TIG emerge on top.

Contracts that don’t follow purchasing policy are “of no effect and void,” school board policy says. The board may hold employees who purchase goods or services outside the policy’s bounds personally liable — or discipline or fire them. Board chairwoman LaChandra Butler Burkes did not respond to three phone messages.

For this story, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reviewed roughly 2,000 pages of documents related to multiple technology contracts, including invoices, purchase orders and court documents, along with records kept by the non-profit that administers the E-rate program for the federal government. The newspaper used the Georgia Open Records Act to obtain documents from the school district.

The AJC also interviewed vendors involved in the bidding process and submitted detailed questions to Atlanta school district officials concerning the bids.