Hanna Skandera Senate Rules Committee Confirmation Hearing

7/29/2019 Hanna Skandera Senate Rules Committee Confirmation Hearing

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Hanna Skandera Senate Rules Committee Confirmation HearingMichael CorwinMarch 1-2, 2013

Thank you for the opportunity to present information today. I am here today because I

have a son in public school in New Mexico. His education and that of hundreds ofthousands of other students requires that an assessment of Ms. Skanderas managementof the New Mexico Public Education Department (PED) be performed with the mostcomplete information. She has been in office for over two years so there is a true trackrecord of her performance.

Per Article XII, Section 6 the New Mexico Constitution requires the director to be aqualified, experienced educator. It is clear that Ms. Skandera lacks classroom, or schooladministration experience, so the question is whether her two years as secretary designatehas dispelled concerns about her qualifications and experience, or reinforced her lack ofthose constitutional requirements.

The administration would like this hearing to be about reform vs. status quo, but it isabout far more than that. Policies are a critical component of determining what is best forour kids, but before we tackle policy we must first look at her operational actions for theyreveal significant problems in the areas of misuse of public funds and resources, conflictsof interest, ethical lapses, procurement code violations, dismissiveness of minorityeducation, including state laws, significant communication problems including refusingto meet with stakeholders, and an administration bent on concealing information.

The weight of these factors combined with the constitutional and policy concerns presenta very clear picture that Ms. Skandera should not be confirmed.

MISUSE OF PUBLIC RESOURCES AND FUNDS:

1) Directed the entire PED IT Department to spend two full work-days combingthrough non-PED held information in order to create lists and a new public record foruse by Governor Susana Martinezs key advisor to use on a political attack againstteachers unions opposed to the governors agenda. Misuse of government resources forpolitical purposes may be a violation of the governmental conduct act.

Item # 1- Email string showing the actions were directed by Ms. Skandera.Item # 2- Email response from PED that it does not create lists or create a new

public record pursuant to an IPRA request except for the governors political benefit.Item #3- SF New Mexican article on possible violation of law and secrecy.Item #4- ABQ Journal article on PED already having info in its own system.

2) Misused almost $2,000,000 in voter approved (by over 60%) GO Bond funds toreward A/B schools after the legislature rejected request for funds to reward A ratedschools. Under SB 1 the 2010 Capital Projects General Obligation Bond Act the


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legislature designated two million dollars ($2,000,000) to purchase books andinstructional materialstatewide. (Emphasis added).

Ms. Amador-Guzman reported in an LESC meeting on 11/13-16/2012 that PED issued amemo announcing that it would give awards to purchase books and instructional

materials to schools that received a letter grade of A or to Top Growth schools. Thefunding source of the awards for those schools, Ms. Amador-Guzman said, was a generalobligation (GO) bond authorized in 2010. Members of the LESC noted that the wordingin the legislation for the bond was to provide funds to schools statewide. The chair ofthe LESC questioned the legality of using GO bonds for rewarding A schools.

According to LESC minutes dated 6/18-20/2012, Mr. Craig also noted that the 2012Legislature did not appropriate $1.25 million that the executive had requested formonetary rewards for A-grade schools.

PED may have broken the law, and clearly violated the voters trust, because the

administration was denied funds to reward schools the way they do in Florida.

Legislation pushed by the administration to financially reward A schools wasoriginated in draft legislation by Christy Hovanetz, a full-time salaried employee of theFoundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) on January 24, 2011. See below aboutcontract payments made to Ms. Hovanetz by PED while she was still receiving her salaryfrom FEE.

Item #5- LESC Minutes 11/13-16/2012Item #6- LESC Minutes 6/18-20/2012Item #7- Email w/ attachment from Christy Hovanetz to Hanna Skandera 1/24/11

3) Altered the job qualifications of the fully federally fundedwith Title I fundsEducation Administrator-Advanced NAEP Coordinator (A contractor position for theUS Department of Education) in order to ensure that the position went to the wife ofKeith Gardner, Governor Martinezs chief of staff. A string of emails show that Gardnerwas kept in the loop for the hiring of his wifea direct financial benefit -- a conflict ofinterest under federal procurement rules.

The job qualifications for this advanced administrator position were altered to requireclassroom teaching experience within the previous 12 months and eliminated aneducational requirements for course work in statistics or assessment. Requiring recentclassroom experience eliminated anyone who worked as an administrator within thelast year including the acting administrator, who had extensive administration experience.Despite several very qualified applicants only Ms. Gardner was deemed qualified.

Item #8- Email (Gardner/Skandera)- Skandera Request Letter for PositionItem #9A-D- Job Descriptions changes 2011 vs. 2010, 2007,2006.Item # 10- Federal contracting conflict of interest definition.


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CONFLICT OF INTEREST/ETHICS ISSUES:

1) Paid Christy Hovanetz over $86,000 as a contract consultant. Hovanetz was at thesame time a full-time paid senior fellow at Foundation for Excellence in Education(FEE) who lives in Minnesota. Hovanetz used boilerplate legislation from FEE (below)

to draft all of the Martinez admin education reform bills. FEE paid for Skanderastravel during the contract with Hovanetz while Skandera used its services toprepare the reform bill.

FEE was formed by Jeb Bush, Zachariah P. Zachariah and Brian Yablonski. Zachariahwas sued by the SEC for fraudulent insider trading and sued in a class action lawsuit forrefusing to pay legally required overtime to his employees. Yablonski was a long-termboard member of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commissionwhich a Florida grand juryfound rife with massive fraud and abuse, which was so prevalent that it had to becommon knowledge within and outside the agency. Yablonski was also a vice-presidentat the St. Joe Company, which is under investigation for fraud by the SEC.

Item # 11- Contract between Skandera and Hovanetz/invoices/purchase orders.Item # 12- Reuters article Writing Bills, Finding Funds.Item # 13- Emails from Hovanetz to Skandera (and lobbyists for FEE including

John Bailey) with accompanying draft bills/revisions for A-F (see virtual academybelow), 3rd-grade retention (with email that says Florida has not conducted any studies oneffectiveness of retention), graduation exam, and teacher effectiveness. Also, emails oflist of funders of conference Skandera helped put on for FEE.

Item # 14- SEC documents on Zachariah fraud/ Lawsuit coversheet on overtime.Item # 15- Florida grand jury report on fraud/ St. Joe Company doc on fraud.

2) Forced the taxpayers to pay tens of millions of dollars for new technology bychanging from Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, who New Mexico hadpartnered with to transition to the new common core standards to PARCC. Skanderaswitched consortiums because FEE (Chiefs for Change) pushes PARCC over SBAC.

APS, while the largest is just one district. Other districts will have to spend money too.SBAC is set up to work with new and old technology. PARCC requires districts buy thelatest equipment.

According to minutes of the LESC meeting 11/13-16/2012- APS may have to purchase asmany as 36,492 new devices because 56% of APS computers do not meet PARCCsrequirements. The existing equipment owned by APS and other districts worked fine forSBAC. The estimated cost to the taxpayers for this upgrade is up to $17 Million.

One of the other out of state consultants that Skandera hired along with Hovanetz andBailey, Chad Colby, is the director of communications for Achieve Inc. the parentcompany for PARCC. PARCC rewarded Skandera by appointing her to its board ofdirectors.


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In March of 2012, Skandera contracted with Achieve Inc. paying them $39,660 for athree- month contract. Skandera also has her travel paid for by this state contractor.(Gift ban issue). Colby became the director of communications for Achieve five monthsbefore Skandera contracted with Achieve. (Not even a one year cooling off period).

Item # 16- NMPED 2010 Annual Report on partnering with SBACItem # 17- LESC Meeting Minutes 11/15/2012.Item # 18- FEEs (Chiefs for Change) communication in support of PARCC.Item # 19- Achieve Inc. Contract/ Colby Achieve info.Item # 20- Skandera travel paid for by PARCC and FEE.

3) Yet another state contractor pays her travel. The National Association of CharterSchool Authorizers provides services to New Mexico. Skandera has increased NASCAsrole in New Mexico. They rewarded her by naming her to NASCAs board of directors.NASCA now pays Skanderas travel too.

Item # 21- NASCA website showing NM/Skandera bio.

4) Virtual online charter pay to play hand in hand with clear cut PED staff conflicts ofinterest. K12, Inc. the worlds largest for-profit virtual charter school managementcompany gave Susana Martinez $5,000. K12, Inc. is a big financial sponsor of FEEincluding the Chiefs for Change education summit in San Francisco that Skandera washeavily engaged in as an officer of Chiefs for Change.

When Christy Hovanetz drafted the A-F school grading bill for Skandera, it included thewording, In addition to any rights a parent may have pursuant to federal law, the parentof a student enrolled in a public school rated F for two of the last four years has the rightto transfer the student in the same grade to any public school in the state not rated For

the right to have the student continue schooling by means of distance learning offered

through the statewide cyber academy or a cyber academy approved in any other state.

This verbiage made it into SB 427 submitted by Vernon Asbill during the 2011 session.At the time there was no cyber academy in New Mexico. K12, Inc. had tried to open inNew Mexico as the Sandia Academy, but was blocked by the New Mexico PublicEducation Commission. Veronica Garcia, then the education secretary upheld the denial.Sandia Academy, represented by attorney Patricia A. Matthews of the law firmMatthews Fox, filed a lawsuit in Santa Fe District Court. The court upheld Garciasrejection of Sandias appeal.

K12, Inc. lost for a variety of reasons. Unlike IDEAL-NM, the state run online educationprogram that served students and online training for state employees forfree was at thattime one of the best in the country. K12, Inc. would have been a sole-source procurement($700,000 a year) with an out of state vendor. K12, Inc. was also a for-profitmanagement company, which is illegal under the Charter School Act.


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In June 2011, Skandera contracted with Matthews Fox, and hired Patricia Matthewsfulltime in July 2011 to run her charter school program. Matthews helped Skandera RIF33 PED employees including the director of charter schools, who had rejected K12, Inc.Matthews same client that has tried to bring K12, Inc. in during Richardson, has sinceopened the New Mexico Virtual Academy.

According to LESC Meeting Minutes on 6/18-20/2012, K12, Inc. and New MexicoVirtual Academy have a MOU, which provides that K12, Inc. will hire administrativepersonnel-perhaps including a school director- to deliver the educational services;

and will be involved in recruiting, interviewing, and recommending certain

administrative positions at the school: head administrator, business manager, and

special education coordinator, and enumerates a number of other general and

administrative services that K12 Inc. will perform.(Clearly for-profit management).The special assistance to Matthews Foxs charter school clients did not end with that.Matthews as head of NMPED-Options for Parents (formerly the charter school division)interceded on behalf of New Mexico Virtual Academy after it missed a deadline to apply

for federal funding through the state. The lawyer for NMVAMatthews law partner(until two months prior) Susan Fox. (More on these two below).

Item # 21- K12, Inc. contribution to Martinez.Item # 22- SB 427 allowing students at F schools to go to virtual academy.Item # 23- Emails between Skandera and FEE on A-F bill rolloutItem # 24- PEC Denial/ Sandia Lawsuit DocketItem # 25- LESC Meeting Minutes 8/18-20/2012/ Emails Matthews, Fox, K12.

5) Numerous procurement code violations involving PED. PED has been found to haveviolated the state procurement code on at least seven times from November 2011 to July2012. Violations can be charged criminally as well as require a fine. There are numerousoccasions in addition to these findings were PED did not follow the state procurementcode.

Item # 26- Procurement code violation findings.

6) Skandera reversed additional PEC denials of charters involving Matthews Foxclients. Hanna Skandera hired Matthews Fox on a contract on 6/9/11. The contract wasto review the current proposed staffing levels and roles of staff members within theCharter Schools Division. One day after the contract date Susan Fox appeared beforethe PEC at a hearing where the PEC had to revisit its denial of the charter for MatthewsFox client Ralph J. Bunche Charter School after Skandera reversed the PECs ruling. Thedenial of Matthews Foxs clients charter was recommended by Matthews predecessor atthe Charter School Division, who was then RIFd by Skandera on the same day that Foxappeared in front of the PEC on behalf of Matthews Fox.

Matthews appeared at the December 2010 hearing when the PEC denied the charter.


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In late May 2011, Skandera announced that she was reversing the PECs denial of acharter to Matthews Fox clients calling the PECs ruling arbitrary and capricious. ThePECs denial of the charters had been upon specific factors under the charter school act.

Skandera also recently reversed the PECs denial of a charter for New Mexico

Connections Academy. Connections was represented by Susan Fox. Connections is alsomanaged by a for-profit management company, Connections Inc. New MexicoConnections Academy filed a Notice of Intent with Skanderas office that including aManagement Contract with Connections for comprehensive management services.Skandera reversed the PEC despite NMSA 22-8-4R, which states, the governing bodyshall not contract with a for-profit entity for the management of the charter school.

Item # 27- Documents on reversal of charters 2011 and 2013.

MINORITY EDUCATION/COMMUNICATION ISSUE WITH STAKE HOLDERS

1) Attempt to end run New Mexico law allowing Spanish and Native Americanlanguages in alternate demonstration of competency. In an email to Leighann Lenti,Skanderas director of policy, one of Lentis employees sought legal advice from PEDgeneral counsel, to determine if PED can require the majority of the portfolio to be inEnglish due to the rule which allows submissions in Spanish or Native languages.

Darn. We could say that submissions demonstrating competency in reading must be in

English. (Email from Vanderbilt to Lenti).

NMAC 6.19.7.10 D4 specifically states, students may submit a portfolio in English,Spanish, or in a Native American language of an Indian nation, tribe or pueblo located inNew Mexico.

2) The US Office of Civil Rights expressed concern over PEDs lack of a bilingualreading model. LESC Meeting Minutes 11/13/16/12.

3) Lack of communication with Tribal leaders and Hispanic Education leaders.Skandera was accused by both Indian Education leaders and Hispanic Education leadersof not communicating with them. (Santa Fe New Mexican article 12/15/11).

Mandatory retention conflicts with both the Indian Education Act and HispanicEducation Act that call for increasing parental involvement in education.

4) Long term vacancies in key positions in the Indian Education Division and also theBilingual Education Division left the divisions non-functioning. Failing to fill thepositions ran counter to the Indian Education Act and the Hispanic Education Act.

5) NCLB Waiver initially rejected over lack of addressing minority education gap, thesystem did not address achievement gaps among racial and ethnic groups and a lackof attention to subgroups of students-such as ethnic groups and students learningEnglish-was of particular concern.


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6) Failed to attend Hispanic Education Summit while in San Francisco where shespoke at the Chiefs for Change (FEE) education summit and spent time with K12, Inc,Connections and other donors.

Item # 28- Minority education issue docs.

7) Sole-source contracts with Teach for American instead of using the NativeAmerican Teacher Training Program through the Indian Education Division andUNM/CNM. Teach for America was paid $800,000 to recruit and train Native Americaneducators and provide culturally sensitive training to non-Native American teachers.Only about 1% of that money went to recruiting and training Native American educators.80% of teachers trained through TFA leave the profession after 3 years. Over 50% leaveafter only 2 years. TFA was caught double billing the taxpayers for the same services andhad to return the funds over charged.

Item # 29- Teach for America contract, expenditure and study on effectiveness.

8) Accused school districts of gaming the system by inflating special educationnumbers through a high profile media campaign. Skandera launched a high profile auditof 34 school districts accusing many of them of skewing special education figures tomake more money. Superintendents countered back that Skandera did not communicatewith the districts and that the vast majority of alleged issues could have been resolved inone sitting. The head of the superintendents association opined that the purpose of theaudit was to discredit the districts, contenting that there was no urgency, no need to

rush, and no findings of fraudulent behavior.

Item # 30- Press release, LESC Meetings, news articles.

9) RIF of key PED staff left no one available to aid with E-rate application process forFederal grant money for technology in rural and poor school districts. Skanderaeliminated the jobs of the Educational Technologies Bureau putting every district in NewMexico at risk of losing technology funds.

Skanderas office refused to communicate with the NM Council for Technology inEducation who stepped in to fill the void left by Skanderas RIF. However, the PED hasnot made any effort to replace the lost reviewers. Nor do they have a single person onstaff who can sit down with a school district and help them to develop an acceptable

plan. Further, the PED and the Secretary-Designate (and her staff) have seen fit toavoid communications with the CTE while we are doing the work free of charge.

E-rate money collected in New Mexico dropped significantly in 2011 from over$47,000,000 to $34,000,000.

Item # 31- Emails, press release, E-rate Central state information.


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10) Superintendents Association accused Skandera in a letter dated 9/21/2012 ofon going and systematic exclusion of Superintendents Council input.Skandera didnot notify the council of changes to the A-F school grading system, and failed to respondto requests for information from the council.

Item # 32- Letter from the president of the New Mexico Schools SuperintendentAssociation.

POLICY AND FITNESS ISSUES

1)Failure to analyze serious issues created by third-grade retention as documented inkey studies. To date Florida has not assessed the effectiveness of retention, and one studyconducted through Harvard found no benefits to retaining kids by the time the reach 8thgrade. The rush to push through unproven policy is not reform. Mandatory retention hasbeen proven to increase dropout rates, not reduce them.

Item # 33- National Academy of Science study/ National Assoc of School Pschol.

2) Failure to assess actual effectiveness of virtual academies. Significant high turn-overrates and increased drop out rates. According to K12, Inc.s annual report, these schools aprofitable for companies, but their students do not perform any better than brick andmortar students. According to an investigation in Colorado, online schools lead to higherrates of permanent dropouts.

3) Bypassing New Mexico institutions for out of state corporations. Ms. Skandera haslet IDEAL-NM wither on the vine, while allowing both K12,Inc and Connections siphonoff state funds. The result here will be devastating to NM jobs, meaning fewer peoplehere can afford groceries, cars, houses while those living in Virginia will be able to buymore.

Through her conduct in office, Ms. Skandera has demonstrated that she should not beconfirmed. Thank you.

Hanna Skandera Senate Rules Committee Confirmation Hearing

Documents

Transcript of Hanna Skandera Senate Rules Committee Confirmation Hearing