By Adam Pagnucco.
On Monday, I published questions about new MCPS Interim Superintendent Monique Felder’s background. Specifically, I discussed a controversy concerning her receipt of $6,000 in “honorariums” from a group with ties to vendors of her school district in Nashville, where she was a senior school official. That provoked questioning from the press at an event after her appointment as interim superintendent and Felder responded. Let’s find out if she told the truth.
The following exchange occurred between WJLA reporter Kellye Lynn, Board of Education President Karla Silvestre and Felder at the press event shortly after Felder’s appointment was announced. It can be viewed at 15:04 of the event video.
Lynn: I’m Kellye Lynn from WJLA-TV. Congratulations. I wanted to mention the fact that there are some concerns about your background, particularly when you served as chief academic officer in Nashville in the public school system there about financial disclosure. What can you say to concerned parents and students about your background and about your credibility and being someone who is worthy of this position?
Silvestre: So I want to start out by saying that the board has – is well aware of Dr. Felder’s background and has had conversations with her to fully understand it, has fully vetted it and we are confident that she can do the job that she has been asked to do here as interim superintendent. I’ll let Dr. Felder expand on that if she’d like.
Felder: Thank you, thank you for that question. And so what I can tell you is that there was an error in that I completed a form prospectively versus retrospectively. And there was an audit and that audit came back noting that and simply suggesting that I amend my disclosure form. So there was a disclosure form – I have nothing not to disclose, I have always done so and I had to amend a form.
Lynn: You originally said that you did not receive any payments and you went back it and changed it… (inaudible)
Felder: No, what I was speaking to was – you complete the disclosure form retroactively, so after the fact. I completed the form but the date I put on was prospectively versus retrospectively. So that was the correction. If you look at the audit, it speaks to that fact and it also notes that, um, it was unsubstantiated. Yes.
Felder speaks at the press event.
So what happened? Is Felder correct?
On one level, yes she is. The audit to which she referred is a 2019 investigation by the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County that addressed many issues at the school system, of which the payments to Felder were just one small part. The report found that Felder initially did not disclose the payments, but later filed an addendum that did. Because Felder corrected the information, an early version of the report deemed allegations against her “unsubstantiated.”
The word “unsubstantiated” generated protest by Nashville elected officials. Here is News Channel 5 Nashville’s account of how that played out.
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In January 2018, Felder filed a financial disclosure in which she was asked to “list all sources of your income for the preceding calendar year.”
Felder listed none.
In fact, a recently released audit of Metro Schools says Felder had actually pocketed $4,000 in 2017 from the Education Research and Development Institute.
ERDI is an industry trade group that pays school officials to sit down with technology companies, giving them feedback on products they hope to sell to those officials.
The group’s affiliated companies include eight with whom Dr. Joseph’s team has signed contracts — for more than $17 million. [Note from Pagnucco: Shawn Joseph was the schools director and Felder’s boss.]
Back in June, school board member Amy Frogge publicly questioned the administration’s ties to ERDI — and the potential conflicts of interest when district officials take money from the group.
“ERDI’s sole purpose is to act as a middleman between school districts and ed vendors,” Frogge told her fellow board members.
But Joseph insisted that Felder’s consulting work had been properly disclosed.
The chief academic officer had reported receiving money from ERDI back in 2016.
“Legal did clarify that it was not an issue, any ethics issues or problems. Therefore, we proceeded. And it was accurately reported,” the schools director said.
Then, in October, as Metro auditors zeroed in on Felder’s fees, she filed an amended statement to disclose the money from 2017.
The Metro audit report suggested the chief academic officer just didn’t understand the requirement to “list all sources of your income for the preceding calendar year” and, since she amended her report, the allegation of undisclosed fees was ruled “unsubstantianted.”
“Sometime between it being identified by the auditor and the report coming out, it gets fixed — that shouldn’t unsubstantiated,” said Metro Council member Bob Mendes.
“That should be called substantiated. It happened. It got fixed only because the auditor pointed it out.”
Mendes serves on the committee that oversees the Metro auditor.
He said the schools audit may reflect an unfortunate trend he’s seen where the Metro auditor seems to want to avoid controversy.
“A lot of times with investigations that happen in government, there is a desire by some to check the box, to say we looked into it, we fixed it and move on,” Mendes said.
“That’s not necessarily what is best for the city.”
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After pushback by local politicians, the final version of the investigation report discarded the terms “substantiated” and “unsubstantiated.” The report noted, “…The investigation report conclusions have been updated using the terminology ‘Did Find Evidence’ or ‘Found No Evidence’ in place of the previous report terminology ‘Substantiate’ or ‘Unsubstantiated.’ We believe this will provide additional clarity for the conclusions related to specific allegation elements.”
The report then said the following about Felder (bold type appears in the original):
We did find evidence Dr. Monique Felder’s January 10, 2018, MNPS Disclosure of Interest form omitted Educational Research Development Institute as a source of income for the preceding year. Dr. Felder did an addendum to her MNPS Disclosure of Interest form for the calendar year 2017, on October 15, 2018, to include this source of income. Also, Dr. Felder disclosed Educational Research Development Institute as a source of income on her January 30, 2017, MNPS Disclosure of Interest form.
Both Felder and the school board are relying on the word “unsubstantiated” to excuse the findings by Nashville’s local government. But the terms “unsubstantiated” and “did find evidence” are in fact polar opposites.
Disclosure issues happen and can be fixed. Felder fixed hers. The bigger issue here is the use of the word “unsubstantiated” when that is a clear mischaracterization of the findings in Nashville. Why not just admit it was a screw-up without trying to spin the report?
In any event, form corrections are not the problem here. The money is the problem. I will look into that soon.