The Scandal Behind The Effort

Right Photo

Ad promoting the NBC 5 Series on its

investigation toward DCS.

I admit to NOT following the story behind Dallas County Schools that much originally.  As I said, most of my effort following it all came when its existence to continue it was on the ballot this November.  Don Huffines, who is also my state senator representing me (and I participated in his campaign I admit)  authored the actual bill to get rid off it.  I spend much of this weekend trying to catch up on what exactly happened here after attending DISD's Board Briefing this past Thursday.  The reason is why would DISD somehow have to assume upwards of perhaps $90-100 million in debt to get access to DCS' assets?

Clearly the station that took the lead in breaking the story behind the scandals (and to a degree caused its demise) was NBC Channel 5.   While other stations had talked about Dallas County Schools and safety concerns for years, they are the best resource (link to their series) to get more specific information to find out why DCS went into financial turmoil and thus got voted out of existence.  

How did DCS get into such bad shape financially?  Its own board of trustees didn't know about supposedly until last February.  It had $40 million less than it anticipated.

The closest thing I have found to an origin story of what caused this scandal, its dissolution, and now DISD's effort to create a transportation department is here.  Somehow at one point, former DCS Superintendent Rick Sorells and the head of a company called Force Multipler Solutions, Robert Leonard had known each other closely for years. 

The floor plan of the apartments in New Orleans that then DCS Superintendent Rick Sorrells and Force Multipler Solutions Robert Leonard had shared.

So close they shared a luxury suite of apartments in the French Quarter of New Orleans.  Leonard's company paid at least for the water bill on those apartments according documents found by Channel 5.  Meanwhile, Force Multiplier Solutions was awarded $70 million in contracts essentially for school bus camera equipment dating back to 2012.   Apparently (not mentioned in this specific story) one of DCS' former board presidents, Larry Duncan, was given gifts and donations from this same company.  I will mention this in another post.  

The four major service centers of Dallas County Schools. 

DISD was to acquire them to run its own transportation

department currently.

To honor all these contracts, I'm assuming that DCS had to then find shady ways to get funding just to stay alive from leases on buses to its service centers.  A separate Channel 5 story talks about DCS in one instance back in 2015 got $25 million in cash by leasing its four major bus service centers for over $47 million.  A question I like to ask here is: "How much of that lease was paid for so far and will DISD have to take that entire obligation?"    This was briefly mentioned, but not fully explained in last Thursday's board briefing.  This here can be talked about in another post altogether.  

Full of Unknowns: DISD's Incomplete Transportation Plan

Yesterday DISD executives unveiled their first draft of a transportation plan to establish their own department.  I was fascinated to see how a $53 million a year bureaucracy was somehow going to be established in simply a manner of months.  The news media was there too.  In fact you can see me twice in this Channel 11 video (I'm wearing a green shirt here.)

Here is the actual slideshow presentation that was used by DISD executives.  For those who want to see the video of the whole meeting and the 1-hour presentation on the topic the link is here.   (You have to click on meetings and then find the record for November 30th meeting.  I have this already as a jump link above.) Scroll down the slideshow presentation and you'll come into a page (number 8 to be specific) entitled literally unknowns.  The headline is "We don't know what we don't know..."  Was this written by some school kid or someone high on drugs?   I appreciate the candor here but this represents utter panic behind the scenes whether DISD executives want to admit it or not.

I could write a bunch of blogs breaking this up and I think will indeed do that.  But a very quick general summary.  DISD wants to establish this department essentially in six months so it can operate for summer school students.  To do this, DISD will try to take over most or all of the physical property and human capital of Dallas County Schools (DCS.)  This means taking control of four major service centers and about 800 buses DISD doesn't own yet.  It also means hiring 1100+ new employees mostly from DCS.  Upwards of $90 million worth of debt may have to been incurred by the DISD from DCS to successfully get all of this done. What's most alarming is that DISD is not even 100% sure it will own all of the buses it gets from DCS.

There was no specific discussion about more specific topics like potential costs to acquire fuel or individual parts to actually run the school buses DISD will operate.  It was revealed in the presentation, DISD does not have any idea of how much in insurance costs it will incur for transportation at all.  What's more alarming is that in the presentation it was pointed out DISD does not have a designated head to run its new transportation department in its day-to-day operations yet!

I included this other news clip from FOX 4 so one can get a better feeling of acting being there.  Wait a minute and you'll find one of the union reps and Trustee Joyce Foreman expressing some of the same concerns here.  (Disclaimer:  I'm not sure where Channel 4 got the $47 million figure from.)

One Hot Mess: An Introduction to DISD's Newest Crisis

Off and on, I have been following the Dallas ISD Board Meetings for 20 years now since I was a high school junior at Townview Magnet Center (above.)  Even though I'm a DISD graduate and now a Navy veteran, many ask why do I care what DISD does especially I'm not a parent (at least yet.)  I'll tell you why: because I simply care about education.


Dallas ISD is now acquiring the Dallas Public Schools after voters agreed to a referendum to disband this organization last month.  This agency handled the transportation needs of Dallas ISD students and several other suburban districts in Dallas County.  Below is a brief news clip better explaining why and what happened here.

I thought about being a teacher, but what rarely gets talked about in education is how a school district is actually run as a whole.  How are the logistics and accounting issues handled?  Sometimes labor issues are brought up too.  However, when these issues get talked about Dallas ISD, often times millions of dollars in taxpayer money is at stake. Few taxpayers in general seems to understand that Dallas ISD has control over a Billion-plus dollar budget.  That means if you live in Dallas, every taxpayer's everyday life (especially if you're a property owner) is directly impacted!

The next blog will talk about that first meeting...uncovering the messy challenge of a establishing a $53 million dollar department in a manner of months!