You read about the U-turn the School Board seemed to pull last Thursday at their “review session” last week on Esrati.com Dayton Public Schools. Unsafe leadership, unsafe buses

Today, we bring you the emergency meeting of the finance committee, the meeting that was hastily called after last Thursdays discussion.

The first question should be of course, why the rush? Did a district that hasn’t bought a standard school bus since 2010 seriously not have a full plan in place? This is the purchasing department that also knows how to run an RFP/RFQ process for marketing so well that they can present their findings to the board, without substantiation, or even a contract to review- and the board buys it lock, stock and barrel.

Going back to that marketing contract- the one where district legal counsel Jyllian Bradshaw spent an inordinate amount of time telling the board that if they were to listen to a presentation, or review the documents, they would have to recuse themselves. “You have to follow our scoring rubric” were her instructions.

So when Dr. Adil Baguirov presents his document “DPS New Bus Purchase: buy 30 buses, or finance or lease 60 buses or 115 buses?” to the finance committee tonight, does this mean he built a rubric, went out to bid, accepted bids and scored them? Did I miss something and find out he’s now on payroll in the purchasing department? And, superintendent Rhonda Corr who is the CEO of the district, is allowing this to happen? Didn’t she learn anything in Chicago when her boss got sent to prison for kickback contracts?

Since when do school board members negotiate contracts?

When is someone going to investigate Baguirov’s role in the real estate negotiations that sold the Patterson Co-Op site for half the value of a parking lot a block away? Why wasn’t the board and superintendent informed of a $900K offer on the Patterson Kennedy elementary site that was previously offered for a minimum bid of $720K but got no bids?

The more we watch the Dayton Public Schools Board of Education, the more questions we have. Maybe that’s why they meet more, do less, and have worse schools than any other district in the region.

Note- this bus issue brought board members Sheila Taylor and John McManus out, possibly causing this to be an illegal unannounced meeting of the School Board. Sitting mute- doesn’t really solve the issue. Dr. Walker even said Dr. Hazel Rountree wanted to attend, but didn’t for that very reason. This issue was so supercharged that Board member Joe Lacey said he was resigning his duties as finance committee chair for this issue when it is to be presented at the board meeting tomorrow.

Here’s the video of the meeting. Please feel free to share in comments what lines you like best- as our board members go where board members never should be involved.