KIYU NEWSROOM

IDEA International protest
September 1, 2006
Tim Bodony, KIYU

Galena City School District’s IDEA International program has formally protested the awarding of a Department of Defense home schooling contract to another group. 

A bid protest was filed with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Monday.

The DoD contract involves home schooling services for military families around the Pacific. 

IDEA International has held the contract for the last 6 years.  Over the past 3 years, IDEA International generated about 2-point-2 million dollars through the DoD contract.

But earlier this month, the DoD announced that a new partnership of companies, which employ many former employees of the Galena City School District, would be awarded the contract. 

World Wide Independent Distance Education of America, based in Missoula, Montana, is led by former Galena superintendent Carl Knudsen, along with Jim Foster, Jen Obie, and Megan McCarthy-Grant.

That group partnered with a consulting firm in Florida, I-CATT, to submit a bid for the DoD contract that came in 70 thousand dollars below the Galena bid.

IDEA International’s Executive Director Tim Cline, speaking on Tuesday, explains that the effort to appeal the decision began by getting more information from the DoD personnel that made the decision. 

"We were required to seek a debrief. And so we met with the Department of Defense Education Activity folks and they debriefed us about the status and the scoring of our proposal, and answered a few questions to us. And based on the information that we gleaned from that debriefing, we filed an official protest with the GAO."

Cline also notes that the protest is a process that can take up to 100 days, and effectively puts a freeze on the awarding of the contract to WWIDEA/I-CATT.

"Everything just sort of stops while they go through that process to try an determine if things were handled appropriately," Cline says. 

The protest filed on Monday included a lengthy written document from IDEA International, outlining its concerns about the manner in which I-CATT / WWIDEA secured the deal, and questioning whether the group has sufficient experience to run the program.

"We asked," Cline says about the bid protest, "how is it possible that somebody whose company has not provided any service overseas at all could possibly beat a company that is fully accredited and has been providing excellent service over the last 6 years?"

Cline also reports that the protest raises questions about a possible misuse of I-CATT's access to the GSA Schedule, which allows the firm to bid for government services.

"There were some questions regarding I-CATT, which is the primary [bidder] in this case.  How it is that with no experience in K through 12 education that they could possibly provide this service without giving a majority of the work to their subcontractor [WWIDEA], and then questioning whether this was an appropriate use of the GSA Schedule."

Since the protest filed with the GAO effectively puts the transition to I-CATT / WWIDEA on hold for at least 100 days, Cline says that the projected layoffs at IDEA International’s Anchorage office are on hold as well. 

Cline directed military families to write to the DoD contracting officers if they wanted to share their thoughts on the situation.  Cline got copies of many such letters, and says overall they were consistent with the argument made by IDEA International leading to this week’s formal protest.

As the appeal process moves on, IDEA International will maintain its current level of service as usual, according to Cline.  He adds that parents retain the right to stay with IDEA International as their education provider until the appeal process is settled, or parents can withdraw their students from the program if they want to. 

IDEA International serves about one thousand students around the Pacific; the DoD home schooling contract calls for a minimum of 700 to be served.

World Wide International Distance Education of America has thus far declined to comment to KIYU on this situation.  A message on the group's website defends its bid for the home schooling contract as being the result of a "full-and-open competition" and that "the program offered by I-CATT is sound and conforms to the standards established and tested by DoDEA [Department of Defense Education Activity]."