KIYU NEWSROOM
Federal court issues decision on bid protest
surrounding military home
schooling contract
12-4-06
Tim Bodony (KIYU)
Audio version:
121506_bidprotest.mp3
But when the home schooling contract went out to bid earlier this year, the Department of Defense chose a new provider.
IDEA International felt they were passed over unfairly, and took the matter to the Court of Federal Claims in Washington DC.
The court issued its ruling on November 21st - and while it agrees with most of IDEA International’s arguments, it won’t give the contract back to them.
In August, the Department of Defense Education Activities ( DoDEA) awarded the contract for its Remote Location Home Schooling Program to the Jacksonville, Florida-based consulting firm I-CATT. In its proposal, I-CATT teamed up with a subcontractor - World Wide Independent Distance Education of America, or World Wide IDEA. That group involves several former employees of the Galena school district, including a previous superintendent, Carl Knudsen.
I-CATT had no prior experience in an education program such as this, and passed the bulk of the work under the contract to World Wide IDEA, which has now set up an office in Anchorage to administer the home schooling program.
After getting the news that they lost the contract, officials with the Galena School District’s IDEA International program started to cry foul, arguing that World Wide IDEA unfairly put itself in a position to execute the contract. DoDEA required that bidders to the contract have authorization – through the General Services Administration – to provide educational services to government entities according to pre-determined prices.
I-CATT,
the primary contractor, has such authorization, but World Wide IDEA
does
not.
This is a big deal, according to IDEA International’s Executive Director Tim
Cline, who claims that World Wide IDEA got itself a government contract by
using another company as a front.
"How could somebody beat us by using a subcontractor?" Cline asks. "If
that’s the case, then all I need to do is go to the Washington Post and put
out an ad that says ‘we’ll take anybody that is interested in doing
government work can sign up with us, and it doesn’t matter what we say”
Using that argument, IDEA International began its effort to get the contract
back by filing two separate bid protests with the Government Accountability
Office.
Usually that suspends the transfer of a contract, but DoDEA granted an
override, which moved the contract to the new providers, and started paying
them. Galena’s IDEA International program had problems with that too,
claiming that DoDEA was overstepping its authority.
The entire quarrel eventually came before the Court of Federal Claims in
Washington DC, and Judge Thomas Wheeler.
On the merits of the case as a whole, the Court found that "DoDEA’s
acquisition of home schooling services was less than a model procurement."
The ruling of the court, released on November 21st, finds numerous
shortcomings in how the DoDEA solicited bids, how it reviewed and evaluated
those bids once they were submitted, and how it altered the payment scheme
called for in the contract after it selected a winner. The Court also
chided DoDEA for not being clear about the all the requirements that any
subcontractors would have to meet.
Carl Knudsen is the President of World Wide IDEA. He denies any wrongdoing on the part of his company, and its partnership with ICATT consulting. He says that such partnerships are commonplace in the world of government contracting.
But
Knudsen refutes the Court’s labeling of the bid process that selected ICATT
and World Wide IDEA as a less than model procurement, arguing that DoDEA
performance was reasonable, given that the agency has little prior
experience in doing procurements for home schooling services.
Even though its sides with IDEA International on the merits of the case, the
Court did not order the Defense Department to give the contract back to
them.
IDEA
International’s lawyers tried to show how the company could resume services
with little interruption, but Judge Wheeler didn’t buy it, and refused to
take the contract away from I-CATT and World Wide IDEA.
The judge voiced concern for the students at the heart of the dispute, and
Cline respects that:
"The reason was honorable, " he says. "What he did was that
he was looking at the situation that has now gone on for 4 months, and he
said, ‘if we switch now, what impact will that have on the children, and is
that impact negative enough to warrant us to not do it?”
The
court decision makes IDEA International eligible to recoup some of its legal
expenses, and encourages the Department of Defense to correct its errors and
conduct a better procurement next year.
But there might not be a next year for this contract - on that both
quarreling parties agree.
Both Carl Knudsen and Tim Cline have received word from DoDEA - though
unconfirmed - that the program will be eliminated after the current contract
period expires.
World
Wide IDEA is looking at how it could survive after that. World Wide IDEA
uses a web-based system for recording students’ progress, and Knudsen claims
that he is getting 100 percent positive feedback from the military families
that previously used the paper-based system of IDEA International.
The Galena City School District started its international home schooling
program as an offshoot of an Alaska-only distance education program.
Senator Ted Stevens earmarked the funds needed to operate Galena’s
international program for 4 of the past 6 years.
Citing the crackdown on the use of earmarks in the federal budget process,
Galena Schools Superintendent Jim Smith recognized that IDEA International
could lose the contract in an open bid process, and didn’t count on any
revenue from IDEA International in the School District’s 5 year business
plan, released before the Court decision in August.
Going back to Senator Stevens for an earmark is unlikely to succeed, so
Cline says that IDEA International will have to fend for itself in the
future.
“I can’t think of another example where Senator Stevens funded a
pilot project for 6 years. His goal though always was that at some point
DoDEA would embrace the program and take it in as one of its own, and go
from there. It is not likely that he’ll fund it for another year, which is
another reason why IDEA
International is expanding its programs and looking for additional revenues,
in order to continue in our original goal, which was to provide additional
revenue for the Galena City School District.”
Cline estimates that the military home schooling contract could have
generated about 500 thousand dollars for the Galena school district this
year, and that the program has generated about 2.25 million dollars over the
past 3 years - money which Superintendent Smith has still referred to as
lost revenue that could have gone towards jobs or programs in Galena.