Corder on new regime at SDE, after report on $61M Schoolnet boondoggle: ‘We can count, we can calculate’

Responding to an especially damning state performance evaluation report released yesterday that says Idaho has wasted $61 million on a failed statewide instructional management system for schools, Tim Corder, special assistant to new state schools Superintendent Sherri Ybarra, told lawmakers this morning the report is accurate. “We really are a changed administration,” Corder told the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee. “It was not us. It was the previous administration. … Superintendent Ybarra did not create that problem, but Superintendent Ybarra is going to be about fixing that problem.”

Corder said one of Ybarra’s top priorities, already approved by JFAC, is adding a person to oversee contracts at the state Department of Education; he said the new administration was surprised to find no one had that role, though the department oversees some 1,500 contracts. He noted how the department leapt into action to replace the defunct Idaho Education Network statewide contract by helping individual districts select and contract with their own broadband vendors. “We will continue to resolve the problems that are handed to us with that kind of expertise,” he said.

“We want to leave you with the message that you can trust the state Department of Education, you can trust this administration – we can count, we can, and we can calculate, and we can spell. And we can do all of the other things that you require us to do. And we will never forget that we are doing these things for the children of our state. And we will continue to go forward with excellence, and with professionalism.”

Pete Koehler, Ybarra’s chief deputy superintendent and former Nampa School District superintendent, told the committee that Schoolnet, the instructional management system that former Superintendent Tom Luna tried to implement statewide, was never intended to be a statewide system – it was designed to function at the school district level. “Schoolnet went south because they tried to make it a statewide system for a system that was designed for a school district,” Koehler told JLOC. “That was the problem they ran into. … but instead of coming to grips … they pushed forward.” He said, “We want instructional management systems at each school district.”

JLOC Co-Chair John Rusche, D-Lewiston, said, “It seems to me that this problem was not so much with the contract but with the vision of the project. And that it was designed, that a centralized or statewide system was needed. … My impression from you discussion is that the entire vision may have been flawed.”

“I’m reluctant to address the question of vision – I was not there,” Koehler responded. “I do not know the rationale behind the decisions that were made. The IMS system is designed to help teachers, moms and dads and principals work forward with children. … The information that comes out of an IMS system we have no use for at the state department; there’s no reason for us to have that information. It is designed to help that immediate teacher, those parents, make decisions on how their child is or is no advancing. … It’s important at the district level. It is not critical at the state level.”

He said, “The superintendent has been very explicit in her desire for local control, local management.” The department is requesting $985,000 next year to continue operating Schoolnet for those districts that are using it – less than half the $2.5 million operating cost up to now – and $2.6 million for local IMS systems at school districts. After next year, Schoolnet would become just one of the options for districts, with no statewide function.