EDINBURG — An effort to purchase software to analyze online education data stalled at an Edinburg school board meeting Tuesday because of transparency concerns regarding how the purchase was being made, and a desire by trustees to learn more about the deal.
Much of the concern stemmed from the fact that the Hidalgo-based company is owned by a current school district employee and employs two former staff members, Assistant Superintendent for Technology Services Division Eduardo Moreno said during the meeting.
The board considered buying Google Analytics suite software for $70,000 from Vulcan Solutions of Hidalgo.
The Texas Comptroller’s office lists Javier Campos as the owner of Vulcan Solutions.
The school district’s website lists Javier Campos as its auditor and leads the audit department.
Moreno said a former school district employee working with Vulcan pitched the product to the district.
According to Moreno, the software would enable the district to analyze data from Google platforms currently being used by the district with user-friendly dashboards. He said that data isn’t provided by Google and that it would help administrators make better educational decisions.
“I have worked with and seen numerous other software companies, asked for this type of development, and this is the first company I’ve seen do it and they met the need,” he said. “So I think there’s an advantage for ECISD.”
Moreno described Vulcan Solutions as a startup and said that the proposed software analytics deal with Edinburg CISD would be their first, although he said Vulcan is meeting with other districts about the software and he’s confident some of those will purchase it.
He said there was no direct policy violation in the process, but discussion with legal raised transparency concerns.
“The only reason that I would also be interested and willing to make that kind of commitment from our end is because I value and I recognize the platform and the software,” he said. “I also know the individuals, and I recognize their skill and their talent and what they did. It’s valuable.”
Moreno said that legal counsel advised him that the purchase would be permissible as long as the district employee who owns Vulcan wasn’t involved in any of the preparations for the bid as a district employee, and that the district will now likely put the project out for bids.
“I appreciate the transparency, we worked with legal to make sure that we were as clear and honest about it as possible, but sometimes, you know what, I wouldn’t bring this to the board if I didn’t think it was valuable and if it had merit,” he said.
Nonetheless, the proposal faced criticism from the board. Several expressed a desire to refrain from moving forward with it until being provided with more information.
Trustee Oscar Salinas advocated exploring whether the district could purchase the software for a year rather than the proposed three years.
He asked whether there was a rush to implement the software, and was critical of the purchase appearing on the board’s consent agenda.
“I think that that’s not good,” he said. “I think that this stuff should have been in action, you know in my opinion. Because when you’re looking at consent, it means that we consent, that it’s almost an automatic here, and in my opinion this is not an automatic decision. This is an action decision that needs to be vetted.”
Although Moreno said the district doesn’t currently have the manpower to do the project in house, Trustee Dominga “Minga” Vela asked for more information on the specifics of purchase and the product, and exploration on whether similar analysis could be done by school district staff.
“I know that our programmers are doing a lot, but still,” she said. “This has been a difficult year, and I did read in the newspaper today that the governor did say there would be some budget cuts, so we also have to be good stewards of our money and that we’re not enhancing or doing double work that our staff is doing.”
The purchase agreement item died for lack of a motion.
