Council Member Hanks Questions COMPASS Contract Concentration and Small CBO Support

Thank you, Chair.

Well, good to see you again, Commissioner, and to your team.

Uh, one of the uh obviously topics of discussion and contention has been the uh COMPAS program or RFP.

Uh, one of the major concerns raised following the most recent COMPASS RFP process involves the uh concentration of contracts amongst uh smaller number of large providers.

In some instances, a single organization reportedly oversees uh north of 80 schools or sites under the DYCD funded COMPAS program.

What is the agency's rationale for following or you know, for allowing one provider to manage such a large portfolio of school-based contracts so at time award selection we really did take that into consideration um the provider that you're referencing they did submit a lot of proposals across the entire procurement um and weren't selected for everything that they um proposed for and they do make up only 10% of all the awards that were made we did um not award them in multiple competitions just to ensure that we were reaching other but that's a that's a large concentration of contracts to one organization.

They are an existing provider and when we were making rewards we wanted to ensure that we were making them thoughtful and not um overgrowing the the system and um we really did make an effort to ensure that we were um reaching other providers within the different competitions so well that particular providers actually the providers actually uh they received contracts in I mean areas that they have no track record in as far as community relations and they so how how do you rationalize that yeah within their response for the RFP they demonstrated to be the highest proposer within those competitions.

Okay.

But I think I think your point is well taken and I want to I want to also just say there's 52 new providers as a result of that.

And so in prior iterations we had higher concentrations of what you're speaking of and this has really opened up the aperture and created a ecosystems that's more balanced that that takes into account small, medium, and large organizations.

Well, many of the uh smaller community-based organizations feel that they are being shut out of the opportunities within the compass uh ecosystem despite years of service and strong relationships within their communities.

What opportunities currently exists for the smaller nonprofits to grow within the compass, and um and and what opportunity and uh broader DYCD and the broader DYCD uh ecosystem and complete uh compete for additional sites or contracts over time, including programs such as Saturday Night, uh Saturday Night Lights and other DYCD funded uh active initiatives.

What are being done to support those groups or give them opportunities?