Council Member Marte Questions COMPASS Procurement Transparency
Council Member Christopher Marte questions the transparency of the COMPASS scoring process and asks why principal rankings were seemingly overruled in certain school competitions.
But I'm also really excited about the providers that were selected that are high quality, high caliber, and that offer um really great services.
Thank you, Commissioner.
Um, to add, I definitely want to push back a little on the fact that the procurement wasn't transparent, it was extremely transparent.
We had made selections based on a basis for award where there was criteria outlined on how we were making the awards.
Um, in the case of Manhattan Youth, they did apply to multiple competitions, and each competition is handled on its own merit.
So you could have one school which was considered a competition be more competitive than others, and we made selections based on where scores, ranking, provided diversity.
There were many um areas that we looked at when making those selections, but it stood behind the basis for award that was released in the RFP, and that was a procurement document that was made public.
One of them was was around budget.
Can you share more details on how Manhattan Youth scored against those criteria?
At this time, we can't give specifics because we are in the protest period.
And also they will be awarded a briefing, so they will get not only their scores and how they fared in relationship to other people, but they will get also specific feedback on their RFP of areas of that were highlighted by the evaluator.
And are there instances where a school and a uh principal did rank Manhattan Youth as excellent and it was still not awarded again?
And if if that's the case, there's a process where the principals on the ground are being overruled in a closed-door process, if you could speak to that.
Yeah.
It wasn't a closed-door process.
It was actually a transparent process that was guided by a contribution that was made by the principal.
So print principals selections was weighed, but the primary selections, as Dana mentioned, were the RFP.
And so I'm proud to say that over 80% of principals got their first or second award.
And with principals that did not get their first ranking, we're gonna be working to help that transition on the ground to really think about ways to be a bridge and to make sure that they are centering this choice around children, youth, and families.