WEDC + Skyward + Infinite Campus = We all lose

Late last week, we had the next step in the continuing fiasco involving Wisconsin's state K-12 school information systems. It's been a brutal sequence of screw-ups, corruption from the failing WEDC, a bad model of service, and potentially the loss of hundreds of Wisconsin jobs.


1. The state originally set up its plans for the bid for the state system over a year ago, and seemed to have been planning for a relatively smooth bid process. But then WEDC interceded, and promised tax credits to Skyward before the bid even closed. Then-WEDC CEO Paul Jadin said he couldn't understand how this type of promise could be considered uncouth, especially since WEDC officials felt state government rules didn't apply to them.

Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. leader Paul Jadin told The Associated Press his legal team advised him that the offer to Skyward Inc. was allowed because the year-old agency isn’t bound by procurement laws that forbid bid-rigging.

“It was indicated that we could make a contingency offer,” Jadin said in his first public remarks on the controversy since it came to a head earlier this month. “We’re satisfied that we could make the offer.”

We still don't know who contacted who first, but we definitely do know that WEDC found this type of sketchiness not to be a problem when they tried to steer the original bid to Skyward. You know who did have a problem with it? the then-CEO of Minnesota-based Infinite Campus, Eric Creighton. Creighton sent a letter complaining about the procedure to the Walker DOA, while not blaming Walker himself (despite Walker being the Chariman of the Board of the same organization Creighton accused of the sketchiness).

2. Once this potential bid-rigging hit the public (naturally, right after the recall elections on June 5), Gov. Walker's office all of a sudden saw a potential conflict, and DOA pulled the bid on June 18, saying the negotiations got in the way of having a fair and competitive bid. So the state decided to re-bid the school informations system contract, and instead of allowing the possibility of multiple bidders getting pieces of the contract the state decided to use the "one-provider-for-the-entire-state" model that has been a total failure with Logisticare for Non-Emergency Medical Transport. But then again, having only one provider means there's only one set of potential donators to look after, so it might be easier to do business from that point of view.

3. So the bid was redone, and this time Infinite Campus wins the estimated $15 million contract, after which Skyward complained that the contract was incorrectly awarded, and charged that the DOA changed scoring criteria and overall scores to favor Infinite Campus over Skyward. As a follow-up, Fox 6 in Milwaukee ran a thorough report on the Student Info Systems bid, and I find the following passage quite intriguing.

Through open records requests, FOX6 News discovered the RFP was initially scored in Skyward’s favor, but (and it is unclear why), the same proposals were rejudged and the scored were essentially flipped.

“Skyward actually won the scoring by about 300 or 400 points. After the rescore happened, Skyward lost by over 1,400 points, so there was a swing of 1,700-1,800 points on a scale of 10,000 where the vendors actually changed positions,” Weber said.

“Other things we noticed in the proposal is 73 times the selected vendor was scored higher than the maximum points allowed — 73 times. 139 times Skyward was not given the minimum amount of points they deserved based on the rubrics associated to their evaluation process,” [Skyward founder Jim] King said.

Skyward officials also mention that the loss of this bid also means they will lose the business from the 200+ school systems they serve, which could result in a major loss to the Stevens Point area.

According to an economic report commissioned by the council, the Wood, Portage and Marathon County region could lose about $20 million in earnings if the company leaves the state.

Skyward leaders said they're happy in Stevens Point and want to expand, but after losing out on a statewide education contract, they said there's no point staying.

"It's pretty significant because I think it was a grand total of 825 jobs is what we estimated," said Skyward CEO Cliff King.

The Portage County Business Council commissioned the report two years ago when Skyward started the bidding process.

Needless to say, I don't think Infinite Campus is adding 825 jobs back, and certainly not all in Stevens Point. Ruh roh.

4. And we had another development last week, when the DPI denied Skyward's appeal on the bid last week, saying the bid was properly scored. Skyward founder Jim King held a news conference soon after, appearing with Point-area legislators, and is now requesting an intervention from DOA to stop the contract, or at least to modify it, and is also asking for the state to ditch the "one-size-fits-all" model for service.

The Fox 6 report also quotes King and ISCorp president and CEO Mike Weber (who does a lot of work with Skyward) as claiming the one-size-fits-all contract was a setup from the beginning, with the idea of getting the contract to Infinite Campus.

"Certainly, Kurt Kiefer had an agenda. He had a preferred vendor. When he didn’t get his result the first time around, they rescored,” Weber said.

Before Kiefer became the Assistant State Superintendent, he was the superintendent of the Madison School District, where he had done business with Infinite Campus — even appearing on the company’s website, endorsing the product.

“In my opinion, Kurt Kiefer was still promoting the Infinite Campus product while he was Assistant Superintendent to the state of Wisconsin and while he was writing, constructing and editing his white papers for why Wisconsin should go to a single vendor. Again, the DPI basically chose because they controlled the RFP process,” Weber said.

Evers is Kiefer’s boss, and Evers defends Kiefer’s actions.

“That was when he worked for the Madison School District. When he worked for us he wasn’t advocating for any of it, and he wasn’t part of the decision-making with the Dept. of Administration, so no. I don’t think he influenced it at all,” Evers said.

Kiefer argued passionately for the single vendor system before the Joint Finance Committee.

“It definitely to me looks like collusion. Certainly the person who has written all the white papers being Kurt Kiefer who is the Assistant Superintendent of the Department of Instruction — he’s the one who wrote all the facts of why it should go single vendor,” Weber said.

Yeah, I don't think we've heard the end of this one yet. It's got all the ingredients of Fitzwalkerstani failure. WEDC acting improperly and believing it was above the law. Seemingly arbitrary decisions by state officials, complete with a "revolving-door" scenario where one former business partner encourages the state to install a system that ends up giving business to a favored client (and you thought this only happened with Michael, Best and Friedrich?). And Wisconsin-based companies getting the short end of the stick, resulting in more job losses for the state.

By the way, I don't necessarily mind if Infinite Campus would have won this bid on a fair basis- as taxpayers, we should demand the best quality and cost-effectiveness there is. But the whole way this bid was approached, the way the contract was designed to be a one-vendor-fits-all process, and the more you peel back the onion of this bid and look at how the state and WEDC has dealt with both Skyward and Infinite Campus, the sketchier this deal appears.