The city Department of Education paid nearly $10 million to a nonprofit group to train Big Apple teachers to “demystify” their students – but the group trained less than one-fifth of the teachers planned, The Post has learned.
The organization, All Kinds of Minds, was co-founded by famed Harvard pediatrician Dr. Melvin Levine, who is facing new allegations that he sexually abused young, male patients.
The group scored a no-bid contract worth up to $12.5 million in 2004 – one of hundreds of no-bid contracts issued by the DOE since mayoral control of the school system began in fiscal year 2003.
According to city-comptroller statistics, the surge of no-bid contracts since then totals $342 million.
“We don’t know what we’re getting for our money,” said Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, who sparked an ongoing state-comptroller audit of no-bid contracts.
“In the case of All Kinds of Minds, what we were told at the beginning was wrong.”
Although the group’s contract did not mandate training for a particular number of teachers, when the contract was first signed, All Kinds of Minds touted its plan to train 20,000 educators in its Schools Attuned program. When the contract expired in June, only 3,000 had been trained.
In the meantime, Levine, who developed the program, was sued by five men who claim he sexually abused them when they were young patients.
Attorney Carmen Durso said nearly 50 other victims have come forward since the suit was filed, and may also sue.
Levine has strongly denied all allegations.
The DOE has a second contract, for $218,000, with All Kinds of Minds through 2009 that had been bid out.
Education officials said the pacts are with Levine’s organization, not Levine.
It also said it paid only $9.7 million of the no-bid contract for the training, and called the program “very successful.”
But teachers who received the multipart training had mixed reviews.
Some thought the program, which requires teachers to have informal conversations with students called “demystifications” to target weaknesses, help students identify trouble areas and improve performance, was useful. Others called it “impractical” and “a total waste of time.”
“It can be the best program in the world. That’s not the issue,” Gotbaum fumed. “The issue is [that] it was contracted through a secretive process.”
According to city-comptroller statistics, in fiscal year 2000 under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the DOE signed seven no-bid contracts worth a total of $693,000. In fiscal year 2007, under Mayor Bloomberg, 76 no-bid contracts were signed for a total of $72 million. The numbers dropped to $12 million in fiscal year 2008.
An internal board that reviews no-bid contract requests has approved 120 of them since January 2006, and denied only one.
That rejected request – a $2.2 million deal with the New Teacher Center in California – was approved the following month with an almost identical description, but a higher price of $2.8 million.
Gotbaum said the commission she created to evaluate mayoral control, which expires with Mayor Bloomberg‘s term, is taking a “very close and careful look” at no-bid contracts.
The DOE argues no-bid contracts get business done quickly, and when it comes to curriculum, quality is more important than price.