Sun gave incomplete account of BCPS shredding
Having broken the story that led to a recent article in The Baltimore Sun, “Baltimore County school system shredded more than 2,500 financial disclosure statements, records show” (Sept. 28), I am writing to clear up a few issues. The first deals with what I consider to be a fundamental courtesy that seems to have been neglected in The Sun’s publishing of the document purge story regarding Baltimore County Public Schools. It is my understanding that it is both common courtesy and basic journalistic ethics to attribute stories properly. The Sun failed to do so until I made repeated complaints to the paper’s editors.
After a six-month investigation in which I requested disclosure forms for over two dozen employees, I asked for the log of destroyed records due to several inconsistencies I began experiencing during my requests for the disclosure records. I was sent that destruction log on Aug. 9 and began reporting on the purge immediately. That was over a month and a half ago. But I also reported that the record purge was significant for a few reasons:
For one, an official at Baltimore County schools decided to purge the records in April and August for the first time in the system’s recorded history, the log showed. And the official decided to do it a week after the school system’s former superintendent was sentenced to jail, and on the eve of his April 28th incarceration. But, more importantly, as also first reported by The Baltimore Post, the purge occurred amid very public and heated discussions on the scope and control of a procurement audit that was triggered immediately following a New York Times article (“How Silicon Valley Plans to Conquer the Classroom,” Nov. 3, 2017) which included details about school system administrators having ties to the Education Research and Development Institute.
Secondly, the purges occurred while I was actively requesting the records. Among other strange discoveries that occurred throughout my six-month investigation, one month after questioning the school system’s ethics and communications departments about a position I found an employee had with controversial consulting firm, The SUPES Academy, a position that had not been included on the employee’s 2013 financial disclosure statement; instead of looking into it and responding, Baltimore County schools simply purged that document, too.