Brockton subcommittee probes heavy Amazon spending, seeks procurement hires and new controls

Brockton Public Schools account review subcommittee members on March 31 pressed district finance staff to explain a surge in Amazon purchases on the district's warrants and called for faster hiring of procurement staff and clearer purchase controls.

District finance staff told the committee the surge in Amazon orders is partly a systems issue: requisitions entered into the district's Munis system become purchase orders and that workflow, combined with fluctuating online prices, has complicated reconciliation. "Every requisition we submit turns into a purchase order," the staff member said, adding that e-procurement integration and standardizing how Amazon orders are entered could produce clearer spend reports.

Staff described several immediate and prospective fixes: attach a PDF of the Amazon cart to each requisition so the itemized order is recorded; require purchase orders to be fully approved and executed before Amazon purchases are finalized; and consider adding a 5–10% buffer to POs to cover price changes between requisition and PO generation. "We're building the plane while we're flying it," the staff member said, describing the difficulty of overhauling procurement mid-year.

Members pressed staffing and oversight points. The committee was told the district has two vacant procurement positions that it is actively recruiting for; members raised pay-range concerns during discussion, mentioning ranges of roughly $75,000 to $95,000 and a candidate who had sought about $125,000. Staff said salary adjustments would come to the committee for approval.

Committee members also raised concerns about storage and apparent waste at the district warehouse, citing past bulk orders that left unused items, and urged clearer principal responsibility for classroom supply lines. Staff said the district had consolidated paper orders last year to obtain better rates and scheduled multiple deliveries to address storage limits.

Transportation contracts drew scrutiny as well. Members said they receive complaints that some contracted van drivers bill for more students than were transported. Staff said the district checks student attendance against monthly vendor invoices and pays only for students who boarded; where vendors repeatedly overcharge the district seeks reimbursement or terminates contracts.

Staff said the goal is to stop routine Amazon purchases by the next school year but acknowledged that the memo they planned to issue to principals was paused after discovering the requisition/PO timing issue. They said a procurement manager hired over the summer would be asked to put common classroom items out to bid or use cooperative purchasing under Massachusetts procurement laws to secure consistent pricing.

The committee asked for monthly procurement updates; staff confirmed fiscal updates are a standing agenda item and an update is scheduled for the April 7 meeting. The account review subcommittee adjourned after the discussion.

(Reporting note: quotes and attributions are drawn from the March 31 subcommittee transcript. Where speakers were not identified by full name in the transcript, attributions use the committee or district staff labels used at the meeting.)