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Board hears Zello rollout plan and superintendent outlines contract audit after finding duplicate curriculum purchases
Summary
Trustee Gavin previewed Zello, a tiered career‑planning platform, and Dr. Griffin described a 90‑day audit that found overlapping curriculum and testing contracts; staff are renegotiating or canceling redundant agreements and will tighten contract monitoring and progress reporting.
Trustee Gavin presented a two‑minute overview of Zello, a career‑planning platform the district is considering for a K–12 rollout, and proposed a SMART adoption goal for the year. Board members and staff discussed realistic targets (Dr. Griffin’s team proposed 70% as a minimum floor for initial phases), logistics for classroom deployment, teacher training, and parent nights so families can see and support student portfolios.
Dr. Foster, the district’s director (auditing curriculum and purchases), confirmed Zello is a tiered program and said pricing quotes were obtained for the district. Trustees emphasized including parents in rollout plans and asked staff to produce a plan that covers deployment, engagement metrics and parent/teacher training.
Separately, Dr. Griffin summarized findings from an incoming 90‑day audit that reviewed district purchasing and curriculum contracts. She said the audit identified multiple overlapping curriculum contracts and duplicate testing products, some locked into multi‑year agreements. Dr. Griffin said she has canceled some purchases that duplicated services, paused others, and is negotiating with vendors to recover costs where possible.
The superintendent described steps to avoid future duplication: require scope‑of‑work documents for contract approvals, avoid long multi‑year automatic renewals without performance monitoring, and implement weekly or periodic progress monitoring tied to deliverables and budget spenddown reports from contract vendors. Several trustees urged including teacher voices in curriculum decisions and involving principals in pacing and alignment work to Michigan standards.
Centric vs. Subject: Trustees and staff also raised a specific contracting issue in which two online instruction platforms — referred to in the discussion as Centric and Subject — both provided similar services and both became active after the district missed a non‑renewal deadline for Centric. The district is negotiating to repurpose licenses (Subject for credit recovery; Centric for filling live‑teacher gaps) and trying to recover or renegotiate past payments where feasible.
What’s next: staff will return with a Zello rollout plan including a recommended SMART goal, timelines for teacher/parent training, and a negotiated plan for overlapping vendor contracts after the audit team completes vendor‑by‑vendor recommendations.
