DCSS official weighs in on educational Epiphany consultant

ALBANY — Dougherty County School System Superintendent Ken Dyer met with staff of The Albany Herald Tuesday in response to an article that appeared in Sunday’s paper about the BOE moving forward on a half-million dollar deal with an Educational Epiphany consultant who was already working within the school system without the board having voted to approve the contract.

Dyer noted during the discussion that, among other things, School Board members did give approval to move ahead with the process in the interest of speeding it forward.

“We’ve got a few concerns about the article in the paper on Sunday,” Dyer said Tuesday. “First, I would like to talk about one of the quotes that was attributed to me, that I said the minutes were ‘screwed up.’ I didn’t say that. What I said was that the minutes were not completely accurate. And what I was referring to was the fact that it said that I requested permission, and it didn’t say that I requested and received permission.”

Dyer was referring to a quote in Sunday’s article taken directly from the minutes of the Jan. 24 School Board meeting during which, “Mr. Dyer asked permission to move forward with getting the process started,” with Educational Epiphany, an educational consulting firm headed by Donyall Dickey. But nothing further was mentioned in the board minutes.

Dyer did have an analog recording of the meeting during which board members agreed to move forward with the program, although the quality of the recording was such that voices were not always clear enough to be understood.

School Board members have confirmed Dyer’s statement that he not only asked for permission to move forward with Dickey’s program, but also received permission to move forward with the nearly $500,000 contract. Board member Melissa Strother said last Wednesday, “We did all make a verbal agreement to get the process moving forward to be able to take advantage of the Title I funds.”

There was, however, no mention of the program in the minutes of either the Feb. 12 meeting or the Feb. 28 meeting.

Asked exactly when the board would approve the contract, DCSS Public Information Officer J.D. Sumner said, “(The) board meeting on Monday is at 6:30 (p.m., for a briefing), regular meeting at 7.”

The Albany Herald started looking into the contract with Dickey on Feb. 26 and began asking questions about his program because there were no apparent records about the program from the board meetings. The Herald’s education writer said he knew nothing about the program, and the board’s attorney knew nothing about it. Research led to concern over what the Portland Public School system was saying, or rather not saying, about the consultant now working with DCSS.

Dickey, whose company Educational Epiphany has worked with at least four school systems across the country, including systems in Baltimore, Atlanta, Philadelphia and, most recently, Portland, Ore., was the sole candidate for the superintendent’s position with Portland Public Schools before he withdrew his bid for the job last year, which raised red flags with local and national media.

The Portland publication Williamette Week reported on Dickey’s decision to withdraw his bid as the lone candidate for the position in May of 2017 and about what the school system was saying.

“At a press conference this afternoon, PPS (Portland Public Schools) Board Chair Tom Koehler said he received a final due diligence report on Dickey on Monday, May 1,” the publication wrote. “Koehler explained that after receiving the report, he consulted with fellow board members verbally about the contents of the report and that they reached a decision not to finalize a contract with Dickey.”

Dickey had a different story Friday at Albany Middle School, saying about his decision to withdraw from Portland’s schools, “Contract negotiations would not allow me to do any support outside of that district, would not allow me to do speaking engagements and would not allow me to publish. But I had huge opportunities all over the country to do that work, and I could not have my skill set be limited to one location.”

Tuesday, Dyer explained how Dickey came to the attention of DCSS.

“The first thing that we said we wanted to focus on was quality instruction,” Dyer said. “Because if it doesn’t happen in the classroom, it doesn’t happen. … The answer to a lot of things we do is buy a program, put the kids in front of the computer and say they’ll get better and that doesn’t work. It’s got to happen in the classroom. So what we did was, when the Georgia Department of Education sponsored an instructional leadership conference in Macon, Ga., Dr. Dickey was the presenter.

“Our priority focus schools went and some of our district leaders went, and they came back saying that it was great. So I had him (Dickey) come down and talk to our principals and see what they think. He got an overwhelmingly positive response. The DOE had a positive response to his initial presentation as well. So we had him come down and do another one and invited more schools. We invited a large contingent to go up and listen to get feedback from them. We brought him back to Dougherty County to talk to our assistant principals, our instructional coaches and our other system and building leaders.”

Dyer pointed out that even though the board had not officially voted yet to approve the $494,360.40 for Dickey’s services, the board did make a verbal agreement to move forward with the process.

During an interview with Dickey on Friday, the consultant was asked about his background, specifically what might have been so troubling to the Portland School System.

“What would be of interest to folks in my background?” Dickey responded. “I have already talked to reporters out West about my background. There’s nothing in my background outside of being a college kid, 23 or 24 years ago, and at the grocery store I unintentionally bounced a $28 check. Now, if I were someone else, this wouldn’t be an issue.”

Dickey was asked again specifically if he would release his criminal background information.

“No,” he said.

Tuesday morning, Dyer was asked again about Dickey’s background, the fact that Portland Oregon School Board Chair Koehler, after reviewing that background check consulted fellow board members and decided not to finalize a contract with Dickey, and Dickey’s refused to release background information to The Herald. Dyer was asked specifically whether that was cause for concern for either the superintendent or DCSS.

“We have an agreement with him,” Dyer said. “I’m not going to go back and circle back around without some valid reason to do it.”

About the issue with the Portland School System, Dyer said, “He (Dickey) explained that to me.”

Asked about the vetting process with Dickey, and whether DCSS got any feedback from school systems with which Dickey had worked, the superintendent said, “The results are on his (Dickey) website.”

Educational Epiphany’s website does provide several charts of data points suggesting an increase in proficiency where its programs are implemented, but cites only “DGES demonstrated the most significant gains in the state of Nevada after the school had previously failed to meet adequate yearly progress for four consecutive years prior to working with Educational Epiphany.”

Calls have been made to Educational Epiphany, but so far none have been returned.

“We are going to have to have consistent quality, high quality of instruction in every classroom,” Dyer said Tuesday. “And this (Educational Epiphany) gets to the core of that. It may not sound groundbreaking, but it is not widely practiced that we move from content-based objectives to performance-based objectives. Performance-based objectives is the knowing and doing. You have to demonstrate stuff or perform something in that lesson to demonstrate the mastery of the content that we are teaching.”