The South Bend Community School Corp. issued a written statement late Monday that said previous statements about the Brown Administration Building remodel were premature, and as the investigation is ongoing, no conclusions have been drawn about the legality of prior actions.
On April 18, The Tribune published a story quoting district Chief Financial Officer Ahnaf Tahmid saying SBCSC had illegally awarded contracts to renovate its new headquarters at Brown by not requesting bids on the work. Tahmid had also told The Tribune that the renovations went $3 million over budget.
And during a SBCSC board meeting on April 16, board Vice President Bill Sniadecki told attendees that the board had heard from investigators that the Brown remodel had cost millions of dollars, but no contracts were put up for bid as required by law.
In a statement emailed on Monday, April 21, the district said “certain public statements regarding the Board-authorized investigation may have lacked clarity,” and that any statements made publicly and/or with the media about alleged illegal conduct “should not have been made at this stage of the investigation.”
Further, the statement said, since the news was first reported, further investigation along with former CFO Kareemah Fowler revealed that the school board at the time had approved “use of a special procurement method on July 31, 2023, for the authorization of work on the Brown School project.”
The meeting agenda on BoardDocs for July 31, 2023, includes an action item “Approval of Construction Delivery Model (Brown Community Learning Center), along with a contract between the Indiana Department of Administration’s Public Works Division and contractor F.H. Paschen, S.N. Nielsen & Associates LLC.
The statement from SBCSC adds that Tahmid said he didn’t find any evidence of a traditional bidding process being followed, nor any separately maintained records documenting exceptions to the normal bidding process, but he acknowledged that “no final conclusions could be drawn from that information alone and that further investigation and analysis was needed.” In the statement, Tahmid added that he plans to update his report to the State Board of Accounts to reflect the new information SBCSC learned over the weekend.
“School Superintendent, Mansour Eid, echoed the statement that no conclusions have been made at this time, nor should any be made until the investigation is complete, including hearing from former board members and employees involved in the process,” the statement reads, adding that a further update will be provided at the conclusion of the investigation.
Email South Bend Tribune education reporter Rayleigh Deaton at rdeaton@gannett.com.