Public Contracting
The purpose of competitive bidding is “‘to guard against favoritism, improvidence, extravagance, fraud and corruption; to prevent the waste of public funds; and to obtain the best economic result for the public,’ and to stimulate advantageous market place competition.” Fair Education Santa Barbara v. Santa Barbara Unified School Dist. (2021) 72 Cal.App.5th 884, 893.
When a public agency makes a decision, especially a decision to award a six-figure contract, that public agency must be transparent, unbiased, and objective in its process and decision-making. A public agency should not make decisions based on emotion or favoritism.
Some public contracts are exempt from bidding requirements under state law. That does not mean it’s prudent to award no-bid contracts that might be exempt. And if a public agency uses a request for proposals process for bidding by contractors, that process must be followed to the letter. As we enter a dark financial time for public agencies in California, I am committed to a fair and transparent process for all public contracting.
The discussion at last night’s board meeting regarding the award of a mental health contract for our district raised serious concerns, from both an operational and a substantive perspective. (Video here, agenda item here). We need to be sure we adhere to a fairness standard in awarding contracts, and we need to conduct a thorough analysis of each problem we are trying to solve before throwing money at it.
With respect to adolescent mental health, data shows a continued decline. I am unaware of any data that shows improvement following widespread implementation of mental health services in schools. In fact, since California mandated that school districts implement suicide prevention policies in 2016, adolescent suicide rates have increased.
According to Abigail Shrier, “[b]y 2022, 96 percent of public schools offered mental health services to students. Many of these interventions constitute what I call “bad therapy”: they target the healthy, inadvertently exacerbating kids’ worry, sadness, and feelings of incapacity.”
Further, our own student board members shared concerning critiques of the mental health services our district provides during a presentation at our June 6, 2023 meeting.
This is not meant as an attack on any one. My point is that (1) we are putting the district at risk for legal liability by not adhering to public contracting standards and (2) we must listen to the concerns raised with respect to how we provide mental health services and pivot accordingly.
Many government bodies throw money at problems for the sake of showing they are “doing something.” I do not subscribe to that mentality, and want our district to think critically about the problem we are trying to solve, create benchmarks for success, and chart a path forward that leads us in a better direction rather than sending us further into a downward spiral.
As always, this is one lady’s opinion. I do not speak for the Board, and no one else speaks for me.
