DPS Foundation could receive $1.28-million allotment from DPS, draft plan shows
Documents previewing the Thursday February 9 Work Session meeting show Durham Public Schools will present a "draft proposal spending plan" for the $18-million MacKenzie Scott donation.
Questions had swirled for weeks about what Durham Public Schools could and should do with the unprecedented and unsolicited $18-million no-strings-attached donation from MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. In the initial press release from DPS announcing the mid-November gift, the district administration pledged to “work with the Durham Public Schools Board of Education to prioritize the use of the grant funds.” This Thursday, Superintendent Dr. Pascal Mubenga is expected to lead a presentation to the Board outlining a “draft proposal spending plan” of what the agenda calls the “Mackenzie $18 million donation.” The first draft of the agenda packet has been published in advance and gives the public a preview of how DPS administration proposes to spend the $18-million gift.
Among the more than 30 proposed spending priorities detailed in the plan is a proposed $1.28-million allocation to the privately-run DPS Foundation, an organization that in their founding report identified themselves as “an independent, nonprofit organization that builds community support and investment in our public schools.” Typically foundations closely aligned with local school districts exist to raise private funds that are then redirected as financial support to schools, teachers and districts. This proposal would counter that paradigm in what amounts to DPS regifting a private cash donation to a private organization.
The directionality of this funding is not the only intriguing detail. In a BCPI exclusive report last week, the latest IRS Form 990 filings showed the DPS Foundation had accumulated over $2.4-million in unspent asset reserves. Unofficial financial statements published by the DPS Foundation since that most recent IRS filing suggest over $2-million remain in that reserve.
Although details in the published agenda packet are sparse, DPS is clear that of the $1.28-million proposed for the DPS Foundation $280,000 would go towards thematic programming initiatives promoted by the DPS Foundation with the remaining $1-million earmarked for “Teacher Housing for DPS teachers.” DPS has in the past attempted to work with nonprofit affordable housing developers to provide workforce housing. Five other school districts across the state have partnered with their local education foundations and the State Employees’ Credit Union (SECU) Foundation to construct workforce housing. In one of the most successful examples, Dare County (the Outer Banks) used the partnering foundation model to construct workforce housing for their teachers in 2008 and expanded to an additional site in 2011. Their efforts were fostered by a zero-percent construction loan from the SECU Foundation. It is unclear at this time how the DPS Foundation intends to proceed with workforce housing.
The presentation of the spending plan on Thursday to the Board will come just a few agenda items after the Board is to vote on a new Vice Chair and discuss the open seat left by former Board Member Matt Sears, who resigned last week to accept a position at the DPS Foundation. BCPI has made a public information request for all of Mr. Sears’s emails and official calendar appointments over the last four months of his tenure as an elected official. The results of that public investigation will be shared when it is completed.
The Board of Education meets at 5:30pm on Thursday February 9 in the top floor of the Fuller Building at 511 Cleveland Street in downtown Durham. Video streams of the meeting are broadcast live on DPS Channel 4 and the DPS YouTube channel.
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