Wrong Lessons Being Taught In Pr. George's
By Marc Fisher, November 16, 2004

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You've got a new, very public, big job with lots of responsibility and a mandate to set an example for the people you work for, who happen to be children.

From the start, people want to help: A company that does business with you offers you a free, 10-day trip to Africa. Another company, one that employs the woman you live with, wants to sell you $1 million worth of its products. A guy who used to work for you in your previous job offers to take on some of your contracting work, without any competitive bidding for the work.

Easy calls, right? No, no and no. Thanks, but no thanks.

Unless you are Andre Hornsby, chief of the Prince George's County school system. In which case, you go with yes, yes and yes.

Investigators with the county, state and federal governments are examining Hornsby's actions. But parents and teachers have already absorbed this lesson: No matter how much good Hornsby achieves in the county's classrooms, he has forsaken his place as a moral authority and mortgaged his value to the school system.

The true crime in the Hornsby saga is that the record shows that he has worn ethical blinders not only since arriving here 16 months ago, but throughout his career. As state Del. Jim Hubbard, education chairman of the county's delegation to Annapolis, puts it, "There's a pattern here that goes back to his jobs in Yonkers (N.Y.) and Houston. All of this was foreseeable, even if it wasn't foreseen."

Rewind the time machine: spring 2003. Prince George's is shopping for a new chief for its troubled schools. Prince George's students rank next to last in Maryland on most test scores; only Baltimore schools do worse.

But when the top job opens in systems with lousy scores, large minority populations and chronic turnover in leadership, the candidate pool tends not to be deep. "Top-notch candidates don't want to come here because of the core educational problems," Hubbard says. "When we saw the finalists, the board should have continued the search."

Instead, the board focused on Hornsby. They knew he had been fired from his superintendent job in Yonkers, but they attributed that to a personality clash with the mayor. They knew he had battled the unions in Yonkers, but they figured that meant he was tough.

The board also knew that the Yonkers inspector general, in a report completed after Hornsby's firing, had found that he "accepted improper gratuities from the Xerox Corporation," which he had awarded an "excessive" $1.4 million contract for copiers, even though a bid from Minolta would have cost much less.

Inspector General Philip Zisman's scathing report said Hornsby refused to meet with Minolta representatives, accepted Xerox's gift of an expense-paid trip to the Ryder Cup golf tournament, took a Palm Pilot awarded by Xerox, twice served as a guest speaker at Xerox events at the company's expense and refused to answer questions about any aspect of the Xerox deal.

Zisman concluded that Hornsby violated both state and school ethics rules and that "his involvement with Xerox must have greatly influenced the decision-making process."

No one involved in the hiring process in Prince George's can be surprised that Hornsby now stands accused of approving a $1 million, sole-source contract with LeapFrog software for teaching tools, or that Hornsby lives with a saleswoman for LeapFrog. Hornsby said only that LeapFrog makes the product he needed, but in fact, two other companies, Fisher-Price and Publications International, compete with LeapFrog's system.

The investigations actually hamper the board's ability to deal with the Hornsby problem. Once the legal gears start grinding, politicians feel compelled to zip their lips and wait.

Hornsby dismisses all this as "character assassination" designed to slow his reforms of the system. But it is Hornsby who has shot himself in the foot at each stop along his career path.

While the school board waits, Hubbard and other legislators plan to change state ethics rules to make school superintendents meet the same standards that govern politicians. "If I took a trip to Africa with a vendor for the state of Maryland, I'd have a special prosecutor waiting on my doorstep when I came home," Hubbard says. "But a superintendent can get away with it. We're going to change that."

E-mail: marcfisher@washpost.com

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Tighter Ethics Laws Considered in Md.; Hornsby's Action Prompts Call for More Disclosure
by Nancy Trejos, Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington Post; 10/15/2004

Two legislators said yesterday they will seek to tighten ethics rules for Maryland school officials after Prince George's County schools chief Andre J. Hornsby approved buying nearly $1 million in educational products from a California company that employs a woman who lives with him.

State Sen. Paul G. Pinsky (D-Prince George's) and Del. James Hubbard (D-Prince George's) said they will introduce legislation that would require all Board of Education members and superintendents -- and any other school officials with authority to award contracts -- to file financial disclosure and ethics forms every year with the state Board of Ethics.

The Baltimore Sun reported yesterday that Hornsby, 51, lives in Mitchellville with Sienna Owens, a 26-year-old saleswoman for LeapFrog SchoolHouse, the company that sold software and other teaching tools to the Prince George's district in June. Hornsby did not disclose his relationship with Owens, who the company said sells products only in Virginia.

"It's the public's money and we all want to have total confidence it's being spent the best possible way without any kind of conflict of interest," Pinsky said.

Hornsby declined to discuss his relationship with Owens yesterday, saying only that "everything I do is in the best interests of this county, and everything is where it should have been -- aboveboard."

Prince George's schools have done business with LeapFrog since 2002, a year before Hornsby was hired to be the chief executive, according to records. In June, however, Hornsby oversaw the purchase, with federal Title I funds for low-income students, of LeapPads, which are laptop-like teaching tools. The purchase included software teachers use to track students' progress.

Hornsby made the decision to buy the products after consulting with his curriculum and testing departments and after the software was deemed effective in a trial , said Leroy Tompkins, the school district's chief accountability officer.

School board Chairman Beatrice P. Tignor (Upper Marlboro) said yesterday that she has asked the district's ethics panel to look into the matter. Still, Tignor said she did not believe Hornsby's actions were influenced by his relationship with Owens.

"Since she wasn't working in Prince George's County or even in the state of Maryland, I do not see an impropriety," Tignor said.

Cherie Stewart, a LeapFrog spokeswoman, said the company's Maryland sales representative, Debora Adam, handled the sale to Prince George's. In an e-mail response to questions, Stewart said the company would investigate the matter because it is "concerned about any potential conflict of interest,
including the appearance of impropriety."

The school system's conflict of interest policy says that school board members, officials and employees cannot "hold any outside employment relationship that would impair their impartiality or independence of judgment."

It also states that officials and employees cannot "solicit any gift or accept gifts of greater than $25 in value from any person who is under the authority of the school system or who has or is negotiating a contract with the school system, except where such gifts would not present a conflict of interest . . . "

School system officials are required to fill out ethics forms every year. On Hornsby's form, filed Jan. 31, he was asked: "Is your spouse or any member of your immediate family employed by or affiliated in any manner with a business entity or person doing business with the Board of Education?"
He answered no.

A school spokeswoman said that Hornsby did not have to disclose his relationship with Owens on the form because she was not employed by LeapFrog at the time.

Hornsby also was asked on the form if he received any gifts valued at more than $25 during the previous year from anyone who has a contract with the school system. Again, he responded no, but did report that "in my previous position as past president of [the National Alliance of Black School Educators]
I had professional relationship with many of the companies that do business" with Prince George's schools.

When Hornsby traveled to South Africa in July 2003 on a trip organized by the National Alliance of Black School Educators, the expenses were paid for by Plato Learning, a Minnesota-based company that the Prince George's school system is considering for a contract. The details of that trip were first reported by the Baltimore Sun.

Hornsby, who started work in Prince George's in June 2003, said he had notified the school board about the South Africa trip. This is not the first time Hornsby has run into ethics controversy. As superintendent of
the Yonkers, N.Y., school system, questions arose about a trip he took in 1999 to a golf tournament that was paid for by Xerox, which was bidding for a contract with the school system, officials in Yonkers said.
He was not disciplined for taking that trip.

Some Prince George's County Council members said yesterday that they, too, are concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest in Hornsby's role in the LeapFrog purchase.

"This should not be ignored, or pushed to the side," said council member David Harrington (D-Bladensburg).

Staff writers Ovetta Wiggins and Nurith C. Aizenman and researcher Bobbye
Pratt contributed to this report.

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

School software executive resigns after probe of sale
Step is 1st major fallout in Prince George's deal
By Alec MacGillis, The Baltimore Sun, December 15, 2004

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The president of the education software company LeapFrog SchoolHouse has resigned in response to a company investigation into its $1 million sale to the Prince George's County schools in June, corporate officials announced yesterday.

Bob Lally's resignation is the first major fallout from a transaction that has focused scrutiny on schools chief Andre J. Hornsby and his relationship with a saleswoman for the $40-million-a-year Emeryville, Calif., company.

Lally resigned "in response to an internal investigation under LeapFrog's code of conduct relating to a commission paid to a sales representative," the company's parent company, LeapFrog Enterprises Inc., said in a statement.

"Although we are disappointed and saddened by this development, we take our code of conduct very seriously and believe we have expeditiously addressed this event," said Tom Kalinske, chief executive officer of the parent company. "We remain committed to the vision of LeapFrog SchoolHouse and have taken actions to reinforce the division's solid reputation in the education industry."

The resignation represented the first public acknowledgment by the company of any problems in Prince George's $1 million purchase from LeapFrog, which is under investigation by state and federal authorities. Hornsby and county school board members have vigorously dismissed questions about the sale, and this month the school district's ethics panel cleared Hornsby of any wrongdoing.

The Sun reported in October that Hornsby had presided over the $1 million purchase of LeapFrog early-literacy technology without disclosing that he was living with LeapFrog saleswoman Sienna Owens.

Hornsby, 51, has maintained that the purchase was in no way influenced by his relationship with Owens, 26.

Owens said in October that she handled sales only in Virginia, was not involved in the Prince George's deal and did not benefit financially from it. The saleswoman who LeapFrog and Prince George's officials said handled the deal, Debora Adam, said she received the full commission for it, estimated at about $40,000.

Lally said at the time that he knew of no problems with the transaction but said that he could not "comment on what sales representatives do with their commissions once paid to them.

"Having said that, we paid commissions, in accordance with our written company plan, to the sales representative that covers Prince George's County Public Schools on the transaction."

He said the company had started an internal investigation in response to the news reports to make sure there was nothing amiss about the sale.

In an interview at an education convention last month, Lally gave a somewhat revised account of the circumstances surrounding the sale. He acknowledged that Owens was not selling exclusively in Virginia, as company officials had maintained, saying she had been promoted to a major national sales position after the sale. He reiterated, though, that Owens was not involved in the Prince George's deal.

Last night, company spokeswoman Cherie Stewart said that for legal reasons she could not describe in detail the internal investigation's findings pertaining to Lally's role in, or knowledge of, any problems in the Prince George's sale. The investigation was conducted by the company's ethics committee, she said. "The mutual decision to resign had to do with the response to the internal investigation," she said. "Part of the issue is how people responded to the investigation. There were definitely problems with our code of ethics."

Stewart said she could not comment on whether any disciplinary actions had been taken in regards to Owens or Adam. The internal investigation "is not over," she said.

She said the company hoped to continue to work with the county in implementing LeapFrog materials, which include laptop-like learning toys called LeapPads and a computerized student assessment program called LeapTrack.

A spokesman for the county schools could not be reached last night. In clearing Hornsby of any wrongdoing this month, the school system's five-member ethics panel determined that Hornsby did not have to disclose his relationship with Owens because she didn't start working for LeapFrog until the month after he filled out his annual disclosure form in January.

The ethics panel did not interview Hornsby before reaching its finding, which drew criticism from local lawmakers who questioned the validity of the inquiry.

The panel also cleared Hornsby of any wrongdoing in his acceptance of a 10-day trip to South Africa in the summer of 2003 from the education software company Plato Learning, which is seeking a major deal in Prince George's. Plato Learning CEO John Murray resigned last month in a move the company said was unrelated to the Prince George's situation.

School board Chairwoman Beatrice Tignor said after receiving the ethics panel finding that the board considered the matter closed. But the county is awaiting the results of two other inquiries into Hornsby's dealings with education companies, by the Maryland state prosecutor and by the Maryland U.S. attorney and FBI.

Stewart, the LeapFrog spokeswoman, said last night that the company is "ready to cooperate" with the law enforcement investigations.

Lally's resignation occurs less than a month after he and other LeapFrog executives were seen socializing with Hornsby and Owens at the Dallas convention of the National Alliance of Black School Educators. The company has a close partnership with the black educator alliance, which Hornsby led between 2001 and last year.

In an interview after a cocktail reception attended by Hornsby and Owens, Lally seemed unconcerned about the Prince George's situation. The company, he said, had made sure to remove the county from Owens' national sales work, to "make sure there's no appearance of conflict of interest."
Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun


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Hornsby's relationship questioned
Girlfriend was promoted months after firm's deal with Prince George's school chief
By Alec MacGillis, Baltimore Sun Staff, November 23, 2004

Two months after the Prince George's County school system made a large purchase from the education technology firm LeapFrog SchoolHouse, the company gave a major promotion to the county schools chief's girlfriend, the company has confirmed.

LeapFrog SchoolHouse's chief executive said the August promotion of Sienna Owens from the Virginia sales territory to a national sales position was unrelated to the $1 million purchase of LeapFrog materials in June by Prince George's schools superintendent Andre J. Hornsby, which is now under scrutiny by state and federal investigators.

In an interview at a Dallas convention this past weekend that was attended by Hornsby, 51, and Owens, 26, LeapFrog Schoolhouse CEO Bob Lally repeated earlier assertions that Owens was not involved in the deal, one of the largest in the company's history.

But Lally's confirmation of the promotion diverges from accounts in recent weeks by company officials, Owens and Hornsby, which all stated that her sales were limited exclusively to Virginia and which made no mention of the promotion. While state and county officials assessing the propriety of Prince George's purchase have questioned Hornsby's judgment in failing to disclose that he lived with a LeapFrog employee, they often pointed to her seemingly limited company role to show there might not have been an outright conflict of interest.

Yesterday, Sen. Paul G. Pinsky, a Prince George's Democrat who has criticized the deal, said that news of Owens' promotion after the sale made him more concerned about Hornsby's dealings with LeapFrog SchoolHouse.

Whether or not Owens benefited directly from the LeapFrog deal, Pinsky said, her promotion to a national sales position raised new questions in light of Hornsby's role as an influential superintendent of a prominent district.

With educational connections around the country, Hornsby is in an ideal position to encourage LeapFrog sales in Prince George's and beyond, Pinsky said.

"She has a relationship with someone who is so significant nationally," he said. "Whether or not she got remuneration [from the Prince George's sale], there are lots of ways to get remuneration. It comes back to her in her next job."

Hornsby's dealings with education vendors, disclosed by The Sun last month, are now the subject of investigations by the Maryland state prosecutor's office and the FBI and Maryland U.S. attorney.

Besides the LeapFrog deal, investigators are scrutinizing Hornsby's relationship with the software company Plato Learning, which paid for Hornsby to attend a 10-day trip to South Africa last year with the National Alliance of Black School Educators, and which is now seeking a major deal in Prince George's.

Hornsby, who declined another request for an interview over the weekend, has said through a spokeswoman that the county's dealings with Plato Learning have not been influenced by the South Africa trip, on which he was accompanied by Owens and several Plato executives. Likewise, a schools spokeswoman has said that the purchase of early literacy technology from LeapFrog was not linked to Hornsby's relationship with Owens.

Owens, who did not return a call seeking comment last night, has previously said she did not have anything to do with the sale to Prince George's, and did not receive any commission on it. The saleswoman who LeapFrog says handled the sale, Debora Adam, has said she received the full commission for it, estimated to be about $40,000. Lally, the CEO, has said he could not comment on what happened to the commission after the company paid Adam.

In an interview at last weekend's annual convention of the National Alliance of Black School Educators in Dallas, Lally said LeapFrog hired Owens last winter to sell to Virginia schools. He said she was promoted in August to a new position as a national "strategic account manager" responsible for promoting sales in large districts, mostly on the East Coast.

Lally said that Owens' salary -- which, if in line with equivalent industry positions would be about $100,000 plus annual bonuses -- would be based on the company's nationwide sales performance. However, he said the company deliberately has excluded any future Prince George's revenues from its formula for Owens' compensation, in acknowledgment of her relationship with Hornsby.

"We specifically modified her agreement and carved out Prince George's County to make sure there's no appearance of conflict of interest," Lally said.

There was little sign of such precautions at the four-day Dallas convention, where Hornsby and representatives of LeapFrog and Plato, including Owens, were seen mingling at several company-sponsored cocktail receptions at the convention hotel. Such corporate receptions for school administrators are common at education conventions, but Pinsky said it was disappointing that Hornsby had chosen to attend events paid for by those companies now being scrutinized in connection with the county.

"You have to go out of your way to be clean and appear to be clean," Pinsky said.

Many members of the black educator alliance, which Hornsby headed between 2001 and last year, were quick to come to their colleague's defense. Lois Harrison Jones, another past president of the group, speculated that Hornsby was continuing to associate with the two companies as a way of publicly maintaining the innocence of his dealings with them. Jones said she was inclined to think Hornsby did nothing wrong.

"He is very savvy politically, and I have reason to believe that he'd be smart enough to know that [a misdeed] would be uncovered," said Jones, a professor at Howard University and former head of Boston schools. "I can't imagine he would assume that the [Prince George's] school board would allow that type of action and that the public would accept it."

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun

Hornsby faces $4 million in suits from former principals