Delaware DOE Smarter Balanced & Vendor Contracts & Emails FOIA GoFundMe Page
Exceptional Delaware needs your help, and it needs it yesterday! Back in March I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Delaware Department of Education for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), American Institutes for Research (AIR), and Data Recognition Corporation contracts and any emails sent from the DOE to these entities. The DOE responded with an original $6,500 quote and then, to add “recently found” contracts, the estimate surged to over $8,500. After filing a petition against the DOE with the Delaware Department of Justice, the DOJ responsed a few months later with an estimate of $1,725.10. I started a GoFundMe donation to raise the costs for this FOIA and the costs associated with GoFundMe with a goal of $1,875.00. To date, $775 has been raised, but we are still short of the goal by $1,100.
As the Smarter Balanced Assessment scores are slowly being released around the country, and cut stores are being changed, it is more imperative than ever that the people of Delaware see what this state paid for, any communications surrounding this, and how truthful the Delaware DOE and Governor Markell were with what they told the public and legislators when it became law in Delaware last year.
I will be submitting an initial check to the Delaware DOE next week to get the process going based on funds that have already been donated, but the request will not be completed until ALL funds are given to the DOE. This is top priority folks because we need the truth, once and for all!
In the spirit of transparency, this is the activity that has already happened on this GoFundMe account:
Donations already made:
$663.24
SCHEDULED WITHDRAWALS
RECENT WITHDRAWALS
| Total Online Raised | $775.00 |
| Total Offline Raised | $0.00 |
| Total Amount Raised | $775.00 |
| GoFundMe (5%) | $38.75 |
| WePay (2.9% + 0.30)
per transaction
|
$27.26 |
| Total Fees | $66.01 |
| Remaining Total | $708.99 |
I received the first check today, and I will be starting a separate checking account to cover this FOIA and any other future FOIAs. I appreciate any help you can offer with this mammoth endeavor. Once the request is completed, I will be making all the documents public on Exceptional Delaware.
The Season Of Myths 