"Cincinnati Public Schools admitted on Wednesday it incorrectly counted nearly $9 million it had paid to a white-owned business as a minority contract, meaning the schools have been substantially overstating their success in steering work to minorities in its citywide school construction project."
District spokeswoman Janet Walsh blamed a clerical error and said the statistics will be corrected online by Thursday.
CPS acknowledged the mistake two days after being confronted by the NAACP and the Baptist Ministers Conference at a school board meeting for what the groups call a “shameful” failure to involve enough African-Americans in the $1.07 billion project.
Until Wednesday, CPS had claimed that $84 million out of $707 million spent through October, or 11.9 percent, had gone to minority-owned contractors.
But in researching the statistics, NAACP members discovered that within the $84 million figure was $8.9 million CPS paid to Shook Construction, of Dayton, to help build the new Riverview East Academy in the East End, completed in late 2005.