Search selected LA schools' emails related to the district iPad project
Produced by Annie Gilbertson & Chris Keller | Published Aug. 29, 2014
Emails obtained by KPCC through a public records request show Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy directed his staff to figure out how to incorporate Pearson PLC's software into the school system's plan to transition to the Common Core standards.
Officials with Pearson – the largest publishing company in the world – were copied on communication between Deasy and Jaime Aquino, the district's head of curriculum at the time, who expressed reservations at some of the costs and the speed with which the district was moving. Emails show Pearson weighed in on questions of how to finance software purchases.
Deasy also personally pitched Apple on working with Pearson, according to the emails.
Those meetings and conversations began nearly a year before L.A. Unified put the project out to public bid. Apple and Pearson won the contract on June 24, 2013, after committees made up of school district staff members picked them from among 19 bids.
Records and emails also show some staff members on those bid the selection committees met with Pearson executives and were among 50 staffers sent on a weekend to Palm Springs to attend a Pearson sales pitch on the software. Conference attendees were given iPads to take home.
KPCC has found inconsistencies in how district staff scored Pearson's competition for the software, and L.A. Unified lost some of the competition's scoresheets or didn’t score them at all.
KPCC reviewed more than 1,000 emails for this investigation. Below are 18 key emails among school district staff and with Pearson and Apple executives.
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