Schools under fire for use of contracts: Report says city system often uses emergency deals for routine work that costs more.

Byline: Sara Neufeld

Oct. 1--The Baltimore school board is regularly resorting to the use of emergency contracts to conduct routine business, potentially costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars and raising new concerns about financial controls 2 1/2 years after a budget crisis, a Sun review has found.

Over the past six months, the board has bypassed competitive bidding to approve at least 21 contracts worth more than $19 million -- a process rarely used by surrounding school systems. What's more, even with regular, non-emergency contracts, work is often under way before the board has signed off on it.

"Somebody has got to be accountable as to why and how this kind of thing happens," said Skip Strovel, a vice president of a Beltsville company that submitted the low bid for a technology contract this spring, only for the contract to be thrown out and awarded as an emergency to another company -- for nearly three times the price.

Members of the school board, who are jointly appointed by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Mayor Martin O'Malley, have sometimes questioned the purchases in public meetings, only for a majority to approve them a few minutes later, according to meeting transcripts reviewed by The Sun.

School boards in Maryland are only supposed to use emergency contracts when students' safety is at stake or their education would otherwise be disrupted -- when a storm destroys a school roof, for example.

City school system officials say they are trying to reduce their reliance on emergency contracts, but they are sometimes forced to use them to comply with state and federal mandates that other…