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Pine View School students moved to avoid rats

Sarasota Herald-Tribune - 1 day ago
By Christopher O'Donnell

For more than a year, Sarasota County's most prestigious school —
Pine View School for the Gifted — has been infested with rats. ...

Sarasota's Pine View School for the Gifted fights rat infestation ... www.heraldtribune.com/article/20111213/wire/111219846

SNN6: Rat problem at Pine View School worries parents ...

http://video.heraldtribune.com/video/1325975949001

The school has been battling a rat infestation for more than a year without notifying parents of the problem

Abuses alleged in Sarasota County Schools tech deal

By Doug Sword & Scott Carroll
Staff Writers - Herald-Tribune
Published: Friday, May 14, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.<br>

The Sarasota School District paid $12 million for a computer software program from a company that may have skirted the law and could be headed for bankruptcy, according to a lawsuit filed last week.


The lawsuit filed by two partners in the Orlando-based firm Crosspointe.net also claims that another partner in the company paid $31,500 to Bob Hanson, the school district's former IT director, as a possible thank you for helping facilitate the sale.

The allegations come amid an FBI investigation into another high tech purchase by the district -- the $13 million the district paid for electronic white boards for classrooms. Hanson has been implicated in that investigation, too.

The lawsuit was filed May 6 by Larry Plasil and Jim Barako, software engineers whose companies own a 50 percent stake in CrossPointe. In it they accuse Joan Keebler, who owns the other half of the company and was the main salesperson, of gross negligence and possible illegalities.

Plasil and Barako are seeking to recover payments they say were made to Hanson without their consent and to investigate "any improprieties or illegal conduct." Hanson was the school district's chief negotiator on the CrossPointe contract.

The lawsuit claims that Crosspointe is in deep financial trouble because of Keebler's loose spending and asks an Orange County judge to appoint an overseer for the company.

The lawsuit also claims:

• That Plasil was supposed to approve all company expenditures, but did not approve a $31,500 payment to Hanson made through the Florida Association of School Administrators, where Hanson now works.


"Keebler's concealment of the company's payments to Hanson through FASA are troubling, and they raise issues about whether the entire procurement of the Sarasota School District contract was tainted by some arrangement or understanding between Keebler and Bob Hanson," the lawsuit states. "If the process of procuring the Sarasota School District contract was in fact compromised by Keebler's misconduct then Plasil and Barako agree that the Company should pay the Sarasota School District back the Company's ill-gotten gains."

• That Keebler offered Hanson a job at CrossPointe in October 2009, as he was leaving the school district, but backed off after Plasil and Barako objected. The pair were "concerned with the unseemly appearance of hiring the individual most responsible for securing the Sarasota School District contract."

• That Crosspointe was willing to accept $10 million for the software program before the district offered $12 million in December 2008. Keebler "bragged that she was able to extract an extra $2 million."

• That Jim Warford, director of the Florida Association of School Administrators, was paid $2,000 by CrossPointe for each Florida school official he recruited to attend technology conferences sponsored by the company.

The company has paid Warford more than $100,000 since December, according to copies of invoices and canceled checks attached to the lawsuit.

Hanson, Keebler and Warford all dismiss the claims contained in the lawsuit as unfounded.

Responding to questions via e-mail, Hanson denied ever receiving direct payments or a job offer from CrossPointe. He said he talked to the company about employment but a job offer was never extended.

Hanson was hired by FASA in December to help school districts use technology more effectively.

Keebler dismissed the lawsuit as "sheer nonsense" and said that she is the aggrieved party in the company.

Plasil has taken CrossPointe software, repackaged it and sold it without turning revenues over to the company, Keebler said. The lawsuit was filed after she confronted Plasil over selling CrossPointe's software under another name in Illinois, she said.

"This is what's precipitating his blackmail," Keebler said, referring to the lawsuit.


Warford acknowledged that he has been a paid consultant for CrossPointe for about a year, work that is allowed under his contract with FASA. He denied being paid a $2,000 "bounty" for each school official he got to come to a pair of education technology conferences sponsored by Crosspointe and other companies.

The Sarasota school district bought the software program from Crosspointe about six months after the company had been formed. The program brings student performance, school budgeting and management all under one Web-based program.

Despite the court fight between CrossPointe's owners, installation and testing of the program is proceeding satisfactorily, said Al Weidner, the school district's budget director, who had not seen the lawsuit.

The system is behind schedule, but the management portion is expected to be online in August and the district expects that in a year parents will be able to use the program to check on the progress of their children, Weidner said.

The school district and Hanson were named in March in an FBI subpoena for information relating to the district's $13 million purchase of 3,000 electronic white boards, or Activboards, for classrooms. The subpoena also sought information relating to former school superintendent Gary Norris and the Activboard's manufacturer, a British company called Promethean.

The FBI is also investigating the purchase of Activboards by the school district in Waterloo, Iowa. Norris took the Waterloo superintendent position in 2008 after leaving Sarasota and later hired Hanson as a consultant.

Both men have denied any wrongdoing in connection with the Activboard purchases.


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