THE HIRING OF XPEDIANT SOLUTIONS:

 

One of the more questionable actions of former KISD superintendent, Leonard Merrell, was the hiring of Xpediant Solutions as the Information Technology provider for the district.  (It was first called just "Xpediant," but A. D. Muller, upon learning of their expired name franchise contract with the State of Texas, bought it out from under them, so they had to change to "Xpediant Solutions.")

Under Merrell's watch, the IT situation in the schools had, in my opinion, moved from bad to worse over the years. 

The previous head of IT disappeared overnight.  Rumors as to the reason abound, and "yelling and shouting" pretty much describe that episode. 

An effort to go through a bidding process was begun to find a new provider, and then it was halted mid-stream, and Wayne Caskey and Scott Wright emerged with an unbelievable IT service provider contract.


Please remember that it appears that almost all that money for Xpediant and their "contract" workers came from bond funds. 


During the 2006 bond election, George Scott discovered and  printed images of KISD computers being used by Xpediant technicians that held accumulated  lewd and obscene music files that they had collected. The cited computers were located in a KISD Administration building.

Many millions of dollars later, that group was fired by Superintendent Frailey but not until he had left Xpediant in place for over a year after he arrived. 

An accounting of that separation that appeared in the Houston Chronicle has since disappeared from the Chronicle's archives!