On Friday, Gov. Scott Walker's Administration awarded an out-of-state company a $15 million education services contract. The company, Infinite Campus Inc. out of Blaine, Minnesota will be the sole provider of student information systems to Wisconsin's more than 440 school districts. According to breaking stories on this, Infinite Campus won the competitively bidded process fair and square based on several criteria, including having the highest technical score and the lowest cost.
Star Tribune Excerpt:
But losing bidder Skyward Inc. said the evaluation process was flawed, the Stevens Point Journal reported Sunday. The company also said in a statement Saturday that late changes to the process favored Infinite Campus and put Skyward at a disadvantage.
Considering the way this thing started out, I think most of us knew it was going to end in a bad way no matter what. Skyward you may recall, was the company that lobbied against the statewide student information system, then was offered tax breaks from Walker's WEDC contingent upon it winning the contract for the state-wide system it lobbied against and lastly, Skyward threatened to leave the state if it didn't win the contract.
Twin Cities Excerpt: (June 19, 2012)
If Skyward doesn't get the statewide contract, all of its local deals would end. King said in September that the company, which began in Stevens Point 30 years ago, already has talked with Texas state officials about moving there.
That didn't help their cause. Sadly, Skyward practically became a victim of their own design. You got to wonder if they were taking advice from Bucyrus' former CEO Tim Sullivan to politicize negotiations through the media in an effort to garner public support because this was one major publicity gaffe after another. Throw Scott Walker into the mix and you're only asking for a total break down in ever reaching the mission's objective. On the other hand, I would much rather have a homegrown company serve its homestate, but who can we love in this one? Neither of them make it easy.
This is too simple to even compose an argument about and I would think, we all would think, it should be obvious to those in charge that there must be some unique economic advantage when state tax dollars are spent IN STATE to create jobs that employ state taxpayers!!
There are absolutely no winners in Wisconsin in this deal.
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