$80.9 Million in Contracts—Where Was the Outreach?

By Ronda Watson Barber, OhioMBE Publisher

Columbus City Schools reports that $80.9 million was spent on summer Capital Improvements projects in 2025. These projects are funded through a permanent levy approved by Columbus voters—taxpayers who expect that those investments will benefit the community supporting the district.

Recently, I asked district leadership a simple question:

How is Community Inclusion Policy 6400 being enforced on those projects?

The answer was revealing.

In a written response to my inquiry, the district acknowledged that it does not maintain aggregated documentation verifying the Good Faith Efforts submitted by contractors. In other words, there is no centralized system ensuring that contractors actually performed outreach to Local Economically Disadvantaged Enterprises (LEDE) before receiving district work.

Instead, the response described outreach as:

• Newspaper advertisements
• Website postings
• Public Purchase listings
• Mass emails

Those are standard procurement practices used by public agencies across the country. They are not targeted outreach.

Community Inclusion Policy 6400 was adopted to promote participation by historically underutilized businesses. The district’s own Good Faith Efforts guideline outlines actions contractors are expected to take, including:

• Providing written notice to specific LEDE firms
• Conducting documented follow-up communications
• Breaking up project scopes where feasible
• Negotiating with disadvantaged businesses
• Assisting with bonding or credit access

Yet the district also stated that these actions are not mandatory.

If outreach efforts are optional and the district does not maintain documentation verifying that they occurred, then the obvious question becomes:

How is the policy being enforced?

Even more troubling, the district’s response suggests that not even the bare minimum outreach contemplated in the policy is being verified or documented. Without records showing which LEDE firms were contacted, how contractors attempted to engage them, or what efforts were made to include them in project scopes, the district cannot demonstrate that meaningful outreach occurred.

This raises a fundamental question for taxpayers:

Why maintain a Community Inclusion program—and the staff time, administrative structure, and expenses associated with it—if the district is not going to enforce the policy it adopted?

Programs require resources. They require oversight. They require accountability.

If those systems are not being used to verify compliance or ensure meaningful participation, then the program risks becoming little more than a dog and pony show—something that exists on paper but does not function in practice.

The administration pointed to overall LEDE spending totals to demonstrate success. According to the district, $41.5 million was spent with LEDE businesses in FY25, and 31.1 percent of the $80.9 million Capital Improvements spending went to LEDE firms.

Those numbers may reflect progress in certain areas. But spending totals alone do not demonstrate that contractors complied with the outreach expectations described in the district’s policy.

Posting bids online is not the same as actively seeking participation from local businesses.

Advertising a project is not the same as ensuring disadvantaged firms have a real opportunity to compete for the work.

Columbus voters approved a permanent capital levy exceeding $100 million annually to support school facilities improvements. That represents a significant and ongoing financial commitment from taxpayers.

Those taxpayers deserve confidence that their investment is also creating opportunity within the community funding that investment.

Community inclusion policies are intended to ensure that public spending strengthens local economies and opens doors for businesses that historically have been excluded from public contracting.

But policies only work when they are supported by clear procedures, documentation, and oversight.

If contractors are simply encouraged—but not required—to conduct outreach, and if the district does not track whether that outreach actually occurred, then the policy is operating more as a suggestion than a requirement.

Public investment should not simply flow through large construction contracts without meaningful opportunity for local and disadvantaged businesses to participate.

Columbus taxpayers deserve transparency. They deserve accountability. And they deserve assurance that public dollars invested in our schools are also creating economic opportunity in the communities supporting those schools.

A policy without enforcement is not a policy.

It is a suggestion.

just my thoughts…rwb

Ronda is an advocate for Black and other underutilized businesses in government contracting.