HTML Preview Procurement Executive Summary page number 1.
Procurement Practices in
New York State School Districts
William Duncombe
Cynthia Searcy
Educational Finance and Accountability Program
Center for Policy Research
The Maxwell School
Syracuse University
January 2005
Note: The formatting of this report is different from that printed and distributed by the Education Finance Research
Consortium (available at: http://www.albany.edu/edfin).
Acknowledgements: This project would not have been possible without significant help from a number of individuals.
George Perry at NYSASBO and Tom Rogers at NYSCOSS graciously sponsored the survey. We want to especially
thank Steve Vanhoesen of NYSASBO, who provided significant help with all aspects of the survey. Shane Higuera, and
the finance committee of NYSASBO provided valuable advice on survey design as did several other school business
officials in New York. Mary Ellen Clark, Deborah Cunningham, and Charles Szuberla of the New York State Education
Department reviewed the survey and provided a number of valuable suggestions. Walt Bikowitz, Director of the New
York State Office of General Services Procurement Services Group, provided guidance on survey questions and
reviewed an initial draft of the instrument. Special thanks to Anne Casey (Syracuse City School District), Paul Apicella
(Troy City School District), and Greg Mayo (Shenendehowa School District) who agreed to interviews and answered
numerous questions about how goods and services are acquired in their districts. We also want to thank Jeff McLellan
and Clark Godshall for their comments on preliminary results from the survey and initial drafts of the report. Finally, we
thank Bernard Jump of the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University for reading with a critical eye and
suggesting edits. Errors and omissions are, of course, solely the responsibility of the authors of this report
.