- April 25, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
A lawsuit between the Volusia County School Board and a former school district employee over claims of unlawful retaliation is still active in court.
Alex Kennedy, an ex-assistant director of applications and infrastructure at Volusia County Schools, was informed his position was going to be eliminated in May 2020 after 13 years with the district. Since then, Kennedy, an Ormond Beach resident, this was retaliation for speaking out against Oracle Fusion, the new financial system the district has been working to implement since 2017 after the School Board voted to approve a $6.2 million agreement with CherryRoad Technologies.
Kennedy said that he knew early on the software implementation would run over-budget and that staff would have a lot of difficulty with it, and continuously advised his district superiors of this until his termination.
“It’s just shameful when you have someone like myself saying, ‘This is going to cost you millions and millions dollars more than you expect," Kennedy said. "Why would you do this?’ And then they don’t renew my contract.”
Volusia County Schools declined to comment due to the pending litigation, but district spokesperson Kelly Schultz said in an email that "the Oracle system was properly vetted and approved of by the School Board in 2017 as the most appropriate ERP system available to meet the Request For Qualifications."
The Oracle Fusion Enterprise Resource Planning software implementation's first phase was originally scheduled to go live on July 1, 2018, though that didn't take place until July 1, 2019, district documents show. The second phase of implementation was planned to go live on Jan. 1, 2019, but as of now, this has not happened. An update by the district at its Jan. 26 meeting pushed the go live date to July 1.
Barring one-year renewal agreement costs with CherryRoad Technologies, the district has spent over $2 million on change orders since 2018.
Kennedy did file a complaint with the VCS Office of Professional Standards, but was told his concerns were not under the office's purview. On July 13, 2020, he asked the School Board that his complaints of whistleblower retaliation be heard by the Division of Administrative Hearings, but his request was refused.
He filed the lawsuit on Aug. 31, 2020, and on Aug. 21, attorneys representing the School Board filed a motion to dismiss his complaint "for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted," according to court documents.
Then, on Nov. 10, 2020, the School Board approved an investigative report by GrayRobinson — the same firm currently representing the board in the lawsuit, though under different attorneys — which concluded that the school board did not engage in "waste, fraud or financial mismanagement" as Kennedy claimed to the Department of Education, who forwarded his complaint to the to the school board for investigation.
The reason he spoke out against the Oracle system, Kennedy said, is because his staff were faced "with a daunting task" in trying to make the software work. The right thing to do would have been to bring in a third-party auditor to look at the system and speak with the staff members themselves who are struggling to implement it, without fear of retribution.
“My concern is my case gets dismissed or it doesn’t go further, and it continues to enable them to do this to other people," Kennedy said. "That’s the big thing.”
