Jury: Black SuperintendentDiscriminated Against White-Owned Company

And awarded a $2.3 million judgement against the school district.

6.30.2016

The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that a jury has decided that the late Philadelphia School Superintendent Arlene C. Ackerman discriminated against a white-owned company by directing a $7.5 million no-bid contract to a minority-owned company not on the state's approved list of contractors.

Newtown-based Security & Data Technologies Inc. (SDT) filed the racial discrimination suit after, it said, Ackerman and the School District "deselected" it in 2010 for a contract to install surveillance cameras at 19 schools that the state had deemed "persistently dangerous."

The company, which had begun preliminary work, said Ackerman changed course and ordered the emergency contract be awarded to IBS Communications, which was not on a state list of companies eligible for no-bid contracts.

Ackerman told several colleagues she was tired of giving work to contractors that did not look like her. A top procurement official testified that Ackerman wanted to make sure that "all these white boys didn't get contracts" and asked why "a black firm [couldn't] get it."

The law suit is the second case the district has lost relating to a 2010 report that Ackerman pushed aside Security & Data Technologies Inc in favor of IBS communications.

"My client has been struggling with this fact of being rejected for a contract because of race for nearly six years," said attorney Michael Homans, who represented SDT with Melissa Kay Hazell. "It's been a long, hard journey. Justice was served."

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