At a Baltimore City Council hearing earlier this month to discuss absences in public schools, Councilmember James Torrence questioned whether the city was capturing consistent data from the “millions of dollars that [they] spend for home visits” to find missing students, through vendors like Concentric Educational Solutions.

Concentric founder David Heiber assured the council that their work checking on students at home, and “before and after school … makes a difference” and said his company made 19,000 home visits in Baltimore in the 2023-’24 school year.

But records obtained by The Baltimore Sun through a public records request show that the relationship between Concentric and Baltimore Schools has been rocky. Two years ago this month, the school system implemented a Corrective Action Plan with Concentric after an audit of the company’s invoices showed “several anomalies” that indicate the school system suspected Concentric wasn’t performing the work it claimed.

Among them:

Charging for higher cost services like mentoring, when lower cost services like hallway monitoring were provided;

Charging the school system for twice as many home visits as had actually been provided;

And billing for work that was performed on days that schools were not in session.

Heiber told The Sun that Concentric has rectified all concerns.

“Wherever things were discussed or issues were brought up, we addressed them,” he said. “And if we made an error, we repaid” the school system.

The school system has since cut short at least one contracted service from Concentric, however.

100 home visits in 41 minutes

The records obtained by The Sun show one Concentric worker claimed to have logged 100 home visits on Jan. 8, 2023, during a 41-minute window, from 1:49 p.m. to 2:30 p.m., according to an email sent to Heiber on April 5, 2023, by Kim Hoffman, the executive director of data monitoring and compliance at Baltimore City Public Schools. The worker claimed letters were left at student homes.

Another worker logged two separate home visits for appearing at the same dwelling to reengage siblings, the email said, and some home visits the school system was billed for were listed as having occurred as late as 1 a.m.

Another April 2023 email sent from Hoffman to Heiber claims Concentric overbilled City Schools by nearly $320,000 for home visits. In addition, the Corrective Action Plan says it “is believed that City Schools has overpaid Concentric” by $300,000 for Squeegee Monitoring and Squeegee Re-Engagement services meant to draw students back to school from roadway medians, making cash for cleaning car windows.

In a written response to the school system regarding the overbilling allegations, dated Oct. 2, 2023, Concentric said that “credit memos” had been issued in both instances and that the company agrees that “no home visits should be billed until those services have been rendered and confirmed.” Concentric also said it “acknowledges the historical clerical and administrative errors related to invoicing for improper services.”

Asked recently about the 100 home visits in less than an hour in 2023, Heiber said there are “glitches” in the company’s app if home visit notes aren’t entered properly. He said the company had to train employees to enter their notes immediately after a home visit instead of waiting until a route is completed.

Holding the vendor accountable

The 2023 Corrective Action Plan called for Concentric to refrain from billing for work on days schools are closed or for periods when workers are on their “lunch breaks”; to provide purchase orders prior to performing services in order to collect payment; “to verify, among other things, that City Schools is not paying for mentoring charges for hours and days when schools were not in session”; and to not count as billable hours any time spent “running errands” and “on personal calls.”

Concentric also must provide “home visit outcome data” with each invoice it submits; attend monthly meetings to discuss open invoices; complete a report with supporting documentation for mentoring visits and tutoring sessions; and provide work logs for its employees.

The school system said in an email that, since the inception of the Corrective Action Plan, it has “worked closely with the vendor [Concentric] to ensure continuous improvement in the areas listed while holding the vendor accountable when challenges arise.”

Torrence and City Council member Mark Conway, who recently sponsored a resolution to study the causes and solutions of school absenteeism, told The Sun that they weren’t aware of the Corrective Action Plan for Concentric. But they said it raises concerns for them, even though the school system is a separate entity from Baltimore City.

“As stewards of tax dollars, of course we care a lot about making sure … they’re spent well,” Conway said.

A chronic absenteeism

Concentric is a Baltimore-based company that’s become a nationwide leader in the education support space by partnering with more than 200 schools and districts to address tutoring needs and chronic absenteeism, which is defined as a student missing at least 10% of enrolled school days or 18 days out of an entire school year.

Chronic absenteeism worsened significantly during the pandemic and continues to be a serious problem in school systems across the country, including Baltimore’s. The city’s chronic absenteeism rate hit 58% during the 2021-’22 school year and was still nearly 49% during the last school year.

The Sun found in an earlier analysis that thousands of Baltimore students were absent at least 60 days of the 2022-’23 school year — far beyond the minimum threshold defining chronic absence.

Concentric employees visit students’ homes to identify barriers to school attendance and relay that information to the school. From there, the school addresses the barriers, like helping students access transportation and other resources.

Baltimore has spent millions in its partnership with Concentric — $17.5 million alone was proposed for one three-year contract involving tutoring, which had been set to expire in October but is now ending with the school year in June, following a “recent review of tutoring services,” the school system said.

Other school systems in about 12 states contract with Concentric, including in Anne Arundel County. Concentric also provides “one-off services” in Prince George’s and Baltimore counties, Heiber told The Sun.

Torrence said “Concentric has been a good partner” on attendance at Carver Vocational-Technical High School, in particular, based on his conversations with people at the Baltimore school.

‘Nothing fraudulent about it’

Heiber said Concentric “didn’t even argue” with the city’s claims. “If we provided the documentation, if the documentation didn’t suffice, they’re such a good partner that … we paid back whatever the agreed-upon amount was.”

Asked why the faulty payments happened in the first place, Heiber said, “I think it was scalability and making sure all the documentation was attached to our invoices.”

He added: “It’s similar from going from one restaurant to 20 restaurants — you have to create systems and structures.”

Heiber said there “was nothing fraudulent about it — absolutely not, unequivocally.”

Heiber said Concentric has since “created more checks and balances with a president and CFO and some department heads that look over all services and billing before it goes out.”

When asked about the early end of the city schools’ tutoring contract, Heiber said tutoring was “what was needed after the pandemic.” Going forward, he said, the focus will be on home visits.

“We’re doubling down on our services for home visits … That is what we were good at.”

The city school system did not directly answer a question about how long it would continue contracting with Concentric for home visits.

“As a matter of standard practice, City Schools will not continue to use vendors’ services that do not meet our standards and requirements,” the school system said in a statement.

Schools should own home visits

Concentric employees typically are capped at 25 home visits per day, said Michael Gary, the company’s chief of staff.

Asked for data showing whether kids are more likely to come to school after engaging with Concentric, Heiber said a study on the program’s effectiveness has been performed in the past, but he doesn’t think the results are public. He did not respond when asked to provide the study.

Steven Sheldon, an education expert at Johns Hopkins University whose research focuses on family engagement in children’s education, said he’s skeptical that Concentric’s way of performing home visits has the same benefits as home visits between parents and school employees.

“I would rather see the school take ownership of the home visits because I think that relationship between teachers and families or schools and families … is really valuable,” he said. He added that he’s “not sure you get that benefit when you hire out the home visit work.”

The school system said in an email that it “shares Dr. Sheldon’s general view that home visits are effective,” adding, “While many of our schools conduct home visits independently, working with a vendor provides increased capacity to reach more Baltimore City students and families. We have found that our approach allows successful re-engagement and relationship building.”

Sheldon also said he thinks it’s better to have a pre-planned visit with a family, rather than an unannounced visit, as is the practice with Concentric.

“Especially in this political climate, I can see my parents, even if they’re home, they might not want to answer the door,” Sheldon said. He added that there’s “a lot of wasted time” if someone’s driving to an address and no one is there.

Gary said Concentric performs “unannounced” home visits “because the expectation is that the school should have made an attempt to get in contact with these families first.”

One downside of assigning teachers or school employees to perform home visits — as is done in some other school systems — is the additional workload for those staff, Sheldon said. But he thinks it’s worth the “return on investment.”

Scarce resources

Nat Malkus, an education policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said there’s an appeal to hiring contractors for home visits since “the school system doesn’t necessarily have the staff.”

Malkus runs a “Return to Learn Tracker” and is part of a “50% challenge” with other national organizations, asking states to commit to cutting chronic absenteeism in half within five years, following the skyrocketing rates of absent students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Malkus added that home visits are “tough work” and aren’t a “silver bullet” solution.

“Home visits can be effective, but they’re a very expensive intervention,” he said, adding, “You’ve got to pay somebody who you hope knows what they’re doing and can make progress with families. And they actually have to go to each residence, and they have to get there when the families are at home.”

Malkus noted schools have “scarce resources” for combating absenteeism.

“We need to make absolutely sure those resources are being used to advantage,” he said.

Have a news tip? Contact Brooke Conrad at bconrad@baltsun.com, 443-682-2356 or @conrad_brooke on X.