.

The Cincinnati NAACP has investigated the Cincinnati Public Schools' (CPS) reports on minority participation in its Facilities Master Plan to rebuild school buildings. The Cincinnati NAACP decided to do a fact check at the 50% point of the facilities project.  The CPS district continuously reported that minority participation was at 12% ($84 million). The district admitted that 12% was not a good number, but CPS officials said they were trying harder and that minority participation was on track given that the project was not yet complete. The implication to Cincinnati NAACP leadership was that the school district would hit the mark.

.

When the local branch audited CPS's numbers, it found that Cincinnati School Board had been inflating their financial numbers to make the minority statistics look positive as well as hide the fact that the majority of the public money was being awarded to White men.  "The Board was either willfully blind, incompetent, or Board members were working in concert with the White contractors to inflate the minority numbers so the White contractors could walk away with 91% of the public money.  The smoking gun for working in concert is the 100% approval of change orders for five years by the CPS Board. This corruption that the School Board was/is engaging in is no different than what Enron, AIG, Lehmann Brothers, and Bernie Madoff did," says Cincinnati NAACP president, Christopher Smitherman. The School Board says that the reporting was one big clerical error.

.

The local newspaper reported one week ago School Board member, Katherine Ingram's, statement that the minority participation goal set for the school building project has always been "unattainable".  The newspaper included in the same article that the Cincinnati NAACP was emotional, but not speaking factually. This is only an issue because of the sound financial analysis of the Cincinnati NAACP.  The local newspaper reported that the minority participation numbers dropped from 12% to 10%; HOWEVER, there was no explanation in the article for the decrease.  The average person understands dollar amounts better than percentages.  This 2% decrease in minority participation translates to approximately $12 million less, or a new total of $72 million versus the $84 million reported. The Cincinnati NAACP believes that the final minority number will be lower than 10% ($70 million). It likely will be closer to 8 or 9%; $56-63 million total minority participation which is $21-28 million lower than initially reported by the CPS Board. 

.

The Cincinnati NAACP must highlight that the district's use of the term "minority participation" DOES NOT MEAN BLACK nor AFRICAN AMERICAN. Therefore, when African American participation is discussed by the Cincinnati NAACP is not discussed in the context of 8 to 9%, it is discussed in the context of 1% to 2% of the 8 or 9%.  African Americans have been awarded 1-2% of $700 million which translates to only $7-14 million over 5 years. The White Community walked away in the same time period with $637 million of Cincinnati Public School money. The School Board and the White Contractors are asserting that these are fair numbers because they claim that African Americans can not do more than 1-2% of the work because of a lack of African American capacity.  Smitherman stated, "This is despicable. This is greed. This is a lie. This is racism. This is economic apartheid! I believe that the Cincinnati School Board is refusing to release their new numbers because they know that the truth could spark the failure of any school levy in 2010-2015."

.

.