Socorro Superintendent Nate Carman took several steps shortly after arriving in the district in 2022 that led to the award of contracts to a company he had previously done business with in South Texas, an external auditor hired by the district told the school board Monday.
After a presentation from the auditor and a lengthy closed-door discussion, the board voted 6-0 to place Carman on administrative leave with pay. Board Chair Michael Najera abstained from the vote without explanation.
Monday’s meeting added to the turmoil surrounding El Paso’s second-largest school district: Carman is taking a new job as superintendent of a small Arizona school district, the district faces a $33 million budget deficit, and the Texas Education Agency is preparing to place one or more conservators to help oversee the district after a four-year investigation found numerous governance problems in Socorro.
In a statement emailed to El Paso Matters on Tuesday, Carman denied wrongdoing and said the district followed policies in awarding the contract at the heart of he audit.
“It is unfortunate that the SISD community is continuing to be shed in such a negative light and that I will be forced to be on (paid) leave the remainder of my tenure and unable to be performing my duties at the district during such a crucial time of the year,” said Carman, who hasn’t attended recent board meetings, including the one Monday.
In a report discussed Monday, external auditors hired by the district said that Carman was involved in a potential conflict of interest by steering the district to contract with ADM Group, an architectural consultant services out of Tempe, Ariz.
School board members have received a draft version of the audit by the firm Weaver & Tidwell of Houston, and heard a presentation on Monday from the firm’s Travis Casner. The audit report won’t be available to the public until after a final version is presented to the school board.
Casner said Carman directed a change in the scoring criteria to make it easier for ADM Group to be selected. At Carman’s recommendation, the board also gave the superintendent deeper involvement in reviewing contracts in the bidding process. Those changes came within Carman’s first weeks on the job in the spring of 2022.
ADM Group was contracted by administrators in May 2022 to complete a facilities analysis on 16 gyms throughout the district without needing trustee approval, under the district’s policy that only requires purchases to go before the board if they are worth over $100,000. The contract amount was set at exactly $100,000.
The audit — conducted by Weaver & Tidwell of Houston — found that Carman had communicated with the client relations director for ADM Group through his work email while he was superintendent of the San Benito Consolidated Independent School District.
This included a discussion to plan an itinerary for the ADM Group representative to visit South Texas, to introduce them to other superintendents and attend a conference together, and for the representative to review Carman’s portfolio to apply for the superintendent position with Socorro ISD.
After Carman was selected as Socorro ISD’s superintendent in February 2022, he also told the representative that an analysis of the district’s gyms “may be in store sooner rather than later,” according to the auditor, Travis Casner.
Shortly after Carman joined the district, the school board voted to allow administrators to find an architectural firm to conduct the facilities analysis, in March 2022. Less than a month later, Carman and several board members attended a National School Boards Association conference in San Diego and attended an event hosted by ADM Group.
Days after the event, on April 7, Carman revised the scoring criteria for the bid proposal to remove 20 points previously given to companies that had done work with the district in the past. ADM had not previously worked for Socorro.
Casner said auditors interviewed Carman to ask him about these changes.
Casner said that Carman told auditors that members of the school board executive committee who did not want the district to select firms that had previously done architectural services for the 2017 bond project.
Under questioning by Trustee Richard Castellano, Casner said Carman identified the members of the executive committee who made the recommendation as Eduardo Mena and David Morales, who lost re-election bids in 2023 and did not respond to requests to meet with the auditors. Casner said the two trustees received campaign contributions in 2023 from people associated with ADM Group.
Carman was made chair of the committee that reviewed bids on April 19, 2022, after the board adopted a policy to give the position to the superintendent or a designee.
The committee then met in late April 2022 to evaluate proposals from 10 different architecture firms. ADM Group ended up receiving the highest scores in the evaluations, according to the presentation.
Carman was among the four evaluators, and signed a form saying he didn’t have a conflict of interest, Casner said.
The contract was awarded to ADM Group on May 17, 2022.
Administrators also awarded a $49,000 contract to the company in December 2022 for a safety and security audit, without getting bids from other vendors.
In response to the finding, Weaver & Tidwell recommended changes to the district’s purchasing procurements practices, including reviewing the policy that allowed Carman to chair the bid review committee.
“We’ve noted the standard industry practices for the superintendent is to review the recommendation that is formed coming out of the evaluation committee before taking it to the board, whereas the current policy and the process that we observed involved the superintendent not only chairing the committee but also being one of four evaluators, which could cause different concerns,” Casner said.
Auditors also recommended the district review its policy that allows administrators to approve purchases under $100,000 without board approval.
8:50 a.m. March 26: This story has been updated to include comment from Superintendent Nate Carman.
