Hush money

The San Diego County Office of Education has come out the apparent winner in a lawsuit against Infinite Campus, an educational software outfit hired to produce a “student information system” that allegedly failed to deliver. But for some reason, it is trying to hide the news from the public. The story begins back on November 12 of last year when the office filed a breach-of-contract suit in federal court saying that it had contracted with the Blaine, Minnesota, firm to create a computer system that would manage student records for 26 small public school districts throughout the county, along with 12 in Imperial County, 2 in Orange, and 22 charter schools.

The complaint alleged that throughout 2007, Infinite Campus repeatedly promised to fix numerous bugs in the software. “The county was lulled into waiting for a workable system to support its needs,” the suit said, but the company never delivered and ultimately terminated the agreement in April 2008. “As a result of Infinite Campus’ failure to create the system required by the RFP [request for proposal], the county was left without an alternative but to resume a prior method to comply with State Reporting Requirements at great expense to the county.” The software provider responded by filing a counterclaim, alleging it was owed $259,812 in damages.

But on June 9 of this year, according to a settlement agreement obtained from the Office of Education after a request made under the state’s Public Records Act, Infinite Campus suddenly agreed to pay the County $290,000 to end the matter. Details beyond that are scarce, since both Infinite and the County agreed “that they shall not publicize the existence of this Agreement or the terms of this Agreement absent a Public Records Act request, except to their tax accountants and/or attorneys, or as necessary for the enforcement or compliance with this Agreement.”

The parties also agreed “they will not make, or cause to be made, any public statements, disclosures or publications which portray unfavorably, reflect adversely on, or discuss any Party’s performance of any of the prior agreements among the Parties.” The agreement added that “in the event they are questioned” about the case, Infinite Campus and County “will represent that they have amicably resolved their issues with one another and shall not make any additional representations or comments on the subject of said lawsuit or this Agreement.” Neither Infinite Campus nor the office of education responded to requests for comment by press time.