Parents in the DeKalb County Lakeside attendance cluster have done a decades-deep probe into HPM and its vice president, Tracy Richter, finding that facility planning campaigns he has led for more than two decades have a history of mixed and financially disastrous results.
HPM is the consulting company hired by the DeKalb County School District by its disgraced former superintendent, Devon Q. Horton, to identify underutilized schools as part of a sweeping Student Assignment Project that could cost the district an estimated $1.5 to $2 billion to implement.
It calls for the closure of several high-performing schools, including Vanderlyn, Ashford Park, and Oak Grove elementary schools.
According to HPM’s website, its work with the DCSD will provide “full-service planning and program management for the school district, which plans to implement a number of renovations and new construction projects to accommodate evolving enrollment and modernize aging facilities.”
The analysis of past projects
The group has researched Richter and his past affiliations with other companies doing similar work to HPM, and found that of the 22 documented engagements with school systems around the country, seven were assessed as having negative results.
The 12-part analysis, produced by Oak Grove parent Thomas Brown, who is a director of a large impact investing firm, found that six of the engagements where closures that were recommended had been rejected or abandoned. Of the remaining engagements, five were designated as having mixed results, eight were rated as having a neutral or pending impact, and only one, which didn’t involve any school closures, was assessed as having a positive result.
The analysis is accompanied by a 22-page list of its sources, which references school district documents, news stories, audit reports, master plans, bid documents, and other material to support its conclusions.
Related stories:
• Oak Grove parents create a video calling SAP process a “fishy plan”
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One of the documents, entitled “The Full Track Record,” traced Richter’s employment at several companies, including DeJong-Richter, Cooperative Strategies, and HPM. It categorized the outcomes of 22 engagements, which it analyzed as:
- Positive: Plan worked as intended, no major issues
- Mixed: Partial success, community pushback modified plan
- Negative: Documented harm, plan rejected, or significant problems
- Neutral/Pending: No closure component, or too early to assess
Here are the details from Brown’s report that Rough Draft researched.
School District of Philadelphia 2009-2013
In Philadelphia, DeJong-Richter, working with URS Corp., implemented a $2.8 billion plan to close 30 schools and consolidate five others, displacing 10,000 to 15,000 students. About 80% of the displaced students were Black or low-income.
A report generated by the City of Philadelphia controller in 2013, however, called the district’s cost-savings projections “misleading” and estimated that the value loss of the blighted property would approach $86 million. It also questioned the reasoning behind closing high-performing schools.
“… we question whether the closure plan is adequately linked to the District’s stated commitment to ‘improving academic outcomes,'” the report said. “In approximately one-third of the proposed closures and relocations, students will be leaving a better-performing school for a worse-performing school, according to the District’s own indices.”
“Research on closures and relocations suggests that student outcomes only improve if students transfer to higher-performing schools than those they leave. In addition, thousands of families may face significant obstacles created by the school transfers, some of which will mean that students will be forced to travel into unfamiliar neighborhoods to attend new schools,” the controller’s report continued.
An article in the February Philly Voice regarding another round of proposed school closures recalled that when the system closed two dozen schools as a cost-cutting measure in 2013, “it resulted in thousands of students being displaced, academic performance worsening around the city, and buildings being left vacant for over a decade.”
“Last month, the city proposed shuttering another 20 schools starting in 2027-2028, leaving some teachers, elected officials, and community members fearful that another wave of closures will have similar ramifications,” the article said.
Austin, TX 2010-2011
DeJong-Richter and several subcontractors were paid $893,796 and recommended closing a dozen or more high-achieving schools, according to media reports.
The community backlash led to the formation of a group called “Save Austin Schools,” which argued that the data assumptions within the report were “out-of-date, misinterpreted, or just flat out wrong,” according to a report in The Austin Chronicle.
After the protest, several schools were removed from the final closure plan.
The Austin school district, again facing financial trouble, in 2025 voted to close 10 schools before the 2026-2027 school year, reassigning 3,796 students and eliminating 6,319 seats. In this round of closures, however, seven of the 10 had received three consecutive F ratings under the state accountability system.
Worthington City Schools, Ohio 2015-2022
From 2015 to 2022, Cooperative Strategies worked with the school district to create a Master Facilities Plan, according to a report on the Worthington City Schools website.
The plan was phased in with financing from an $89 million bond in 2018, followed by a $234 million bond in the second phase, for a total of $323 million.
“This plan provided capacity for our elementary schools by moving 6th grade to the middle school buildings in the fall of 2021. It addressed our aging buildings by rebuilding Worthingway and Perry Middle School while adding on to McCord and Kilbourne Middle Schools,” the report said.
Brown’s report indicated that Worthington schools have maintained their high academic ratings and assessed the project outcome as positive in its Full Track Record report.
DCSD, SAP sent analysis
Brown told Rough Draft that he sent the analysis package on March 17 to DCSD board members, Interim Superintendent Dr. Norman Sauce, and the email contact address for SAP representatives.
In the email, he said the utilization problem is “an isolated, addressable challenge” that could be solved primarily by investing in South DeKalb schools.
“Attached is the full track record of HPM. Their projects consistently overpromise and underdeliver. When this is over, HPM moves on. You do not. Your constituents do not. The children of this community do not,” Brown’s email said. “The problem today is isolated. Please review the attachments before committing to a plan that spreads it everywhere.”
After sending the data, Brown said he received acknowledgement from several school board members and Sauce, thanking him for the input and encouraging him to attend the second round of engagement meetings scheduled for March 23-27.
Rough Draft contacted DCSD representative Carla Parker for comment regarding Brown’s analysis package.
“The District is currently in the round 2 scenario engagement phase and will take all feedback submitted, including this, into consideration,” she said in an email sent March 25.
