Welcome to our experiment in open-source investigative journalism. We are a team of three students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism reporting on sole-source contracts awarded by the New York City Department of Education. The number of New Yorkers passionately engaged in working to improve education, equity and transparency in city schools makes the city the perfect laboratory for our exploration of what can be done by moving an investigative project into the public domain.

As a reader of our blog, you can expect to find posts about the discoveries we make about Department of Education contracts, procedures and vendors. You will also read about our process - who we request information from and how - and our frustrations. As a member of our community you can do more than read about our work. You can make contributions to the project. If you know some one who used to work for one of the no-bid vendors who may be willing to share their understanding of the no-bid process, send us an email or comment on a relevant post. Want to peruse our primary sources? Just go to our document archive and start combing them for connections, irregularities and other interesting bits of information we haven’t seen yet.

We’re excited about the things we have already learned and can share with you here. We hope some of you will be excited enough by this project to join us in figuring out why the Department of Education has relied so much more heavily than before on no-bid contracting and what that means for New York City and its schools.

Kyla Calvert is pursuing a master’s of science degree with a concentration in new media at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Originally from Chicago, Kyla graduated with a B.A. in American Studies from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., in 2002. She has written for San Francisco’s Castro Courier and The Capitol and City Hall in New York City. Kyla plans to pursue a career as a multimedia metro reporter.

Malia Politzer is a Toni Stabile Fellow at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she is pursuing a master’s degree in new media and investigative journalism. She has written for the Wall Street Journal Asia, Far Eastern Economic Review, Foreign Policy Magazine, Reason Magazine, Glimpse Magazine Quarterly and D.C. think tank Migration Policy Institute’s monthly publication, The Source. Prior to Columbia she freelanced in Shijiazhuang, China for one year. She speaks Spanish and Chinese.

Andrew Schmid is a Toni Stabile Fellow at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he is pursuing a master’s degree in investigative journalism and magazine writing. Andrew graduated with a B.A. in English Literature from Florida Gulf Coast University. He has written for several Florida newspapers, including the Fort Myers News-Press and Naples Daily News.