Eatontown BOE Hired Lobbying Firm; Spent over $40K to Get Federal Grants

The Eatontown Board of Education spent over $40,000 in one year on a lobbyist to secure federal grants, according to Eatontown School Superintendent Scott McCue.

Further research of records provided by the school business office found that the Eatontown School District paid $48,000 to the lobbying group Millennium Strategies, LLC from February 2010 through February 2011. According to the contract and board minutes, Millennium was paid $4,000 a month.

Eatontown is one of nine school districts in the state that hired the same lobbying firm, according to MyCentralJersey.com.

According to McCue, the firm was hired prior to learning of the massive cuts in state aid to the school district in 2010. In a phone interview, he said that the state aid cuts weren’t known until February or March of 2010.

McCue, who started as superintendent in December 2010 and was not superintendent when the first contract was signed with Millennium, said he believes the main reason the firm was hired was “to bring in additional revenues to support various education programs and initiatives in the district.”

McCue said that the superintendent at the time, Barbara Struble, and former business administrator Robert Green, were both instrumental in bringing Millennium in to the district.

Eatontown’s board minutes from Oct. 12, 2010 show the board renewed Millennium’s contract on Sept. 2, 2010 through Feb. 28, 2011, at a rate of $4,000 a month. The contract was not extended after February, according to McCue.

Millennium Strategies, according to its lobbying registration form filed with the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, registered to lobby for the Eatontown School District on Jan. 1, 2010. On its lobbying registration, Millennium Strategies listed the following business activities it would provide the district: grant writing, government relations and consulting to government entities.

In board minutes, school administrators refer to Millennium as “grant writers.” In minutes from the Feb. 22, 2010 board meeting, Struble noted that the “grant writer is seeking grants other than federal applications.” During the Oct. 12, 2010 board minutes, Struble said, “Through our grant writers, Millennium Strategies, we have received $16,000 in grants.”

The school business office was unable to provide the grants secured during the 2009-2010 year.

But McCue was able to provide information on grants secured, via Millennium, during the 2010-2011 school year. According to McCue, the following grants were secured totaling $26,700:

• $14,000 Learn and Serve America grant that purchased Memorial School’s greenhouse;
• $5,000 Lowe’s Home Center Grant for Vetter School;
•  $4,600 Lowe’s Home Center grant for Meadowbrook;
•  $700 America Target Scholarship for a Memorial Middle School field trip;
• $400 America Target Scholarship to Woodmere for a field trip;
• $2,000 Target grant to sponsor an after-school literacy program at Vetter.

“Whenever you hire a grant writer, it’s the risk you take,” said McCue, adding that the Eatontown School District was one of the finalists for a $350,000 technology grant from the federal government that was ultimately cut due to budget constraints.

Millennium was instrumental in trying to obtain that grant, McCue said, and it “would have been very cost-effective.”

McCue said that Millennium was not hired as a lobbyist for the school district, but rather as a grant writer. But the company, which describes its expertise in grant writing on its Web site, is a lobbyist and subject to the Lobbying Disclosure Act.

On one of its quarterly lobbying reports filed with Congress, Millennium stated that it spoke on behalf of the Eatontown School District to the offices of Congressman Rush Holt and both New Jersey Senate offices, Bob Menendez and Frank Lautenberg.

While the district did not renew Millennium’s contract after it expired on Feb. 28, McCue said that as a result of Millennium’s work for the district, several teachers and administrators have now begun to write their own grants.

“We’ve learned what works for us,” McCue said. “We are not experts like Millennium in writing grants.” But now teachers have researched what grants are out there, McCue said, and are “beginning to write their own.”