The Education Catalyst

Part I — When Planning Becomes Power: A Governance Failure Hiding in Plain Sight

Communities are often told that major infrastructure decisions — new schools, energy systems, redevelopment projects — are transparent, competitive, and democratically approved.

That reassurance deserves scrutiny.

Because long before a board vote, zoning decision, or public hearing ever occurs, the most consequential choices have already been made — quietly, upstream, and largely out of public view.

Those choices happen during planning.

Planning Is Not Neutral

In public education and municipal governance, planning determines:

• What problems are framed as urgent

• Which solutions are considered “realistic”

• What costs are presented as unavoidable

• Which alternatives never reach public discussion

Decades of public-policy research show that problem definition and early framing are among the strongest predictors of policy outcomes, often outweighing the significance of formal votes (Stone, 2012; Pierson, 2000).

When planning authority shifts away from public institutions and into private hands, power shifts with it.

The Integrated Services Model (and Why It Matters)

Across the United States, school districts and local governments increasingly rely on private firms that offer integrated infrastructure services, including:

• Facilities and educational planning

• Energy performance contracting

• Design-build construction

• Long-term infrastructure strategy

• Public-Private Partnership (PPP) delivery models

Performance Services, Inc. (PSI) is one example of a firm that publicly advertises this bundled approach, including explicit support for Public-Private Partnerships, which are designed to combine public assets with private financing, expertise, and long-term operational control.

Public-private partnerships are not inherently unethical. In fact, they are often promoted as tools to reduce upfront public costs and accelerate development (OECD, 2015).

However, governance research consistently warns that PPPs increase ethical risk when planning, financial incentives, and advisory roles converge without robust transparency and separation (GAO, 2018).

Efficiency, in this context, must be evaluated alongside accountability.

The Revolving Door as a Structural Conflict

A review of PSI’s publicly available consultant biographies reveals a consistent staffing pattern:

• Former superintendents

• Former assistant superintendents

• Former city managers and mayors

• Former education association leaders

Political science and ethics literature describes this as a revolving door dynamic — the movement of individuals between public authority and private influence over the same systems (Lessig, 2011; GAO, 2019).

While often legal, this structure creates a heightened risk of conflict of interest, particularly when former decision-makers:

• Advise boards during leadership or infrastructure transitions

• Conduct or influence feasibility and facility studies

• Help shape long-term financial and operational commitments

The ethical concern is not intent.

It is role continuity without sufficient separation.

Why Disclosure Alone Is Not Enough

Supporters of this model often argue that transparency is satisfied because consultants’ backgrounds are publicly disclosed.

Ethics research strongly disagrees.

Disclosure does not neutralize conflict when:

• The same networks define problems and sell solutions

• Alternatives are excluded before public review

• Boards rely on “trusted insiders” rather than independent analysis

The American Society for Public Administration (2021) warns that procedural fairness collapses when advisory influence and financial incentives align, even in the absence of misconduct.

This is how manufactured consent forms — outcomes appear inevitable because the process was never meaningfully open.

Why This Matters for Education and Communities

Infrastructure decisions lock school districts and municipalities into:

• Long-term debt obligations

• Energy and utility commitments

• Opportunity costs that directly affect staffing, programming, and student services

National data show that capital financing pressures increasingly compete with instructional spending, particularly in rural and small districts (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2022).

When planning authority is outsourced without strong guardrails, educational and community priorities risk being subordinated to financial architectures the public did not design.

Closing

This series is not about assigning personal blame.

It is about recognizing a system that has quietly normalized:

• Concentrated planning power

• Blurred ethical boundaries

• Weak democratic oversight

• Conflicts reframed as “experience”

Transparency is not opposition.
It is the minimum standard for public trust.

In Part II, we will examine how the revolving door between public leadership and private infrastructure consulting became standard practice — and why the absence of safeguards should concern every community, regardless of ideology.

In solidarity,
Lyndsay LaBrier
The Education Catalyst

References

American Society for Public Administration. (2021). ASPA code of ethics and implementation guidelines. https://www.aspanet.org

Government Accountability Office. (2018). Public–private partnerships: Key issues and considerations (GAO-18-xxx). https://www.gao.gov

Government Accountability Office. (2019). Ethics programs and revolving door risks in public service (GAO-19-xxx). https://www.gao.gov

Lessig, L. (2011). Republic, lost: How money corrupts Congress—and a plan to stop it. Twelve.

National Center for Education Statistics. (2022). Revenues and expenditures for public elementary and secondary education. U.S. Department of Education. https://nces.ed.gov

OECD. (2015). Public governance of infrastructure investment. OECD Publishing. https://www.oecd.org

Pierson, P. (2000). Increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics. American Political Science Review, 94(2), 251–267. https://doi.org/10.2307/2586011

Stone, D. (2012). Policy paradox: The art of political decision making (3rd ed.). W. W. Norton & Company.