Thames Valley school board spent $225K on Navigator PR firm. Why?

The embattled London-area public school board spent more than $225,000 on advice from damage-control consulting firm Navigator in 2021 and 2022, documents obtained by The Free Press show – but officials won’t say why.

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Navigator describes itself as a “high stakes” public relations, crisis management, lobbying, and polling company whose motto is: “When you can’t afford to lose.”

The total amount paid by the Thames Valley District school board to Toronto-based Navigator adds up to $227,169, according to receipts obtained by The Free Press through a freedom-of-information request. Craig Smith, a teachers union leader, calls it “a lot of money” for crisis communications.

“One wonders just what polling was being done and why this required the services of (Navigator),” he said.

Records show that starting in May 2021, the school board paid Navigator $27,685 a month for seven consecutive months. Invoices state the services provided were for “communications support, per letter of agreement.”

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In March 2022 the board paid Navigator $22,600 as part of a “communications plan.”

In a heavily redacted receipt dated May 31, 2022, the board paid Navigator $10,775.

All but a few of the receipts were signed by then-education director Mark Fisher, currently on an unexplained paid leave of absence following a scandal over board administrators spending $38,000 on a three-day August retreat to the stadium in the Toronto Blue Jays hotel.

All receipts were signed by associate director Jeff Pratt.

An invoice for June 2021 for $27,685 was signed by Fisher and then-chair of the board of trustees Lori-Ann Pizzolato, who is still a board trustee but no longer chair.

Pizzolato didn’t return phone calls Tuesday.

Jay Goldberg is Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. He said if the board wants to be transparent with the community, “they shouldn’t need to hire a crisis consulting firm” to communicate with parents and citizens.

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“It raised a lot of questions as to why a crisis consulting firm was needed to essentially be transparent with the public,” he said.

Neither school board chair Beth Mai nor interim education director Bill Tucker responded to questions about the nature of the services provided by Navigator.

The cash-strapped school board has faced heavy criticism since The Free Press detailed in late August that 18 administrators attended a three-day retreat at the Marriott City Center hotel in the Rogers Centre. Rooms range from $374 to $1,199 per night, hotel staff say. The Blue Jays were playing on all three dates, against Cincinnati.

The retreat was held while the board wrestled with a $7.6-million budget deficit. It sparked an operations audit by Queen’s Park examining the financial operations of Thames Valley, Ontario’s fourth-biggest school board, as well as executives’ compensation and their administration of the board.

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Both Fisher and associate director Linda Nicholls have since gone on paid leaves of absence.

The newly discovered Navigator bills mark the second recent case of a publicly funded London body hiring the firm. In September, the London police board faced criticism after The Free Press reported that it paid the firm more than $100,000 to help sell the public and city politicians last year on its record-setting four-year police budget.

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