THE WATCHDOGS: Key figure a 'conduit' for ousted CPS CEO, former Rahm aide says
Gary Solomon, whose company’s $20.5 million, no-bid contract is at the center of a federal investigation that cost former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett her job, pushed for her hiring and then regularly communicated with Mayor Rahm Emanuel’’s top education adviser on Byrd-Bennett’s behalf, emails obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.
Solomon’s emails to Beth Swanson, Emanuel’s then-deputy chief of staff for education issues, were so frequent that Swanson described him in an interview Friday as “Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s conduit — an extension of her team who pushed for her hiring.”
“When I would ask Barbara for information, she would have Gary send it,” said Swanson, who left City Hall last year for a post with the Joyce Foundation.
The Emanuel administration has tried to distance itself from Solomon and the lucrative deal that CPS gave his SUPES Academy consulting firm soon after Byrd-Bennett, a former SUPES employee, got the top schools job in October 2012.
But the emails show City Hall knew of Byrd-Bennett’s relationship with Solomon more than a year and a half before SUPES Academy was given the contract to train CPS principals.
Beth Swanson, left, then Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s deputy chief of staff for education, with actress Joan Cusack and then-Chicago schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard, at an event at Daley Plaza in June 2011. | Rich Hein~Sun-Times file photo
They show Solomon was pushing City Hall in early 2012 to hire Byrd-Bennett as the city’s chief education officer — second in command to then-schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard.
Solomon negotiated some of the terms of Byrd-Bennett’s deal to take that post, according to the emails, and later passed along a series of her complaints to City Hall once she was in place at CPS.
In March 2012, Solomon emailed Swanson to complain that high-level CPS officials had met Byrd-Bennett in a hotel bar and kept her out late to speak at length with her.
“They kept BBB up til after midnite, complaining…the(y) do not trust THE WATCHDOGS: Key figure a 'conduit' for ousted CPS CEO, former Rahm aide says | Chicago: