This goes way beyond Byrd-Bennett
The Sun-Times lays it out perfectly:
Consider this sequence of events:
In October 2012, Byrd-Bennett was hand-picked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to be CEO of the public schools. Byrd-Bennett’s appointment was approved by Mayor Emanuel’s hand-picked school board.
On the same day the mayor’s hand-picked board signed off on his hand-picked CEO, the board also awarded a $20 million no-bid contract to Byrd-Bennett’s hand-picked education consulting firm, SUPES Academy.
Did the board have reason to question that no-bid contract? You bet. The board has reason to question every no-bid contract. But more specifically, just weeks earlier a nonprofit group, the Chicago Public Education Fund, had declined to fund SUPES for that very same Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: This goes way beyond Byrd-Bennett:
