Stench of Chicago’s Corporate Education Reform Industry scandal wafts as far as Connecticut
This past Tuesday (October 13, 2015) former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, one of the nation’s leading Corporate Education Reform Industry leaders, pleaded guilty for her role in a $23 million kick-back scheme with Gary Solomon and his education reform companies, The SUPES Academy and Synesi Associates.
As part of the plea agreement federal prosecutors told the court that they would drop all but one of the twenty fraud charges listed in Byrd-Bennett’s indictment and that although she faced a maximum of 20 years on each of 20 fraud counts, they would recommend a prison sentence of no more than seven 7 ½ years if she continued to “cooperate with federal investigators.”
Byrd-Bennett has previously served in top management positions with the Cleveland and Detroit public school systems.
As Barbara Byrd-Bennett was pleading guilty for her crimes in Chicago, The Detroit News reported that the FBI was investigating contracts Byrd-Bennett approved when she worked in Detroit;
According to six-month expenditure reports from May and November 2011, DPS paid $1,487,654.08 to Synesi for “Consultant Services/Curriculum/Office of Accountability.”The report from November 2011 also lists an invoice of $128,698.77 to Synesi as “disapproved.”
The dark cloud of potentially illegal activities casts a long shadow over The Supes Academy, Synesi Associates, and a third company that is owned by Gary Solomon, PROACT Search.
As previously reported, Solomon’s PROACT Search has received a number of contracts in Connecticut.
The superintendent search firm was responsible for getting Garth Harries the superintendent’s job in New Haven and Manuel Rivera the same post in Norwalk.
When the New London Board of Education, with the help of Governor Malloy’s Special Stench of Chicago’s Corporate Education Reform Industry scandal wafts as far as Connecticut - Wait What?:
From the Quinnipiac University Public Opinion Poll;
Connecticut voters disapprove 58 – 32 percent of the job Gov. Dannel Malloy is doing, his lowest approval rating ever and the lowest score for any governor in the nine states surveyed this year by the independent Quinnipiac University Poll. The governor gets 4-1 negative scores for the way he his handling taxes and the state budget.“Gov. Dannel Malloy’s job approval rating has plummeted to 32 percent, close to the historic 24 percent low hit by disgraced former Gov. John Rowland in January 2004, and Gov. Malloy is not in the middle of a corruption scandal,” said Quinnipiac University Poll Director Douglas Schwartz, PhD.“Only 36 percent of voters are satisfied with the way things are going in the state, one of the lowest scores since Quinnipiac University started asking this question in 1997.”
Three in four Connecticut voters disapprove of the way Malloy is handling the state budget.
When running for re-election last year, Dannel Malloy said that the state budget was balanced and that if he was re-elected he wouldn’t raise taxes, wouldn’t make cuts to vital services and wouldn’t need to demand concessions from state employees.
But after being sworn back into office this past January, Malloy raised taxes, cut vital When it comes to Governor Dannel Malloy, Connecticut voters are rightfully angry