Schooling in the Ownership Society: What happened to the feds' probe of Chicago Public Ed Fund? Where'd everybody go?

Schooling in the Ownership Society: What happened to the feds' probe of Chicago Public Ed Fund? Where'd everybody go?:

What happened to the feds' probe of Chicago Public Ed Fund? Where'd everybody go?

Rahm and Griffin.

Back in April, 2015, we heard that the feds were in town, supposedly looking into the Chicago Public Education Fund (CPEF) and its involvement in the Barbara Byrd-Bennett/SUPES no-bid contract scandal. Remember? Subpoenas were flying and the names of some of the biggest players in corporate school reform were being dropped to the press.  Among those names were CPEF's billionaire board members, Bruce Rauner, Penny Pritzker,  Susan Crown, Mellody Hobson (wife of George Lucas), and the state's richest man, Ken Griffin. 

While the Fund wasn't the target of the investigation, and no-bid contracts with kickbacks are usually no big deal in Rahmville, it was reported that its board had given SUPES a $380,000 contract to train area network chiefs and their deputies. But when things started getting hot, they quietly discontinued their funding. 

Ace Catalyst reporter Sarah Karp, now with the BGA, made the point then, that if the Fund had been more transparent about its de-funding of SUPES, "taxpayers might have saved the $12 million of the more than $20 million SUPES was paid before its contract was cancelled".  But transparency is a no-no around CPEF's fancy downtown headquarters (nice view of the lake).  

As Karp puts it:

No one outside The Fund’s staff and board of directors knows how it Schooling in the Ownership Society: What happened to the feds' probe of Chicago Public Ed Fund? Where'd everybody go?: