Kapos: Arne Duncan won’t rule out a run for office
For a guy who’s left public office, Arne Duncan is pretty opinionated about how Illinois should be run.
The former U.S. secretary of education says inequity in education — when “more money is spent on children of the wealthy than kids who are poor” — is the state’s greatest education problem, and it’s much to blame for the violence that’s seized the city.
“It’s a travesty” that needs to be fixed, he says. “I don’t know if there’s a political will to get it done.”
Does Duncan have the will? He won’t say yes — or no.
The former CEO of Chicago Public Schools returned late last year from Washington after seven years working with President Barack Obama. “My goal was to stay eight years,” he says, but returned “for a host of family reasons.”
Political watchers have noted that you must be an Illinois resident for three years in order to run for statewide office.
Duncan has joined California-based Emerson Collective as a managing partner. The organization puts money into programs in struggling communities. A few months ago it handed out grants of between $5,000 and $25,000 to Chicago nonprofits that use peace as a model to end violence. Emerson was founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. She named the organization after Ralph Waldo Emerson, who espoused the idea of self reliance.
Duncan talked about his worries of Chicago in a one-on-one interview and during a Q&A with volunteers from City Year Chicago, another organization that works in hard-hit neighborhoods.
“Over the next few years, I want to have an impact to make sure kids are safe,” he says.
Duncan worries about children being kept indoors because it’s not safe to go outside. “We have to do better.”
“I spend all my days talking about violence in the city,” he says. “I talk to people who have been shot. And I spend a day a month in Cook County Jail talking to shooters and trying to understand them and their world. There’s not one person I’m talking to in the jail who has a college degree.”
He answered some light-hearted questions from City Year volunteers, too.
Who plays basketball better, you or the president?
“I plead the Fifth,” said Duncan, sounding a lot like a politician.Kapos: Arne Duncan won't rule out a run for office | Chicago Sun-Times: