Claypool's lies exceed expectations in letter claiming charter funding is not rigged - Substance News

Claypool nonsense - Substance News:

Claypool's lies exceed expectations in letter claiming charter funding is not rigged against neighborhood schools... Sun-Times 'Letter' tries to obfuscate continued favoring of privatization and charters...

Rookie Chicago Public Schools "Chief Executive Officer" Forrest Claypool showed off his propaganda skills in a letter to the Chicago Sun-Times following a Better Government Association study that showed charter schools getting an edge over the city's real public schools. Reading the actual numbers for the schools in the CPS "Budget", anyone can see the facts -- and the facts show that Claypool's budget is favoring charter schools while screwing the city's real public schools.

What's more, Claypool sat on stage during the August 18, 2015, budget hearing at Schurz High School while parents, teachers, alumnae and community leaders took the facts straight from the CPS "Proposed Budget" and challenged the realities under which the city's real public schools continue being sabotaged by so-called "Student Based Budgeting" while charters continue to receive favorites not only from CPS but also from lucrative bonuses provided by private sector wealthy people.

On August 18, teachers from Kelvyn Park High School demonstrated that once again the school is being reduced massively, while the nearby Intrinsic charter school (on Belmont Ave.) and the Aspira charter school (on Milwaukee Ave.) are both increased dramatically.

Trying to justify the opulent CPS (and privatized) favors to Polaris charter school versus the continuing attacks on the surrounding public schools, Claypool also demonstrates his ignorance of CPS history. Polaris charter school sits in one of the largest elementary school buildings on the West Side, the old Morse Elementary School. At the time of its peak usage, Morse had more than 1,000 students. Polaris, by contrast, has never been required to educate more than 400 students. At the time the school was converted from public use to the current charter, as I reported in Substance a decade ago, the Board of Education not only gave the privatizers the massive building, but both CPS and Chicago officials subsidized the privatization further by spending more than $10 million to upgrade the facility -- both inside and outside.

Not only did CPS pay for massive renovations within the building (I photographed the new gym floor being installed), but the City of Chicago rebuilt the outside sidewalks and parkways, which had been allowed to deteriorate while the school was serving all the children of the West Side. Polaris remained so small that had it been on the listing of the city's public schools in 2012 - 2013, it would easily have been a candidate for closure under the guidelines utilized by Claypool's contemporary, the newly installed Board of Education President Frank Clark (who chaired the committee that recommended the 50 closings in May 2013).

The Sun-Times/BGA analysis was devoted to two schools, Polaris Charter School (in the old Morse school building) and Gregory elementary school (a real public school).

But the comparison of the two schools was used as an example of the citywide trend, which was made clear to Claypool during the August 18 Schurz budget hearing, and is obvious to anyone who bothers to read through the date provided in the massive PDF listing of all CPS "schools" (although the way that list is presented is in itself an obfuscation; for example, schools are listed by first names, so that CPS has dozens of schools named "William" and "Charles," -- Walter Payton High School is under the W's; so is Jones High School, etc.).

Claypool's letter demonstrates, again, what anyone familiar with his career knows. He is in charge of privatizing as Claypool nonsense - Substance News:

Above, Chicago Public Schools "Chief Executive Officer" Forrest Claypool (above right) sits with his special assistant, Denise Little, at the budget hearings at Schurz High School on August 18, 2015. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

LA Times’ ‘Independent’ Education Project Bankrolled by Charter School Backers — FAIR

LA Times’ ‘Independent’ Education Project Bankrolled by Charter School Backers — FAIR:

LA Times’ ‘Independent’ Education Project Bankrolled by Charter School Backer

Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times (8/18/15) announced an initiative called Education Matters, “an ongoing, wide-ranging report card on K-12 education in Los Angeles, California and the nation.” The project will cover educational issues, including “the latest debate on curriculum or testing” and “how charter schools are changing public education.”

The Times, owned by Tribune Publishing, will fund Education Matters with donations and grants from philanthropic organizations like the Baxter Family Foundation and the Broad Foundation. “These institutions, like the Times,” publisher and CEO Austin Beutner writes, “are dedicated to independent journalism that engages and informs its readers.”

The problem with Education Matters’ promise to create “independent journalism,” however, is that several of the organizations funding it have a direct stake in a very specific education reform agenda. Education reform, as a project, is far from value-neutral: Reformers promote specific policies, ranging from firing teachers based on their students’ test scores to replacing public schools with privately run charter schools. Their rhetoric often directly attacks teachers unions and even public education as an institution, in favor of “market-driven” “school choice” solutions. And the organizations funding theLA Times’ new project are no exception.

The Broad Foundation, in particular, has a prodigious record. According to itswebsite, Broad currently invests in organizations that invest in charter-school expansion, including Aspire Public Schools (whose goal is to “expand its network of public charter schools in the Los Angeles area”), the California Charter School Association, the Charter School Growth Fund, charter loan provider Excellent Education Development, Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, Green Dot Public Schools (a charter network), the KIPP Foundation, New Schools Venture Fund, Pacific Charter School Development, Silicon Valley-based charter management organization Rocketship Education, Success Charter Network and Uncommon Schools. It funded the popular pro-charter documentary Waiting for Superman. It also invests in the US Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” grant program.

Two of the other three donors that the Times lists have also invested in charter school expansion and an education reform agenda. The Wasserman Foundation, which describes its education-related giving as “focused on transforming our public schools,” has partnered with Broad and the Gates Foundation to fund senior staffer positions in the LA school district. As reported by the LA Times itself (4/7/06), it gave $6 million to a local charter network; it’s also given to Teach for America.

And the Baxter Family foundation says its mission is to “restructure the present system to create effective competition in the market for educational services.” It promises to “sponsor and/or undertake research that will analyze alternative solutions to the problems plaguing our public schools, including private and charter schools.”

The other foundation, the California Endowment, focuses primarily on health initiatives in schools and communities.  

While it won’t be Broad or Wasserman themselves writing the new stories at theLA Times, it’s dubious that “independent journalism” will be funded, in part, via foundations so powerful in the education reform movement. Just like all journalism, education coverage must be adversarial to those in power–and right now, in education, reformers have a great deal of power.

The reform movement itself should be covered thoroughly and critically. In the past few years, news outlets like the New York Times have begun to investigate disciplinary practices at the popular Success Academy network (4/6/15), charters’ disproportionately low numbers of students with disabilities and English Language Learners (3/16/15), and their high suspension rates (2/11/15).

What will Education Matters’ approach be to covering Los Angeles education stories that involve projects currently funded by those paying for the coverage? LA Times’ ‘Independent’ Education Project Bankrolled by Charter School Backers — FAIR:

The Wasserman Foundation, one of the funds behind the LA Times‘ new education initiative, advertising its involvement in the education debate.

Today: Join hunger strike for community-based public schools #FightForDyett | Cloaking Inequity

Today: Join hunger strike for community-based public schools #FightForDyett | Cloaking Inequity:

Today: Join hunger strike for community-based public schools #FightForDyett

Today is my first hunger strike— my first fast.  I have the opportunity today to learn from the example of Jesus Christ, Ghandi and Cesar Chavez. I stand in solidarity with 12 parents and community member who are on hunger strike for community-based public schools. I challenge you to join the fast today August 25, 2015.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi or The Father of the Nation in India, undertook 17 fasts during India’s freedom movement. His longest fasts lasted 21 days. Fasting was a weapon used by Gandhi as part of his philosophy of Ahimsa or Non Violence. (Via Wikipedia)

Jesus fasted for forty days and nights in the Judaean Desert. That long fast of Jesus strengthened Him to endure.

In February to March of 1968, Cesar Chavez started his first hunger strike— it lasted for 25 days in February and March to stop violence against farmworker strikers. During that strike Martin Luther King Jr. sent him the follow telegram.

In the telegram, MLK stated,

Our separate struggles are really one. A struggle for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity.

Years later, Cesar Chavez reflected,

During my first fast in 1968, Dr. King reminded me that our struggle was his struggle too. He sent me a telegram which said “Our separate struggles are really one. A struggle for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity.”  I was profoundly moved that someone facing such a tremendous struggle himself would take the time to worry about a struggle taking place on the other side of the continent. Just as Dr. King was a disciple of Ghandi and Christ, we must now be Dr. King’s disciples.

On August 17, 2015, in this tradition of activism for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity, 12 parents from Bronzeville and allies from communities across Chicago launched a hunger strike on in front of Dyett High School to protest the continuing and persistent injustice suffered by communities of color at the hands of CPS and the appointed Board of Education.

We are willing to starve ourselves to bring justice to our children and our community!

Jeanette Taylor-Ramann

In past I have written about Rahm’s reign of “educational reform” terror in the post Bloomberg and Rahmbo: Sleight of Hand Artists. The reality of Rahm sponsored school closures in School Closure and Race Infographic: Something fishy going on in Chicago? and Mouth agape: What the data tell us about school closure in Chicago.

Today I want to update you on the Dyett situation. I will begin by taking excerpts are from the document Dyett High School & The 3D’s Of Chicago School Reform: Destabilization Disinvestment Disenfranchisement written by Rhoda Rae Gutierrez and Pauline Lipman, University of Illinois at Chicago, Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education.

Walter H. Dyett High School sits in leafy Washington Park on Chicago’s south side African American

Today: Join hunger strike for community-based public schools #FightForDyett | Cloaking Inequity:

Common Core: The sleeper issue of 2016? Chris Hayes talks with Randi Weingarten about the war over Common Core

All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC:

Common Core: The sleeper issue of 2016?

Chris Hayes talks with Randi Weingarten about the war over Common Core and the politicization of standardized testing.

Dyett parents in 8th day of hunger strike to save school #FightForDyett

Dyett parents in 8th day of hunger strike to save school:

Dyett parents in 8th day of hunger strike to save school

Supporters of turning Dyett High School into a "green tech" school protest at City Hall on Wednesday July 29, 2015. | Saiyna Bashir/Sun-Times

As parents pushing a community-backed proposal for the former Dyett High School entered their eighth day of a hunger strike, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten announced she’ll lend her support to the cause Wednesday.

“I’ll be in Chicago on Wednesday to stand w/ #FightForDyett, help raise up their story. Chicago communities deserve better than more closures,” Weingarten tweeted Monday.

Members of the Coalition to Revitalize Dyett High School have lobbied for years on behalf of the neighborhood school, without success. After Dyett’s final class of 13 seniors graduated in June, Chicago Public Schools asked for other proposals without considering the coalition plan, which ultimately led to this month’s hunger strike.

On Monday, the hunger-striking coalition also sent a letter to Little Black Pearl, a not-for-profit organization that has submitted a proposal for Dyett’s future use.

“On behalf of the Coalition to Revitalize Dyett, we respectfully urge you to withdraw your proposal for Dyett High School,” the letter reads. “The Coalition has worked hard over the past 3 years to build a community process where input and collaboration was utilized to create the Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology academic plan. It reflects the vision of a broad cross-section of the community.”

A representative from Little Black Pearl could not be reached for comment Monday evening.

Dyett High School supporters arrested after City Hall sit-in

Parents, students and organizers who support turning Dyett High School into a “green tech” neighborhood school staged a sit-in Wednesday at City Hall, and four of them were arrested when they refused to stop blocking a bank of elevators.

Chicago Police handcuffed four of the nine protesters who sat in front of elevator doors on the floor of City Hall where a bustling City Council meeting was taking place. But they left organizer Jitu Brown and four others, including CPS mother Jeanette Taylor.

“It’s 2015 and we’re going to jail for a high school,” said Taylor, who was arrested last fall during a similar protest for Dyett that led to CPS issuing a request for proposals to put a new school into the building.

The members of the Coalition to Revitalize Dyett have lobbied for years on behalf of their neighborhood school — first to prevent the 2012 phaseout of Dyett, then to put another new neighborhood school in the building. Dyett’s final graduating class in June had just 13 seniors, so few that they took some courses online.

Coalition members were angry when Chicago Public Schools asked for other proposals but submitted its plan, the Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology High School, that would partner with the Chicago Botanic Gardens, DuSable Museum and others.

Little Black Pearl, a not-for-profit arts organization that runs a contract school for CPS and showed interest in the site, also sent CPS its ideas for another contract school called Little Black Pearl Art and Design Academy for 650 students in grades nine through 12.

A third idea submitted is called “Washington Park Athletic Career Academy” and comes from Charles Campbell, the principal CPS brought in to phase out Dyett; CPS decided to consider that proposal for a sports-themed high school even though it was submitted after the district’s own deadline.

“We have been driven to this point,” Brown bellowed, sitting on the floor as folks taking elevators climbed over him and the others sitting in. “All we want is a world-class open-enrollment neighborhood high school in Bronzeville, that’s all we want. And what we’ve been met with is resistance.

“They’re trying to shove an underperforming alternative contract school down the community’s throats, and we will not accept that,” he continued. “So if we have to be arrested, then so be it.”

The four arrested were charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct, according to Chicago Police spokeswoman Jennifer Rottner.

Brown said when parents recently opposed a charter school moving into Uptown “their needs were immediately met.” That school changed its mind and moved elsewhere. ”We’ve waged this fight for four years,” he said.

Coalition members accuse Ald. Will Burns (4th) of not supporting their efforts; he was loudly booed when he entered City Hall Wednesday morning and did not stop to talk to anyone.

CPS spokesman Bill McCaffrey said the district is still reviewing thethree applications and that new CEO Forrest Claypool will also consider feedback from an Aug. 10 public hearing when choosing a winner. A location and time for that meeting have not yet been finalized, he said.

The Board of Education is still slated to vote on the finalist at its August meeting; the chosen school model then would open in September 2016.

Four members of a group of protesters who have worked to keep Dyett High School open staged a sit-in at City Hall on Wednesday. Four of them were arrested. | Brian Jackson/For the Sun-Times

Dyett parents in 8th day of hunger strike to save school:

Dyett parents in 8th day of hunger strike to save school:

Sparking Curiosity for Truth in the Classroom: An Appreciation of ''Between the World and Me''

Sparking Curiosity for Truth in the Classroom: An Appreciation of ''Between the World and Me'':

Sparking Curiosity for Truth in the Classroom: An Appreciation of ''Between the World and Me''

Ta-Nehisi Coates, the Atlantic correspondent and author of Between the World and Me. (Photo: Nina Subin)

The question of how one should live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream, is the question of my life," writes Ta-Nehisi Coates to his teenage son. In Between the World and Me, Coates confronts the anti-Black racism of US history and the present day, raising critically important questions and refusing to pretend the answers are easy. Get this acclaimed book by making a donation to Truthout today!

Also see: "Between the World and Me": The Black Body Matters

Last year my students - Chicago teachers and teachers-to-be, educators from a range of backgrounds and experiences and orientations - all read The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I'd put this memoir on the list of required readings because I thought it was a fitting and important educational book, a useful text for city teachers to explore and interrogate. Some students agreed; several did not. "What's this got to do with teaching?"

I chose it because it moved me, frankly, and I thought it might move some of them as well. I chose it because in the details of this one life - the challenges and the obstacles, but especially the elements he assembled to build an architecture of survival - I saw human themes of love and beauty and the universal struggle to grow more fully into the light. I chose it because it took readers inside the life of one Black kid, this singular unruly spark of meaning-making energy negotiating and then mapping the territory between his home and the streets and the schools: necessary reading for city teachers, I thought.

There was a lot to dig into, much to wrangle about, and a lot to send us off to other readings and further research. Soon students were diving into Crystal Laura's Being Bad: My Baby Brother and the School to Prison Pipeline, Jesmyn Ward's The Men We Reap, Claudia Rankine's Citizen, and Rachel DeWoskin's Big Girl Small. The book was doing work, as I'd hoped it would.

My students have all chosen to become teachers against a backdrop of corporate-driven school reform accompanied by unprecedented disrespect and hostility toward teachers and teaching. They know that teaching is devalued; they know they won't earn either a lot of money or a fair share of respect; they've been told by family and friends that they could do much, much better. And still they come to teaching, most saying they want to make a difference in children's lives. Some are motivated by memories of a wonderful teacher who'd reached and changed them, others by bitter experiences they hope to correct. They are mostly idealistic, and I admire them for that.

They bring to class a vague hope that they will do great things in spite of a system that they know to be corrupt and dysfunctional. But this knowledge is not yet deep enough, for they also accept - some with greater skepticism and some with hardly any doubts at all - the predatory system's self-serving propaganda: test scores, achievement gaps, accountability, personal responsibility.

Into this contradiction steps Ta-Nehisi Coates with an assertion that shaped and marked the course: No matter what the professional talkers tell you, Coates wrote, I never met a black boy who wanted to fail. That simple observation - or was it an Sparking Curiosity for Truth in the Classroom: An Appreciation of ''Between the World and Me'':

Will the Newark school board openly confront Christopher Cerf? | Bob Braun's Ledger

Will the Newark school board openly confront Christopher Cerf? | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Will the Newark school board openly confront Christopher Cerf?

At the end of the last Newark school board meeting, the board president quietly mentioned she would introduce a resolution at the next board session, scheduled for Tuesday night, August 25. Ariagna Perello gave no details but did mention it would concern “One Newark,” the state administration’s often cruel dispersal of students throughout Newark’s schools. Perello’s comment creates the strong possibility of a confrontation between the board and the new state-imposed superintendent, Christopher Cerf.

Cerf, a Montclair resident, wasn’t at the first scheduled meeting with the board last week but his spokeswoman, Brittany Parmley, said that, unlike his appointee and predecessor, Cami Anderson, he intended to attend all board meetings from now on—and he has a three-year contract.

The board, individual board members, and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka—who is close to most board members—already have either sharply criticized “One Newark” or demanded it be ended, so it won’t be much of a surprise if Perello’s resolution does call for an end to the enrollment procedure that could, in the few years Cerf has in his contract, radically change the nature of public schooling in the state’s largest city.

“Cerf is the closer,’’ said one source close to the board who asked for anonymity. “Cami Anderson set up the plan and we think Cerf was brought in to close the deal for (Gov. Chris) Christie.”

In fact, the “One Newark” plan was really Cerf’s brainchild when he ran a private consulting firm known as Global Education Advisers that was paid $500,000 to come up with a plan that closed public schools and increased the number of privately-operated charters. Then Christie made Cerf his state education Will the Newark school board openly confront Christopher Cerf? | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Right on banks, wrong on schools: “No Child Left Behind wasn’t designed for the types of realities in my school” - Salon.com

Right on banks, wrong on schools: “No Child Left Behind wasn’t designed for the types of realities in my school” - Salon.com:

Right on banks, wrong on schools: “No Child Left Behind wasn’t designed for the types of realities in my school”

A congressman says even progressive Democrats fall for "accountability," over-testing and phony education "reform"

Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders (Credit: Reuters/AP/Jonathan Ernst/Susan Walsh/Photo montage by Salon)

Progressive Democrats are right to hail the new populism in their party driving the debate about the nation’s economic policies and the atrocious inequality those policies have created. Heartened by the bold leadership of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the huge crowds cheering on the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, progressives can truly feel their agenda is driving the national debate and propelling change.

So it’s beyond disappointing when progressive leaders in the Democratic Party who can knock an argument for economic populism out of the park continue to whiff on education populism.

Currently, the House and Senate are in the process of rewriting No Child Left Behind — the federal law that started enforced testing and harsh punishments in public schools. Both versions that have passed in their respective chambers allow for states to end current accountability measures enforced by high-stakes testing if they develop their own alternatives. Public education advocates have backed this new direction enthusiastically.

But during the amendment process in the Senate, a curious thing happened. As The Washington Post explains, an amendment proposed by Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, would have kept the federal government in charge of defining what is a “failing school” and prescribing how states should intervene. Thankfully, the amendment was voted down, but most Democratic senators, including Warren and Sanders, voted for it.

Supporters of public schools were outraged. “Democrats pushed to restore a punitive accountability system, much like NCLB,” education historian Diane Ravitchwrote on her personal blog, calling the vote, “evidence of how little Congress knows about education.”

Classroom teacher and popular edu-blogger Steven Singer wrote on his site, “This provision was an attempt to keep as many test and punish policies as possible … The Democrats seem to be committed to the notion that the only way to tell if a school is doing a good job is by reference to its test scores. High test scores — good school. Bad test scores — bad school. This is baloney!”

Another classroom teacher-blogger, Arthur Goldstein, addressed Sanders specifically. For The Huffington Post, he wrote, “We are disappointed with your recent votes in the senate that contain provisions which perpetuate quantitatively based measures of education … Quantitative measures are invalid. They are masks for social inequalities. They merely highlight and then reflect economic and racial inequalities.”

Civil rights leaders such as Rev. William Barber, the voice of the Moral Monday Movement, have called on politicians in Washington, D.C. to “fix public education and end high stakes testing.”

Other prominent voices in the civil rights movement, Judith Browne Dianis, John H. Jackson and Pedro Noguera, wrote in Education Week, “Today’s status quo in education is annual assessments that provide no true path toward equity or excellence … It is time for a change. Throughout the country, parents, teachers, and students are calling for an alternative to the test-and-punish culture.”

Also recently, an alliance of 38 organizations of student and parent groups in black and brown communities joined with 175 national and local grassroots organizations in an effort to end high stakes testing. In a letter to Senate leaders, they declare, “We respectfully disagree that the proliferation of high stakes assessments and top-down interventions are needed in order to improve our schools. We live in the communities where these schools exist. What, from our vantage point, happens because of these tests is not improvement. It’s destruction.”

What’s going on here? Why are progressive leaders in the Democratic Party out of Right on banks, wrong on schools: “No Child Left Behind wasn’t designed for the types of realities in my school” - Salon.com:

Higher Expulsion Rates for Black Students Are Found - The New York Times

Higher Expulsion Rates for Black Students Are Found - The New York Times:

Higher Expulsion Rates for Black Students Are Found

With the Obama administration focused on reducing the number of suspensions, expulsions and arrests in public schools, a new analysis of federal data identifies districts in 13 Southern states where black students are suspended or expelled at rates overwhelmingly higher than white children.

The analysis, which will be formally released Tuesday by the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, focused on states where more than half of all the suspensions and expulsions of black students nationwide occurred. While black students represented just under a quarter of public school students in these states, they made up nearly half of all suspensions and expulsions.

In some districts, the gaps were even more striking: in 132 Southern school districts, for example, black students were suspended at rates five times their representation in the student population, or higher.

In recent years, civil rights groups such as the Advancement Project and legal advocacy organizations including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. and Texas Appleseed have focused on reducing arrests and other severe disciplinary actions in schools.

Last year, the Obama administration issued guidelines advising schools to create more positive climates, set clear expectations and consequences for students, and ensure equity in discipline.

Still, “I am actually shocked that there is not more outrage,” said Shaun R. Harper, associate professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania and the executive director of the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education who was a co-author of the analysis.

Among the other findings in the analysis were that in 181 school districts where blacks represented just under 60 percent of enrollment on average, all of the students expelled during 2011-12 were black. Within the 13 states, Louisiana and Mississippi expelled the highest proportion of blacks.

Blacks were suspended or expelled at rates higher than their representation in the student body in every one of the 13 states analyzed. The report shows data for more than 3,000 districts.

“We want policy makers, parents and everybody to understand that any degree of disproportionality is in need of redress and response,” Mr. Harper said. The analysis did not look at suspension or expulsion rates for other racial minorities.

Michael Thompson, director of the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a nonprofit policy group, said blacks are more likely to be suspended or expelled in situations where teachers or school leaders have discretion in determining how to respond to behavior, such as when a student is deemed disrespectful or defiant or violates a dress code.

By contrast, in a study of students in Texas, Mr. Thompson and his co-authors found that in situations where laws require schools to suspend or expel a student — such as when the student brings a gun or drugs to campus — whites are more likely to be suspended or expelled than blacks.

The disparities existed in high-achieving as well as low-achieving schools. In Gwinnett County, Ga., a suburban school district near Atlanta, the new analysis showed that while fewer than a third of the students enrolled in the district were black, they represented close to half of all students suspended and more than half of all those expelled in the school year covered by the data.

The district has twice received a prize given by the billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad for strides in student achievement to large urban Higher Expulsion Rates for Black Students Are Found - The New York Times:

Ex-CPS CEO confided in figure in fed probe, emails show | Chicago Sun-Times

Ex-CPS CEO confided in figure in fed probe, emails show | Chicago Sun-Times:

Ex-CPS CEO confided in figure in fed probe, emails show

When City Hall was planning to announce a property-tax increase in 2013 and Barbara Byrd-Bennett hadn’t been informed, the Chicago Public Schools CEO knew who to turn to for sympathy.

“They’re planning a . . . tax increase announcement and no one told me!!!!!! I think I need to get out of here,” Byrd-Bennett wrote to Gary Solomon, her former employer whose SUPES Academy principal-training firm had been given a $20.5 million, no-bid contract with CPS soon after Mayor Rahm Emanuel put her in charge of the city’s schools. “Anyway really pissed.”

“Sorry you are frustrated,” Solomon replied. “Screw them for taking things for granted.”

It was one of a series of email exchanges during Byrd-Bennett’s 2 1/2-year tenure as Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked schools chief in which she confided in Solomon, who’s now at the center of a federal investigation, newly obtained CPS emails show.

Solomon’s SUPES Academy also offered Byrd-Bennett speaking engagements three times — and an “honorarium” for one appearance — after the Chicago Board of Education gave his company the no-bid deal in 2013, the records show.

Byrd-Bennett replied to the offer by saying she would check with lawyers at CPS to see whether that would be allowed.

A CPS spokesman wouldn’t say whether Byrd-Bennett had sought that legal opinion or whether Solomon’s company paid to have her speak.

“I cannot comment due to the ongoing investigation,” CPS spokesman Bill McCaffrey said.

Byrd-Bennett took a paid leave of absence in mid-April after CPS revealed federal investigators had subpoenaed them for records regarding her, some of her top aides and three companies owned by Solomon and his business partner Thomas Vranas. She resigned her $250,000-a-year post as chief executive officer about six weeks later, effective June 1.

Before coming to work for CPS in 2012, initially in the district’s No. 2 post, Byrd-Bennett had worked for two companies owned by Solomon and Vranas, including Wilmette-based SUPES Academy — the company that was given the $20.5 million deal to train school principals.

After Byrd-Bennett stepped aside, interim CPS CEO Jesse Ruiz dumped SUPES, costing the firm more than $7 million of the $20.5 million.

No charges have been filed in the case.

Byrd-Bennett didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

Dennis Culloton, a spokesman for Solomon and Vranas, said: “It is well known Barbara Byrd-Bennett was a colleague and former consultant for Mr. Solomon’s companies prior to her service to Chicago schools, so the email exchanges are nothing new. None of Mr. Solomon’s companies ever paid Ms. Byrd-Bennett an honorarium for any speaking engagement.”

The emails, which CPS released in response to a request made under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, show Byrd-Bennett frequently turned to Solomon to complain about her problems running the nation’s third-biggest school system and also about perceived slights from City Hall.

In June 2013 — the month the SUPES contract was approved — she forwarded Solomon an email from an aide who’d informed her about the “property tax announcement” coming a few days later.

In that email exchange, she also threatened to complain about City Hall to reporters, as her predecessor in the top schools job, Jean-Claude Brizard, had done after he was forced out.

“I am simply a convenience and when I announce I will leave … ” Byrd-Bennett wrote.

Beside offering her sympathy, Solomon, apparently referring to Emanuel, added, “Really, I hope he is enjoying Israel.”

At the time, the mayor was in Israel, where he’d traveled with his family to celebrate his daughter’s bat mitzvah.

Byrd-Bennett replied by thanking Solomon for “allowing me to vent.”

“I am not sure they get what they are doing,” she wrote. “I just cannot be lead [sic] around by the nose like this … just not who I am.”

Solomon offered to meet at Byrd-Bennett’s office “if you can sneak me in.” The next morning, she wrote to her assistant, “If Gary stops by I need to see him.”

In an email exchange a few weeks later, in July 2013, Byrd-Bennett wrote to Solomon: “Thank you for the time yesterday to allow me to catch my breath, catch up and just be in a safe space.”

She wrote that the administrator-training program that Solomon was overseeing for CPS was a high priority “both to the mayor and I.”

“I am betting the farm on this,” Byrd-Bennett told Solomon. “And finally, I really need time for a ‘cup of tea’ with your parents.”

Four minutes later, Solomon replied, “Thank you thank you thank you for everything. Really. And we need to make time for one another to just get together and laugh. As tired as we are, as hard as we work, I think it’s important we get together and just laugh a lot.

“My parents scare me, by the way,” he wrote. “I would prefer we share our drinking with just one another.”

Byrd-Bennett wrote back, “Yes, and yes and ah ha … I love them.”

When Beth Swanson, Emanuel’s longtime top aide at City Hall on education issues, stepped down from that post, Byrd-Bennett forwarded Swanson’s resignation announcement to Solomon.

In that email, sent at 3:58 a.m. on July 31, 2014, Byrd-Bennett told Solomon, “I was in the car with others when we talked and could not share the full details with you!”

“Wait!!! Go back to bed, young lady!!! It is not yet 4 a.m.!!!!!!! I am the only idiot that is up at this hour,” Solomon replied.

Solomon’s business partner, Vranas, made the first of three emailed offers of speaking engagements at SUPES events to Byrd-Bennett in September 2013.

“I know it would mean the world to our cohort to hear from you,” Vranas told Byrd-Bennett of a SUPES conference for “60 senior administrators” from around the country. “Of course we would pay any travel and lodging costs and we could have an honorarium to you or a non-profit of Ex-CPS CEO confided in figure in fed probe, emails show | Chicago Sun-Times: