800 years after Magna Carta, Chicago schools are still ruled by an autocrat

This week we're celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta which is widely considered the foundation of parliamentary democracy, human rights and the supremacy of the law over autocracy. It established the principle that the monarch is not above the law.

Meanwhile in Chicago, where the public schools have been placed by law under the autocratic rule of one man --the mayor -- there's much being made over questions of who approved the decision to hire now-disgraced CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett back in 2012 and who approved that $20 million no-bid contract to SUPES. Everyone knows the answer to these questions but they are still the topic of the day for federal investigators in the midst of grand jury hearings. It's doubtful that indictments, if any are brought, will reach anywhere near the fifth floor of City Hall.

As Rahm and his predecessor might have put it: "We don't need no stink'n Magna Carta".

The only reason there's even a question, is that mayoral control of the schools, which was intended to bring greater transparency and accountability to a bureaucratic system, brought instead its very opposite. Since CPS was made a wing of City Hall, there has been a cloud of secrecy and a lack of public disclosure with one chief bureaucrat after another, all hand-picked by the mayor himself, being tossed under the bus in order to deflect attention away from the misdeeds and corrupt behavior of the autocrat.

Since the signing of the Magna Carta, democratic revolutions have swept the world clean of many czars and monarchs. But when it comes to urban public education, the trend appears to have been reversed. This was highlighted by Gov. Rauner's recent appointment of state "education czar", Beth Purvis following a Chicago Tribune editorial calling on CPS to put a turnaround expert at the top of the school system, with "Mussolini-like powers to execute and implement."

Duncan pinned his success to mayoral control of schools.

When Arne Duncan was first appointed U.S. Secretary of Education by Pres. Obama back in 2009, he made his number-one priority the expansion of autocratic control of the schools by urban mayors. This was the only way Duncan could forsee his plan for corporate-style, top-down school reform being driven past the resistance of educators, parents and community groups. He argued that the revolving door of urban superintendents was leading to too much instability and churn.

Ironically, mayoral control in Chicago has resulted in 6 school chiefs in six years and greater instability than ever before. Another teachers strike seems almost inevitable.

Duncan proclaimed at the time:

"At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed."

By next year his tenure will have ended, his race-to-the-top and his planned expansion of mayoral control tossed in the waste bin of history. He will, by his own admission, have failed.

By then, hopefully Chicago will have joined with the rest of the state and most of the country in having an elected school board and the spirit of the Magna Carta may have survived yet another test.

How to pay a Czar

After reading the Trib's editorial calling for a Mussolini-type to run Chicago schools, Gov. Rauner picked Beth Purvis as the state's "education czar". I'm not exactly sure what a state ed czar does, given that Chicago schools are already ruled from City Hall by our own Little Emperor. And Rahm's about to anoint his own 4th sub-czar in 4 years to replace BBB (Didn't I just see her on America's Most Wanted? Or am I confusing BBB with "Fast Eddie"?).

The problem for Rauner is, how to pay Purvis her quarter-million-dollar annual salary, given his own draconian cuts to the state's education budget. Turns out to be no problem at all. He simply raids the Department of Human Services budget. That's the agency that funds things like autism and epilepsy services  The Czar's new contract was signed three weeks before the governor’s office authorized $26 million in cuts to that same agency.

Robbing Peter to pay Purvis. Nice.

All this prompted this angry missive to the Sun-Times from CTU V.P. Jesse Sharkey .

Illinois is not broke. Illinois is flush. The problem is that those who can pay, don’t. The effective state income-tax rate for the poorest 20 percent of earners in the state is double what the wealthiest 1 percent of people pay.

Well said.

Rauner took my 'czar' advice seriously

Czar Purvis

Sun-Times headline reads:

Rauner paying education czar $250k from agency that funds autism, epilepsy services

Gov. Rauner must have read my Tuesday post -- the one where I go after the Tribune's editorial board for proposing that Chicago put a turnaround expert at the top of the school system, with "Mussolini-like powers to execute and implement."

I think my point was -- there's something about editorial recommendations that have the words Mussolini and execute in the same sentence...

As you may remember, I pointed out that they could have just said, "You know. We really need an education czar," and no one would have blinked. 

Well, it appears that Rauner actually took my czar advice seriously. Anyone who knows me would have told him not to do so. 

Anyway, the new czar's name is Beth Purvis. As you might expect, she's a former charter school director, a post which makes her eminently qualified for the czar's job. She served as CEO of the Chicago International Charter School, a network of 15 schools in Chicago and Rockford.

What Natasha Korecki's S-T article doesn't tell us is that it was Paul Vallas and Synesi that greased CICS and Purvis's entry into Rockford. Connections, anyone? You out there, reporters?

Unfortunately, Czar Purvis' quarter-million-dollar salary is being taken directly from Rauner's brutal budget cuts, otherwise known as “the Good Friday Massacre.” In other words, she's living off money that should be going for autism and epilepsy funding. 

I hope she chokes on it.