Cases top 14 million while 'open-up' cuckoo birds keep tweeting.

  

More than 13.4 million people in the country have been infected with the novel coronavirus and 267,306 have died as of 2:30 p.m. Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 dashboard.

 Hundreds of people on Wednesday night — including members of the right-wing group Proud Boys — protested the closure of a Staten Island bar that ignored COVID-19 restrictions.-- NY Post

As I'm reading the news today about Florida nearing one million COVID cases, I'm recalling a column written back in May by former Tribune writer Dennis Byrne announcing to anyone who cared that he was abandoning Chitown for the wild and wide-open climes of Florida. He'd had enough of being told to wear a mask or wash his hands. He definitely didn't like Mayor Lightfoot and Gov. Pritzker telling him that he couldn't sit inside at a restaurant during a corona surge. 

Byrne, who loves him some Trumpy Gov. Ron DiSantis, said that in FL he felt free to wine and dine on "brisket and bacon burger slathered with BBQ sauce, cheese, onions, and mayonnaise."

I wonder where he'll move next. 

BIRDS OF A FEATHER ~ Mancow, Stone, and...Vallas???

Mancow (left) says he's sick of unions that “radicalize” teachers, and he supports “bringing back civility and respect for cops.” Wants Vallas as his running mate. Good luck with that.  

Trump clone and radio shock jock Erich “Mancow” Muller says he wants to run for IL governor. No joke.

Pritzker must be trembling with fear.  

Mancow is the anti-union, flat-tax, corona super-spreader pal of Roger Stone. (Stone claimed yesterday that "North Korean ships were delivering ballots through a harbor in Maine.”)

And guess who Mancow wants as his running mate? None other than former Chicago schools chief and perennial campaign loser Paul Vallas.

I get it. The two of them are ideologically simpatico. But Mancow could do better. Doesn't he recall how Vallas' last campaign for Lt. Governor went down the toilet, pulling incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn down with him? Or how Vallas fared running against his nemesis, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and finishing seventh in the races with 5% of the vote.

Meanwhile, Vallas has been keeping himself busy speaking at right-wing anti-masker, anti-shutdown QAnon rallies sounding every bit like Dennis Byrne in his attacks on Lightfoot and Pritzker? 

He's gone full-blown MAGA. 

It's HAPPENING!!! Time to #RescueIllinois☀️

🗓️December 5th
🕐1:00
🌆Daley Center Plaza, Chicago (Loop)

Speakers include @Paulvallas @AmyJacobson @DarrenBaileyIL @deannemazzochi @janthonyspeaks & others!

Residents of all states welcome!!! 🥳 pic.twitter.com/YHXl7p8LoP

— Emma Woodhouse (@EWoodhouse7) November 25, 2020

Like a bad penny, Vallas turns up again in Chicago.

Bad penny.

Paul Vallas is like that proverbial bad penny. He always turns up, uninvited. When he does, he's usually part of the problem rather than the solution.

The bad penny turned up again this week in Chicago in the midst of the city's battle with COVID to offer us his unsolicited budgeting advice in a Tribune op-ed. Vallas decided to take a public backhanded swipe at Mayor Lightfoot's management of the city's crisis budget (she's "disingenuous") and offer advice on how best to put the city on a "wartime financial plan."

As if he had a clue.

In the year since her election, and especially during this, the worst crisis to befall our city since the Great Fire, the mayor has gained high marks and become Chicago's acknowledged and highly regarded leader while Vallas has sunk into political obscurity.

This from the mayor:

“Unfortunately, some people are desperate to be relevant,” Lightfoot said. “The suggestion that somehow our city budget is in tatters, as Mr. Vallas dramatically suggests, it's just foolish.”

When I say, the bad penny turned up again, I mean, it seems like I've written this "we thought we were done with Vallas" post several times before.

After all, he ran against Lightfoot for mayor on these ideas a year ago and the voters heard them loud and clear. He placed ninth out of fourteen candidates, receiving 5.43% of the votes cast. He also ran for mayor against Rahm Emanuel and was crushed. He ran for Lieutenant Governor of Illinois in 2014 with then-incumbent Governor Pat Quinn and was soundly beaten, leading to the election of Bruce Rauner and Evelyn Sanguinetti (who???)

Vallas has left a trail of tears from teachers and parents in his wake as he's moved as the corporate reformers' hired gun from Chicago, to Philly, to New Orleans and Bridgeport (with stops in Haiti and Chile), privatizing school districts and busting unions.

Remember, this is also the guy who left Philly's school budget in absolute shambles. It was there that he hooked up with Barbara Byrd-Bennett's criminal conspirators Gary Solomon and Tom Vranas to form their illicit Synesi consulting group, the group behind the SUPES scandal. How he escaped going to prison with them is still a mystery to me. Why anyone would solicit or accept his advice, especially under current conditions is another one.

Up until this point, no one has as far as I can tell.

14 years after Katrina, half of the schools in New Orleans all-charter district are considered "failing".

"Hurricane Katrina gave a great American city a rebirth." -- Kristen McQueary, Chicago Tribune

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina decimated much of the Gulf Coast, including the city of New Orleans. The hurricane triggered a chain reaction which led to the near-total abandonment of the city and its public school system. Over 1,200 died in the storm and nearly half the evacuees never returned.

For some conservative ideologues like Univ. of Chicago economist Milton Friedman and other neo-liberal reformers, the storm's devastation wasn't as much a disaster as it was an opportunity to replace the city's highly segregated, predominantly African-American public school system with privately-run, publicly-financed charter schools.

Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans,” because it gave the city a chance to rebuild and improve its "failing public schools."

Former Chicago and Philly schools chief Paul Vallas got hired to lead the city's educational reconstruction project, which included firing the largely-black teaching force, busting the teachers' union and ultimately replacing every public school with charter schools.

The Tribune's McQueary wished for a similar disaster to strike the city of Chicago so it might follow the New Orleans example.

Now, 14 years later, comes the news that nearly half of the schools in the all-charter New Orleans district are considered "failing."

According to the Times-Picayune, a whopping 35 of the 72 schools in the district scored a D or F on their performance report, meaning nearly half of local public schools were considered failing, or close to it, in the school year ending in 2019. Since then, six of the 35 have closed.

While New Orleans has long been home to struggling schools, the data released this month are concerning. There was an increase of nearly 11% percentage points in the number of schools that received the state's lowest grades from the 2017-18 school year to 2018-19.

"It makes me angry and hurt. Because these are the children of our city," said Ashana Bigard, a parent of two children in Orleans Parish schools and a longtime critic of the post-Hurricane Katrina education reforms that rebuilt the district as a network of charter schools.

Me too. I'm angry and hurt by the great privatization scam that's been run on the citizens of post-Katrina New Orleans. As far as "failing" schools are concerned, as long as there's concentrated dire poverty in the city, there will be schools that are labeled "failing", whether they are charter or regular public schools.

Day 9 of Chicago teachers strike. Sun-Times gives a full page to the charter hustlers

In the wake of horrific Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Univ. of Chicago economist Milton Friedman called the event "an opportunity to radically reform the educational system.”

For all my radical friends out there, by "radically reform," Friedman didn't mean fully democratizing public ed. Rather he meant nothing less than replacing all public schools with privately-run charters. With the help of fellow free-marketeers like Paul Vallas, who became the head of post-Katrina New Orleans schools, that's exactly what happened.

It was Vallas's successor at CPS, Arne Duncan who, as U.S. Secretary of Education, dotted Friedman's i's and crossed his t's by calling Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”

It was then up to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to sum things up with his 2012 catchphrase, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste."

Naomi Klein would later expose this shock-and-awe strategy of "disaster capitalism" in her best-selling book, The Shock Doctrine.

I'm recalling the shock-doctrine mentality while reading a full-page pitch in this morning's Sun-Times by the far-right Heritage Foundation, proposing to replace Chicago's public schools with privately-run charters in order to avoid the inconvenience of teacher strikes. Ironically, S-T is partially owned by the Chicago Federation of Labor.

The city is currently in the ninth day of a teacher's strike, with little prospect of a settlement in sight, and today's prophets (profiteers) of unregulated free markets are once again trying to capitalize on a city's crisis.

The logic behind their sales pitch is that since Chicago charter teachers are forbidden by law from being in the same bargaining unit with CTU Local 1, the city's charter schools have remained generally union-free. Thus, if you have no unions, you will have no strikes. No strikes, no inconvenience for parents. Voila!

Charter schools, public schools where families can choose to send their children instead of to an assigned district school, have remained open during the strike. Though some Chicago charters are unionized, differences in their contracts have allowed charters to keep students in school, saving families from having to make other arrangements to meet work and family commitments.

Passages Charter School

How convenient! Except for one thing. Charter schools, funded by the state, are facing the same funding crisis as public schools. Illinois is 50th of the 50 states when it comes to equitable funding of school districts.

Charter teachers, who are generally working for less pay, with less autonomy and with far worse working conditions than the teachers in regular Chicago public schools, are slowly-but-surely getting organized and speaking out against their exploitation by charter operators. And unlike traditional CPS schools, where the union bargains with a publicly-elected mayor and her appointed school board, charter teachers and their unions must each face-off with their own privately-appointed and unaccountable boards of directors. Often these not-for-profit boards actually sub-contract the operation of the schools to for-profit operating companies.

Not only have the charters failed to produce better results than the public schools they are replacing, but charters are no more immune to strikes than are the schools in so-called right-to-work states like Arizona, Oklahoma and West Virginia, where strike waves have recently rocked the system.

The last paragraph in the Sun-Times piece (which reads like a last-minute add-on), makes my point:

Unfortunately, teachers in Chicago’s Passages Charter School chose to strike and called for higher pay. These striking teachers, who have since settled on a new contract, undermined the value that charter schools bring to students and families, especially during union demonstrations in district schools. And remember that CTU demand to stop charter-school growth in Chicago?

Yes, and a good demand it is.  The Chicago teachers’ union secured a cap on charter school expansion in their last contract negotiations in 2016. That should also be embedded in the new contract.

Thanks for reminding us.

Memo to Paul Vallas: Lose the broom

“There’s nothing Chicago politicians fear more than this broom." -- Paul Vallas

So here's Paul Vallas, running for mayor of Chicago and carrying around a broom in his TV ads,  a prop designed to portray him as the anti-corruption candidate. Clever, right? He's the one who's going to sweep corruption out the door.

It harkens me back to 2008 when D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee posed holding a broom for the cover of Time Magazine and then  was implicated in one of the country's biggest test cheating scandals. Rhee became the darling of the corporate-style school reformers and school privatizers who poured millions into her Students First organization. Then, after serving as a corporate exec with a fertilizer company, she tried to become Trump's ed secretary but lost out to Betsy DeVos.

Now comes another former big-city school chief with a broom, the guy who was Gary Solomon's mentor. You remember Solomon. The force behind the biggest scam --SUPES -- ever to hit the Chicago Public Schools. Solomon and his partner in crime, former CEO at CPS, Barbara Byrd-Bennett are now doing prison time for that scam. But it was Vallas who taught Solomon the ropes and somehow, he's walking free, carrying a broom, and running for mayor of the country's third largest city.

After leaving CPS, Vallas developed ties with education consultant Solomon during his tenure at the Philadelphia and Louisiana districts. He then named Solomon to run his Synesi consulting company. Solomon had become adept at penetrating school districts from around the country after buying off their top school officials with perks and bribes in exchange for expensive consulting contracts.

According to the Tribune:

When Solomon worked as vice president of sales at The Princeton Review, the Philadelphia district Vallas ran was a client. Solomon later launched an educating consulting firm that touted itself as connected to the “Vallas model” of school reform. Vallas, who had no formal links to Solomon's firm, chastised the consultant for trying to capitalize on Vallas' reputation.

But Vallas got over his annoyance. He took Solomon with him as a consultant when Vallas moved to Louisiana to rebuild a school district battered in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina. A few years later, Vallas was recommending to Peoria that it hire another Solomon-run consulting firm, though no contract was signed. Vallas disputed the assertion that he had pitched work specifically for Solomon's firm.

Vallas previously has told the Tribune he stopped working with Solomon in 2010, but has declined to explain why.

My advice to Vallas. Ditch the broom. It doesn't wear well.

Will Chicago elect a mayor who's back in bed with Bezos on HQ2?

 

Toni Preckwinkle and Bill Daley on board with Bezos. 

...bringing Amazon to town will probably cost untold millions in tax credits—money diverted straight from the state's coffers. That spells a tax hike for everyone else as the state jacks up taxes to compensate for the money it's giving to Amazon. -- Ben Joravsky

Like Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm St., Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and his HQ2 plan for Chicago just keeps coming back from the dead. It looks like, now that New York has said no, Rahm/Rauner's $2.5B tax and land giveaway to Bezos is back on the table in Chicago.

How can that be with Rauner gone, Ed Burke on his way to jail, and Rahm on his way out the door? It can only happen if Gov. Pritzker and a new Chicago mayor are ready, willing and able to meet all of Bezos demands and accept his unsubstantiated estimates of tens of thousands of "high-paying city jobs".

And which of the current mayoral candidates is ready to bend over for Bezos? According to Crain's there's only two (maybe three) -- Bill Daley, Toni Preckwinkle and possibly, Paul Vallas who hasn't said yet.

While I would expect no less from Daley and Vallas, I'm still amazed that Preckwinkle, who's only in the race because of backing from CTU and SEIU, is willing to play ball with union-buster supreme, Bezos. The jobs Bezos promises are unsustainable and without long-term security. Amazon has the highest employee turnover this side of Walmart and their working conditions are reported to be the worst of any major corporation.

Burke may be under indictment and Ald. Danny Solis may have gone underground, wire and all. But the spirit of pay-to-play and quid pro quo, obviously still lives on among these three.

ONE MORE POINT, if I might... Bezos is also a big backer of charter schools and other school privatization schemes in the state of Washington. According to a report in the Nation, the Bezos Foundation has donated to Education Reform Now, a nonprofit organization that funds attack advertisements against teachers’ unions and other advocacy efforts to promote test-based evaluations of teachers. Education Reform Now also sponsors Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).

Other education philanthropy supported by the Bezos Foundation include KIPP, Teach for America and many individual charter schools, including privately funded math and science programs across the country.

The mayor's one-sided narratives about CPS progress couldn't save him

Citywide, 45 percent of black students attend Level 1 or 1-plus schools, while 91 percent of white students attend the top rated schools. (Tribune)

Rahm Emanuel may have dropped out of the upcoming mayor's race, but he continues to boast and take credit for the reported bumps in CPS test scores and graduation rates. I think, one of the reasons he dropped out of the race is because his (and CEO Janice Jackson's) one-sided narrative has lost credibility in the media, in the community and with the voters.

Open sessions at CPS board meetings have become a nightmare for the mayor and the board. So much so that they are making it much more difficult for school/community members to participate.

So why the loss of credibility?

First, because neither Jackson nor the mayor can offer any explanation or rationale for the claimed rise or why the mayor and his schools chief deserve credit for the bumps. After all, they reported come despite years of state underfunding of CPS.

Is there some new policy that came from the 5th floor at City Hall or from his hand-picked board that drove test scores up a notch or kept students from dropping out? Rahm may attribute it to "choice". But a closer look should debunk that theory. Thirty years of "choice" (privately-run charters, selective-enrollment schools, and now vouchers) have left us with this  --  45% of black students attending so-called Level 1 or 1-plus schools, while 91% of white students attend the top rated schools.

Also, is the reported bump system-wide? The answer is no. A new CPS report shows, the city's South and West sides have lower concentrations of highest-rated schools than other areas, and black and Latino students attend top schools at far lower rates than their white counterparts.

While at several selective enrollment schools, like Lane Tech on Chicago’s north side, 100% of students are testing at or above standards, at resourced-starved neighborhood schools like Englewood results were much different. At Nicholson Public School for example, only 13.8% of the students at the STEM Academy reached or exceeded math standards. At Auburn Gresham’s Barton Elementary School, 18.1% reached or exceeded standards, and at Dett Elementary near the United Center, just over 15% were meeting standards.

Stats like these leave us wondering if Levels are determined mainly by the color and family income of the attending students or by anything different going on in the classroom? In other words if the 45% and the 91% switched school and teachers, would the Levels travel with them? Or is reform simply another way of reproducing inequality?

Rahm's cheerful narrative omits any mention of the loss of thousands of students from CPS schools, mainly students of color, from low-income families and underserved or closed schools. CPS' own report also makes clear the district, which has seen enrollment dwindling for years, is operating vastly under capacity. There is space for about 150,000 more students in a district that last year had enrollment of about 371,000 in 650 schools. And enrollment is expected to decline by another 5% over the next three years. Could this exodus of poor and black students from CPS account for the reported jump in test scores? Yes, it could and likely did, minus any other credible explanation.

Finally, Rahm's political boasting ignores the continuing stories of widespread sexual abuse and cover-ups and mistreatment of children with disabilities often resulting from privatization of school nurses.  Neither of those things correlate with improved measurable learning outcomes.

I'm not trying to lay all this at Rahm's feet. Selective and political spinning of school data and lack of transparency have long been a central part of the culture of a school system run autocratically by the mayor. For example, the reported cover-up of sexual abuse at CPS goes back the Daley era, when current mayoral candidates Paul Vallas and Gery Chico ran the mayor's school system. 

Now, with Rahm out of the race, it's important that we demand of all potential candidates, an honest, balanced assessment of school progress, a commitment to an elected school board, a cap on charter school expansion, and an end to privatization of essential school functions. If they can't or won't make those commitments, they don't deserve our support. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

James Baldwin

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be. One hasn’t got to have an enormous military machine in order to be un-free when it’s simpler to be asleep, when it’s simpler to be apathetic, when it’s simpler, in fact, not to want to be free, to think that something else is more important. -- Nobody Knows My Name

Rev. William Barber & Rev. Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign

While our nation once fought a war against poverty, now we wage a war on the poor...People are poor not because they are lazy, not because they are unwilling to work hard, but because politicians have blocked living wages and healthcare and undermined union rights and wage increases.-- Guardian Op-ed

Les Wexner, Ohio billionaire and longtime Republican donor 

“If you don’t think things are right, open your mouth...I just decided I’m no longer a Republican." -- HuffPost

James Bloodworth, worked undercover in Amazon warehouse

 In Amazon’s case, convenience evidently has a cost, and this cost is born by those toiling away in Amazon’s warehouses, rarely heard from in the media and invisible to the millions of people who every day submit orders through Amazon’s website. -- Guardian

Paul Vallas, on why he didn't act on CPS sexual assaults

His campaign released a statement that said the Lovett case was “not one that Mr. Vallas or any one of a number of other former school officials to whom we reached out, recalls other than vaguely as something that was fleetingly reported on the news.” Vallas’ campaign defended the lack of an investigation by saying it was a matter for police and child welfare authorities. -- Chicago Tribune

I hope they cast a black Superman. It would nice for a brotha to finally be faster than a speeding bullet.

— Travon Free (@Travon) September 13, 2018

Struck up a conversation w/Glorimarie Peña in Old San Juan. Regarding Hurricane María response, she told me, “It’s not that we weren’t treated like US citizens, it’s that we weren’t even treated like humans.” pic.twitter.com/B8NebKyqSA

— Leyla Santiago (@leylasantiago) September 15, 2018

Camelot charters and the politics of 'disruption' at CPS

Camelot Education takes the students public schools have given up on. But the for-profit company’s approach to discipline has led to allegations of aggression and abuse. (Slate)

Disruption has become a centerpiece in the lexicon of school reformers. It starts from the faulty assumption, held by both liberals and conservatives, that public schools, public space in general, and public (democratic) decision-making are all broken remnants of a bygone era, and that the crisis of stability ("status quo") created mainly by unions, must be shattered by "radical" intervention from the top.

This is a far cry from democratic or revolutionary "disruption" by progressive, grassroots social movements or the breaking with old ideas (mental slavery) through critical thinking and building habits of the mind.

Corporate-style reformers use the term disruption in various ways as it suits them. Some use it to talk about modern technology interventions such as Uber. Or as a way of replacing traditional teaching models with computers or with computers replacing schools entirely. Others call for value-added teacher evaluation, merit pay, mass school closings, teacher firings, union-busting and wholesale privatization.

A case in point: The latest charter school corruption scandal in Chicago has the IG reporting that for-profit charter school operator Camelot Education colluded with former schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett in a pay-for-play scheme that put $67M in public school dollars into Camelot's pockets.

This brand of disruptive corruption is nothing new in a school system run autocratically by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his hand-picked school board. It was precisely this style of "reform" that landed BBB and her partner in crime, Gary Solomon (Paul Vallas' former partner) in prison.

Speaking of Vallas, it was he who brought Camelot into Philly and New Orleans when he was schools chief there. But that's a whole other pay-for-play story. In 2015, Camelot reported more than $77 million in revenue, more than a third from contracts with the school districts of Philadelphia, Houston, and Chicago.

The Tribune reports:

Schuler’s examination of Camelot centers on behavior that largely occurred between 2012 and 2013. Authorities also investigated Byrd-Bennett, Solomon and Vranas for steering multimillion-dollar no-bid contracts to the SUPES Academy education consulting firm in exchange for the promise of lucrative kickbacks during the same time period.

The trio were eventually indicted for their roles in that scheme, pleaded guilty and are now serving federal prison sentences. Schuler said the completed criminal cases against Byrd-Bennett and her co-conspirators allowed his office to finish the Camelot probe.

According to the Sun-Times:

Camelot paid nearly $700,000 to get “access and favor” to Byrd-Bennett, including $294,000 to Solomon and Vranas. Byrd-Bennett allegedly was in line for a job with Camelot when she left CPS — except she left instead for a cushy federal prison in West Virginia.

But what especially caught my eye was not the crime itself, but the reaction to it by the mayor and the press. As expected, once the story broke, the conversation turned to what kind of punishment should be meted out to Camelot. Some favored debarment from CPS and revoking their charter, while others called for an outside monitor to take over operations. Then there were Rahm and the Sun-Times editorial board calling for a slap-on-the-wrist fine and for keeping Camelot's Chicago charters up and running.

Rahm didn't mention "disruption" when he closed NTA.

And here's where disruption comes in. Rahm claimed that the debarment of Camelot would cause "disruption" in the education of the Texas-based company's 800 Chicago students spread across 6 schools. Of those 800 zero were white.

Of course, he's right. (Incidentally, that comes out to 133 students per school if you're counting.) That's quite an intervention at a time when the system is "broke" and when dozens of CPS schools were closed for being too small ("under-utilization").

The S-T editorial calls for a "negotiated settlement" rather than giving Camelot the boot.

CPS says it plans to negotiate fines — hefty fines, we hope — against Camelot, and that would be a start in making this right. The district also has begun debarment proceedings, meaning Camelot eventually could be prohibited from doing business with CPS.

As we see it, what matters most is what’s best for the students, and the sudden closing of the four schools could disrupt the last chance at a decent education for hundreds of young people who sorely need it.

A better solution would be to hire an independent monitor to oversee Camelot’s contract, and then re-bid that contract once it’s up, as the inspector general recommends. 

A do-over or Mulligan, if you will, which would keep this corrupt company in business.

The S-T editors claim "Camelot has a reputation for doing good work in a tough field: educating former dropouts." BTW, the link in that quote offers no evidence of Camelot doing "good work". (Shameful reporting, editors.) Actually, Camelot has a terrible reputation, including charges that they operate "like a prison".

The abuse allegedly occurred in Camelot programs in Reading; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Philadelphia; New Orleans; and Pensacola, Florida. Jandy Rivera, for instance, a former teacher at Camelot-run Phoenix Academy in Lancaster, says that on multiple occasions staff members, including administrators, “baited kids so they could hit kids.” For the most part, staffers who allegedly assaulted students have faced no criminal charges or internal discipline; some have even been promoted.

Three points here...One is that Rahm, who closed 50 schools, mainly in the black community, has a lot of chutzpah to talk about the "disruption" caused by school closings, especially after closing every high school in Englewood and about to close the National Teachers Academy.

Two, even though CPS claims state law prohibits them from closing Camelot schools at least until August 2019, crooked and abusive Camelot can certainly be immediately removed from management without closing their (our) schools. The schools could then be returned to CPS where their abusive approach to discipline can be hopefully ended. Those responsible for their pay-for-play scheme could then be forced to pay back their illegally gotten gains and/or be prosecuted.

Third, Rahm's appointed school board and the mayor himself should be held accountable for the lack of oversight on outside contracting and investigated for their role in contracting with Camelot. One place to start is the upcoming mayoral race. Both Rahm and Vallas are running.

As long as they're doing background checks for sexual predators at CPS...

A background check on Gary Solomon -- before throwing $20M no-bid contract his way -- might have averted
the biggest corruption scandal in CPS history. 

Speaking of background checks for possible sexual predators at CPS, Rahm Emanuel and his hand-picked school board, probably should have done one on Gary Solomon before throwing that $20M SUPES contract his way. A check might have kept Solomon's partner in crime Barbara Byrd-Bennett out of prison and prevented the biggest corruption scandal in CPS history.

Solomon, a former dean and teacher at suburban Niles West H.S., was accused by that district of sending sexually explicit e-mail messages to female students. Besides those messages, they said he attended a Cubs game with students during a school day when no field trip was planned. They accused him of keeping a journal on a school computer that described several unprofessional relationships with students.

Finally, Solomon was forced out of Niles Township School District 219 under a cloud after he was accused by his bosses of “immoral and unprofessional” conduct, including allegations he kissed a female student, covered up students’ drug and alcohol use,and sent “sexually suggestive, predatory” emails to students, court records show.

While no criminal charges were ever filed, Solomon was barred from ever teaching in the district again. Solomon resigned from his post as part of a settlement back in 2001 and began a consulting business with former Niles West student Thomas Vranas, one that also included a partnership with former Chicago schools CEO and current Chicago mayoral candidate Paul Vallas.

Vallas contracted with Solomon to work at schools in Philadelphia. When he was recruited to revive the schools in hurricane-battered New Orleans, Vallas sent a series of letters to Louisiana officials who oversaw the New Orleans district, vouching for Synesi Associates, the education consulting firm that had been started by Solomon in Chicago.

Synesi landed two no-bid contracts worth nearly $893,000 in New Orleans during Vallas’ time running the Recovery School District from 2007 to 2011. 

But Vallas points out: “I’m not the one who gave Gary Solomon a $20 million, no-bid contract.” He's got a point there. That would be Rahm. 

Last year, Solomon was sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in the bribery scandal. His SUPES consulting group employed Byrd-Bennett before she took her position as chief executive officer of CPS in 2012. Solomon admitted his role in the scheme to bribe Rahm's hand-picked CEO by offering her a percentage of the contracts she helped secure for SUPES. He also pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud.

This is a man who should have never been allowed anywhere near CPS schools, students or staff. So, as long as they're doing background checks on teachers, coaches, parents and CPS staff, they might want to do them on profit-hungry contractors as well. 

Will this finally be the end of the line for Rahm? One can only hope.

Rahm's pal David Axelrod hints that Rahm may not run. 

Despite the many millions in his campaign warchest, there are signs that Mayor 1% is vulnerable in the upcoming election and possibly won't even make it to a runoff. Some of his closest friends and advisors are even dropping hints that Rahm Emanuel may choose not to run again, depending on how bad things look over the coming months.

I doubt it.

Sun-Times political reporter Fran Spielman says this about Rahm's chances:

The political deck appears to be so stacked against Emanuel, some political observers wonder why he’s running and whether he will finish first, second or even third.

 He has imposed a nearly $2 billion avalanche of tax increases to solve a pension crisis his predecessor left behind.

He’s caught in a vice between police reform advocates demanding a say in a consent decree outlining federal court oversight of the Chicago Police Department and police officers who accuse him of “turning his back” on them at a time when he needs those officers to fight violent crime aggressively.

African-American voters who elected him in 2011, then re-elected him even after he closed a record 50 public schools, are unlikely to trust him again after his handling of the Laquan McDonald shooting video.

And the trial of Jason Van Dyke, the white Chicago Police officer accused of firing the 16 shots that killed the 17-year-old McDonald is likely to be held in the run-up to the mayoral election now just nine months away.

Victor Reyes, a former Daley political consultant, thinks Rahm will make it, but...

To go into the runoff with the wind at his back, Reyes said Emanuel needs more than 50 percent of the white vote, 40 percent of the Latino vote and 35 percent of the black vote. 

The more Latino votes he gets, the more black votes he can stand to lose. 

“It’s very tough. It’ll be his hardest election. His path is narrow. But I think he’ll get it,” Reyes said.

“His fundraising advantage is No. 1. Incumbency is No. 2. And no Latino in the race is No. 3 . . . They don’t have money. They don’t have name recognition. It’s a younger community. And there’s not a lot of unity.”

Then there's Rahm's political advisor, David Axelrod who drops this on us...

Although Emanuel is raising money at a frenzied pace and positioning himself to run for re-election, he has not yet formally declared his candidacy for a third-term.

“Until someone says that they’re running there’s always a chance they may not,” Axelrod said.

“I don’t think he’s under any pressure to decide that today, tomorrow or in the next few weeks as long as he does the things that preserve the option, such as raising the money. My counsel to him would be, there’s no rush on this. Take a gut check at the appropriate time and make sure this is what you want to do.”

I heard the same, off-the-record, from a Rahm confidant a few weeks ago.

For more Chicago mayor-race chatter, observation, and speculation, tune in Friday at 11 a.m. CDT, to Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers, streaming live at http://www.lumpenradio.com/ with in-studio guest, political mover and shaker, Amara Enyia.

Then, just when people were starting to forget about Rahm's disastrous school closings, out comes a new damaging report from the University of Chicago showing that CPS closing of 50 schools, mostly in the city's African-American community, led to academic setbacks for the affected students.

“Academic outcomes were neutral at best and negative in some instances,” according to the 88-page report.

As one observer tweeted:

The mayor with overwhelming City Council approval, closed 6 of 12 mental health clinics and 50 public schools, claiming they can’t afford them ($803 million combined cost). But they suddenly found $95 million for a new police academy. 

To top it all off, CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler, whose investigation led the FBI to Barbara Byrd-Bennett, yesterday came out with a new report showing that Rahm's hand-picked school board appointee Deborah Quazzo was complicit in BBB's illegal kickback schemes.

The Sun-Times reports that Rahm's former school chief accepted lavish meals at some of the city’s priciest restaurants from a CPS vendor whose investors included Quazzo. 

Quazzo violated the school system’s ethics code by talking up her companies’ products to CPS principals and introducing them to company representatives — which she at first denied to Schuler she’d done but acknowledged after being shown emails proving that.

We'll see how much this blows back on the mayor or gives impetus to the push for an elected school board. 

S-T columnist Laura Washington, predicts a long, hot summer for the mayor.

This summer will host sizzling court trials involving allegations of deadly police misconduct. There’s plenty of hot water there, and Emanuel is stuck in the deep end of the pool.

How will Emanuel handle the heat? Some political insiders speculate that if his poll numbers don’t turn up soon, he may call it quits, and decline to run for a third term.

I expect he will keep his cool and carry on. Alas, his controlled, bloodless style may be part of the problem.

Another indicator of summer problems for the mayor is the potential for a rise in gun violence. Last weekend saw at least eight Chicagoans killed and 30 wounded in street shootings.

It's still early but no Latino candidate in the race certainly helps Rahm's chances. Right now it looks to me like Lori Lightfoot has the best chance of pulling away from Rahm's other eight contenders. She has strong fund-raising capabilities, creds in the police reform scene, and a strong team behind her. 

Paul Vallas and Garry McCarthy, the great white hopes in the race, have already cut a deal between themselves for one to support the other if one of them is more likely to win, thereby keeping a black candidate out of the runoff. But there's always the possibility that between them, they could pull enough white votes from the northwest and southwest sides to move Rahm into third place in the primary. 

Lots of ifs there, I know.

Can Lightfoot be the one?

Former Police Board President Lori Lightfoot is expected to officially announce today that she's joining a long list of candidates, including several other African-American candidates and progressives, running for Mayor of Chicago.

According to Politico's Natasha Korecki, Lightfoot has already brought on a powerhouse support team including:

Media Consultants - Snyder Pickerill Media Group. Ken Snyder and Terrie Pickerill are Chicago-based national political strategists who did work with the likes of U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

The group also handled three major mayoral races: Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, Nashville Mayor Megan Barry and St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson.

Pollster - Jason McGrath, of GBA Strategies, who's done work with Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx, U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly and U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos.

Finance Director - Gina Natale worked as Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's finance director from 2010-2014 and recently worked for the League of Conservation Voters in Washington D.C.

Direct Mail - Adnaan Muslim of Deliver Strategies - Longtime lead SEIU Local 1 consultant on aldermanic campaigns. Firm's most recently worked on successful primaries for Jesus Chuy García, Alma Anaya, Bridget Degnan, and Aaron Ortiz. And for other successful mayoral campaigns including mayors Keisha Lance Bottoms, Toni Harp, Sly James, Michael Nutter and Stephane Miner.

I'll leave it to you to parse the connections here to high-powered city Democrats. But the point is, Lightfoot isn't stepping lightly into this battle. While neither she nor any of the other candidates can match the size of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's war chest dollar-for-dollar, she apparently can raise enough to be respectable in that area and possibly find a pathway to victory.

Lightfoot, the only openly gay candidate in the race, says she's running a campaign based on the need for economic justice and police reform.

According to the Tribune:

Although she could struggle to find a base of support, Lightfoot indicated she plans to run as a progressive, a lane occupied in the 2015 campaign by Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, who pushed Emanuel into the city’s first mayoral runoff election. Lightfoot said she’ll work to promote neighborhood redevelopment, rebuild neighborhood schools and back Democratic governor nominee J.B. Pritzker’s push for a graduated income tax.

She notes that a recent study showed that on the West Side, the life expectancy plummets to 69 years, compared with 85 years for someone living in the Loop, seven “L” stops away. She lauded a group called West Side United, which she said came up with a plan to “significantly improve the quality of life and the life expectancy in those neighborhoods.”

In a Sun-Times interview, she came out against Rahm's planned $95M police academy, which she calls "an edifice to policing in the middle of one of the most economically distressed neighborhoods in our city."

She's also critical of the way the mayor has closed all the high schools in Englewood as well as National Teachers Academy (NTA), and blames Emanuel for hiring Barbara Byrd-Bennett as schools CEO without doing the diligence to know her track record as a "crook...trying to line her personal pocket."

If she pursues this line of attack, she will need a strategy that directs blows not only at the mayor, but at Paul Vallas as well. Vallas, Mayor Daley's former schools CEO, has a similar track record of school closings and replacing closed public schools with privately-run charters. He also is the former partner of Gary Solomon, Byrd-Bennett's accomplice. Going after Vallas as well as Rahm and former top-cop Garry McCarthy will be a necessary piece of campaign strategy for Team Lightfoot if they are to get her into a runoff with the mayor.

The big question remains: Can Lightfoot be the candidate who can finally rally enough unified support from progressives, unions, and within black and Latino communities to elevate herself from the pack and give Rahm a run for his money? Definitely possible.

 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

We'll be talking about the upcoming mayor's race and more Chicago politics tomorrow on Hitting Left with another potential mayoral candidate, Ra Joy.  Tune in at 11am CT on WLPN 105.5 FM Streaming at www.lumpenradio.com. Download the app Podcast on iTunes.

Vallas wanted Rahm to hire him to "fix" the Byrd-Bennett mess

Did Paul Vallas think we'd forget that he was Gary Solomon's partner? Former schools CEO Vallas, who, has already run losing campaigns for Governor (2002) and with Pat Quinn for Lt. Governor (2014), partnered with Solomon in forming Synesi Associates. Synesi was one of the indicted companies that hired Barbara Byrd-Bennett as a consultant, in return for her support in obtaining millions of dollars in CPS no-bid contracts.

It was Vallas who taught Solomon and many of the rest of his Chicago crew, the ropes in one of the great hustles of public schools ever. It often included placing Vallas underlings in district administrative jobs around the country, in exchange for lucrative consulting contracts, often to provide expensive, but worthless professional development (like SUPES) for district principals and teachers. Solomon, who once claimed to be using the "Vallas model", took Vallas' ball and ran with it, offering illegal kickbacks directly to colluding school officials.

When Vallas was Mayor Daley's hand-picked schools CEO, kickbacks for consulting contracts were common occurrences in Chicago schools.

Now Solomon and Byrd-Bennett are both doing time. Vallas is running for mayor against a weakened but still top-dog in the race, Rahm Emanuel. He tells the Tribune that he had the plan on how to control the mess caused by Solomon and BBB. Only Rahm, having brought the corrupt pair in to CPS in the first place, wasn't about the compound the fracture by hiring complicit, former Daley-guy, Vallas.

From Trib's Bill Ruthhart:

It turns out, though, Vallas has his own story of being rejected by Emanuel that left some lingering hard feelings. In 2015, when soon-to-be-indicted Barbara Byrd-Bennett left as CPS CEO amid a kickback scandal, Vallas said he called the administration to offer his services to help stabilize the district.

Those overtures, though, were rejected, Vallas said. Emanuel, whose campaign declined to comment on the matter, ended up tabbing Forrest Claypool as the next schools chief. He, too, left amid a scandal after facing a watchdog’s allegations he “orchestrated a full-blown cover-up” over a clouted legal contract.

“I was told that I did not pass the loyalty test. And, of course, I proceeded to tell everyone I know about that, because it really pissed me off,” Vallas said. “I knew what that was: It’s not about being loyal to the cause or the mission, it’s about being loyal to the individual. It’s all about politics first, and everything else takes a back seat. I didn’t forget that.”

From Sun-Times' Fran Spielman:

Notoriously thin-skinned, Vallas also tried to explain away the close ties he developed with now-convicted education consultant Gary Solomon.

Solomon worked with Vallas at schools in Philadelphia and New Orleans. In Chicago, he’s better known for master-minding a contract kickback scheme with then-Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett. Both Solomon and Byrd-Bennett are now in prison.

“Gary was the vice-president for Princeton Review, one of the largest education service firms in the country. They did business with hundreds of superintendents,” Vallas said.

“I’m not the one who gave Gary Solomon a $20 million, no-bid contract.”

True and yet...

Where's the progressive coalition in Chicago's race for mayor?

Who will get the anti-Rahm vote?

The thing I worry about is that the Chicago mayor's race will be an expensive governor's race redux without a progressive/left coalition ready or willing to back an anti-machine candidate strong enough to take advantage of Rahm Emanuel's obvious vulnerabilities and at least make it to a runoff.

The Sanders-left seemed to have gone underground leading up to the gov's race, leaving us with tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum and tweedle-Pritzker to choose from. One unimaginable scenario in the mayor's race has the unions and community groups rallying behind Rahm or Vallas as the winnable lesser of evils.

The expensive part of the race was already assured when perennial candidate Willie Wilson gave his own campaign $100K, thus erasing all state-imposed fundraising limits. Not that there was any doubt, but now MRE and his growing field of challengers will be able to raise unlimited amounts of money. Of course, this favors Rahm and big-money candidates like Paul Vallas and Garry McCarthy just as it favored billionaires J.B. Pritzker and Bruce Rauner in the gov primary.

Natasha Korecki writes in Politico:

This time, as viable candidates line up to challenge Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2019 and slice up vote totals, there’s a prevailing theory: a runoff election already looks like an inevitability. Emanuel is sure to be one of the two top candidates who make it to the second round. 

So then the question really becomes this: who in the field (announced and unannounced) can take out the mayor in a one-to-one matchup? Three years ago, Garcia spent the opening weeks of the runoff on the road working to raise more money. The cash-flush Emanuel pounced to quickly quell Garcia’s momentum with oppo research dumps and subsequent negative TV ads. 

The political dynamics have dramatically changed for the mayor in this post-Laquan McDonald era. But if Emanuel squeaks into a run-off and is still the better-funded incumbent to beat, who is best suited to exploit his vulnerabilities, particularly within the African American community?

The growing list of candidates will badly divide the anti-Rahm votes, leaving him in position to win the opening round with only 30% of the votes. The word is that Vallas and McCarthy have already cut a deal, assuring that the one with the least votes will back the other in a runoff election.

Troy on Chicago Tonight

My choice so far, but campaign long-shot, Troy LaRaviere, did a nice job telling Chicago Tonight's Phil Ponce why he wanted the job.

As always, Troy was sharp on ed issues.

He spoke out against the privatization of school janitorial services, charter schools and the lack of sufficient funding for special education. He was especially critical of the use of what he said were excessive standardized tests to judge school and student performance.

 He also made it clear that the pension issue couldn't be resolved without a progressive tax and revenue system that didn't put the entire burden on the poor while ignoring those "who have more money than they can spend in their lifetime".

But aside from being able to garner black and Latino community support, unite the progressive movement (including the CTU, SEIU and other unions) behind his campaign and raise a hefty number of millions in his war chest (he told Ponce, he hasn't started fundraising yet), Troy's team needs to develop a solid campaign strategy. He's got to convince the unions and other potential backers that he can run with the big dogs. He's also got to take on more than Rahm, but Vallas/McCarthy as well, if he is even to make it into a runoff. The danger is that Vallas, the least vetted of the candidates, will skate unscathed into second place.

Troy has been a two-time guest on Hitting Left. Here's a podcast of an earlier appearance.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Samantha Eyler-Driscoll

Senior Editor at the Stigler Center and its publication ProMarket, and one of six members of the ProMarket editorial board, I have opposed since its inception the proposal by my colleague Luigi Zingales to provide a platform to Steve Bannon at the Stigler Center, as well as the use of ProMarket to promote the provision of that platform, on grounds that it normalizes white nationalism and implicates us in the concrete violence wrought on American lives every day by that ideology. -- Resignation statement

Donald Trump

"I wouldn't say I'm a feminist..." -- Interview with Piers Morgan 

Janelle Monae

 “We are also daughters, wives, mothers, sisters and human beings. We come in peace, but we mean business.” -- Grammys

Tiffany Kidd, Ballou H.S. math teacher

“I feel like we’re now in a culture where we’re forced to fail students, where we used to be able to provide solutions.There’s been anger and frustration.” -- Washington Post

Chicago State board member Nicholas Gowen 

...said he was taken aback by Vallas’ resignation. “Quite frankly, I’m a little floored,” Gowen said. “If he desires to run for mayor, then of course he can’t keep this position, but that should have been made clear early on if that was his desire. I find it hard to believe this was a lark.” --  Tribune

Recess is the fourth R https://t.co/4176f7JKJ6

— John Merrow (@John_Merrow) January 29, 2018

What Paul Vallas learned early about the school reform biz

Rauner gives Vallas fat contract to fix Chicago State.

“High-performing individuals with decades of specialized experience and knowledge do not limit their ability to contribute to the greater good." -- Paul Vallas

Paul Vallas was never an educator, but he was a quick study. He learned from the start of his stint as Mayor Daley's schools CEO in 1995, the power of government contracting and that there was good money to be made in the school reform business. He also came to believe that the future of school reform belonged not to the system's bureaucrats, but to the outsider corporate reformers, wealthy, powerful, self-interested billionaires and outside consultants who they patronized.

After Daley gave him the boot from Chicago and through a series of unremarkable stints as district school chiefs in Philly, New Orleans and Bridgeport, Vallas assembled a team of loyalists (mostly former Chicago school bureaucrats) and developed a strategy for injecting himself and his brand into struggling urban school districts, in order to do "the greater good". The game plan involved using political clout to place his lieutenants into power in selected districts and in return, having them bring in the big-ticket Vallas Group to "reform" district schools from the top-down. It also included a heavy dose of replacing public schools with privately-run charters and weakening or completely eliminating union collective-bargaining agreements.

It was a plan that included perks and kick-backs to district leaders as in the case of former Vallas partner Gary Solomon, who along with former Chicago schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, is now doing heavy prison time on fraud and corruption charges in the Chicago SUPES scandal.

Byrd-Bennett worked as a consultant and lead teacher for The Supes Academy and worked as a consultant for Synesi Associates, the consulting company founded by Vallas and Solomon. Vallas not only hired Solomon and his companies when he worked in Philadelphia, but brought Solomon with him to New Orleans.

From an earlier Sun-Times story:

Urging that the then-newly formed Synesi be hired in 2007, Vallas told officials the New Orleans school system didn’t have anyone who could do the work, according to documents from the New Orleans district. And in his “justification for an external contractor” letter, he urged that Solomon’s company be hired without seeking competitive bids.

Sun-Times reporter Dan Mihalopoulos broke a story Friday, exposing the unlikely relationship between Vallas, the erstwhile Chicago Democrat Party machine operative, and billionaire Republican and future governor of IL, Bruce Rauner. Actually, a bit of old news. But he evaded the whole Vallas/Solomon connection.

Nearly seven years ago — when Rauner wasn’t yet a politician, just a wealthy private investor with an interest in public education and a friend in the mayor’s office — Vallas corresponded with and met with him, offering to help create what he described as an “ambitious new school district” in Chicago.

In three letters to Rauner in 2010 and 2011, Vallas offered to work for with Rauner and city officials. Vallas said that school “buildings would be provided to the charters at no cost.”

“Concerning our potential partnership, I would welcome the opportunity to contract with you to assist with your school reform efforts in Chicago,” Vallas wrote to Rauner in February 2011, when Vallas was the top schools official in New Orleans.

 “You once told me that if I ever decided to launch a domestic education business, you would be willing to invest,” Vallas told Rauner. “Based on my research and years in the education field, I firmly believe this is a can’t miss.”

Vallas now claims that nothing came of the plans he and Rauner discussed for the Chicago schools and that his offers to assist CPS, "were rebuffed, as leadership chose to follow Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s vision for the district."

A lot has changed since Vallas first solicited Rauner. Vallas lost his bid to become Lt. Gov of IL and in the process, became a factor in Pat Quinn's election loss to Rauner in the governor's race.

Under the15-month contract Rauner has given Vallas to lead an economic recovery at Chicago State, he is still allowed to continue his private work with the Vallas Group.

Here's what Mihalopoulos' story left out...

Actually BBB's "vision" was Gary Solomon's vision and Solomon's vision was Vallas'. Same dreams but different beds. Solomon’s consulting company advertised that it had “the exclusive rights to Paul Vallas’ model of education reform.” In Philadelphia, he marketed the consulting company as using the “Paul Vallas method of school reform.”

In Chicago, Solomon used his former partner's strategy of installing BBB as schools CEO and then kicking-back to her after she gave SUPES and $20M contract to do principal training.

Solomon later said he used Vallas’ name without permission and it was a “mistake.”

But Vallas had used a similar approach in Rockford, St. Louis, Philly, Rochester, Peoria and other districts and greased the wheels for the Synesi group. Synesi landed two no-bid contracts worth nearly $893,000 in New Orleans during Vallas’ time running the Recovery School District from 2007 to 2011.

Vallas calls his involvement with Solomon in New Orleans a “non-story.” He also says, “New Orleans honored me with the key to the city, while those involved in CPS are about to be locked up.”

He's right and this says a lot about our justice system and media's reluctance to make the connection.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Tom Balanoff

SEIU Local 1 President Tom Balanoff 

“Your recent singling-out of  [Hannah] Jubeh highlights a sexist mindset toward women that has no place in politics, the labor movement or anywhere else in society. It denotes a hostility toward women who refuse to ‘fall in line’ with their male counterparts. … We demand an apology for your unacceptable behavior.” -- Letter to AFL-CIO President Michael Carrigan

Rex Tillerson

"I checked. I’m fully intact." -- AP Wire 

Paul Vallas to Bruce Rauner

 “Concerning our potential partnership, I would welcome the opportunity to contract with you to assist with your school reform efforts in Chicago....“You once told me that if I ever decided to launch a domestic education business, you would be willing to invest. Based on my research and years in the education field, I firmly believe this is a can’t miss.” -- Sun-Times 

King County Executive Dow Constantine

 “Being a billionaire right-wing donor should not give you license to take a sledgehammer to the foundation of equal opportunity. No, it should not. But here she is. American prosperity, really American democracy, are built on the bedrock of universal education.” -- At DeVos protest