Jonathan Pelto reports that Connecticut State Commissioner Stefan Pryor, Paul Vallas, and the Bridgeport Board of Education are being sued for illegally hiring Superintendent Paul Vallas.
Pelto writes:
“The CTMirror story goes on to report, “State law requires all superintendents in Connecticut to be certified by the State Department of Education, which requires a candidate have a master’s degree plus 30 credits in courses relating to becoming a superintendent and eight years of teaching or administrative experience. These requirements can be waived for up to one year by the state’s education commissioner while the candidate completes an “educational leadership program” approved by the 11-person State Board of Education.”
“However, as Wait, What? readers know, when the five members of the Bridgeport Board of Education loyal to Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch voted to make Vallas the permanent superintendent and give him a three-year contract, Vallas had NOT completed his probationary period AND had NOT completed the mandated training program. In fact, he hadn’t even started the training program. Making matters worse, it appears the State Board of Education hasn’t even approved a training program that Vallas could take.”
Vallas, of course, served as superintendent in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. But he does not have the credentials required by state law in Connecticut. He is in his 15th month as Bridgeport’s superintendent. The board voted 5-4 last month too extend his contract at $234,000 a year.
The law says that a board may hire a superintendent for one year who lacks the required credentials but no longer. One if the dissident board members warned that what they were doing was illegal.
Pelto followed up here with additional detail.
Bridgeport has a problem.
Stay tuned.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good Morning- We should all be checking what the qualifications are for Commissioner of Education in our state, and file law suits when appropriate.
Marge
It seems that it is becoming more and more irrelevant to follow laws or morals. How do you enforce laws when those who are to enforce are complicit in making sure the laws are broken?
Read Fred Klonsky’s blog: http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/conspiracy-theories/
This is why it is so important that no one be above the law.
If we are not careful, history may show that the American republican experiment ended with the privatization of public education.
At the end of the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, Ben Franklin was asked what had transpired and he famously answered:
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
Vallas is qualified for one thing, and that is destroying public education.
I wonder, would even Arne Duncan be able to fill this position given those qualifications?
Duncan would not be qualified to work in most school districts –as a superintendent, a principal or as a teacher. He just has a bachelor’s degree in sociology.
For the record, Vallas was never the superintendent of Chicago. He was the CEO, therefore not required to have ANY educational background.
And to this day he still doesn’t….his circus performs the same tricks everywhere it goes.
He is the epitome of a bloviating blowhard buffoon.
Listen to Karen! She really knows her stuff!…
The Illinois School Code indicates that superintendents must have a type 75 certificate, but a CEO need only have “the skills of school operations and school finance.” That just applies to cities with a population that exceeds 500,000 i.e., Chicago (or districts under a Financial Oversight Panel).
In contrast to the very detailed education and experience requirements necessary for obtaining a type 75 (administrative) certificate for superintendents, the qualifications of CEOs are very nebulous. The IL School Code says nothing about how those “skills” are to be measured. So by this obtuse standard, any businessman or public transportation authority qualifies. Thus, the three CEOs of CPS that were appointed by Mayor Daley included first Paul Vallas, who had been the Budget Director for the mayor, then Arne Duncan, who had been Deputy Chief of Staff under Vallas, as well as Ron Huberman, who had been President of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). Hey, budgets, staff, public transit and schools… I see the connections. As a CPS student, I took CTA buses to get to my high school.
Our next mayor, Rahm Emanuel, went to appointing Broad affiliated CEOs. At this point, I’m not sure which is worse…
Wow. What a tangled web they weave.
Enough illegality by school boards and their general counsel’s. They are always breaking the law. Now let us make them pay the price for that illegal behavior. Maybe the board and general counsel should be prosecuted for illegal acts.
This name that name he was for all intents and purposes the superintendent and helped to destroy Chicago with Daley, Barack and Michelle Obama. Then Duncan came and he helped to furthur the destruction. Duncan, while superintendent or CEO, also lied to the California Legislature to promote mayoral control. When Rod Paige lied about his lack of dropout in Houston he lost his job, I do not see why Duncan also does not lose his job for lying to promote mayoral control in a state not his own and he certainly had access to the 1994 Chicago Budget which showed that there was a surplus not a $1.8 billion defecit as he stated in his letter to the California Legislature. I have the letters and financial pages by the way. They are all crooks and liars.
So what happened to all that money? There are many still unanswered questions about deceased (in 2009) CPS Board President Michael Scott’s charitable donations & credit card expenditures. (Google stories in both Chicago Sun-Time & Chicago Tribune.)
Great question! I’d love to know what happened with the investigation over the improprieties of Board members, too. Former Board President Rufus Williams was implicated as well, when Arne Duncan was CEO, so the investigation should not have halted after the suicide of Michael Scott –which suggests a lot to some about his guilt, plus they hired a service to sweep for wire taps during the investigation.
Substance News probably has the most detailed reports, but I couldn’t find anything recent there on this matter. The latest I found was dated Jan, 2011 and that was in regard to how the IG’s report was incomplete and lacked transparency because people were not named. Was the ball dropped after that?
I’ve said it here before: we will get nowhere with these megalomaniacal “reformers” until we lawyer up. Hooray!