Barbara Byrd Bennett, who served as CEO of Chicago Public Schools for Rahm Emanuel, pleaded guilty in a scheme to profit from a no-bid contract.
The former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, will plead guilty to charges in an indictment released Thursday that alleges she steered more than $23 million in no-bid contracts from CPS to her former employer, authorities said Thursday.
U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon made the announcement at a news conference Thursday. He declined to discuss the details of any plea agreement, including possible prison time.
Fardon said Byrd-Bennett and others “entered into a scheme to secretly profit from schools.”
Byrd-Bennett — Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked choice — becomes CPS’ first chief executive officer to face criminal charges in connection with her job. Federal authorities have been investigating the most controversial of those contracts — a $20.5 million no-bid CPS deal for principal training, the largest in recent memory — for more than a year.
Receiving that contract in 2013 to train principals was The SUPES Academy, owned by former Niles West High School dean Gary Solomon and his former student Thomas Vranas. It generated controversy at the time because SUPES was not known for training principals while many other, respected organizations did that very job. The deal continued to draw criticism as some educators questioned the quality of SUPES’ training.
Solomon, 47, of Wilmette, and Vranas, 34, of Glenview, also were charged, as were SUPES and another company they owned that was given CPS contracts, Synesi Associates LLC.
Solomon’s attorney suggested Thursday his client would plead guilty in the case as well.
The feds allege in a 43-page indictment that Byrd-Bennett, 66, and Solomon set up a kickback scheme, detailed in emails, in which Byrd-Bennett would get 10 percent of any CPS contracts she steered to SUPES and Synesi. The feds don’t allege how much money, if any, was paid to Byrd-Bennett.
In one email discussing the alleged scheme, Byrd-Bennett wrote: “I have tuition to pay and casinos to visit (:”
“I think those emails reflect greed,” Fardon said.
The scheme started right around the time Byrd-Bennett started her job as chief education officer at CPS, the post she held before becoming CEO, the feds allege.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why?Why?!
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Wonder when the Feds will be coming for Deasy? His problems are also around potential bid-rigging.
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An old fashioned kickback scheme
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No kidding.
Read a PDF of the full indictment:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/ct-barbara-byrd-bennett-indictment-20151008-htmlstory.html
PAGE 6 (of the document, not the PDF counter)
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” 2. .. the defendants herein, together with other parties both known and unknown to the grand jury, knowingly devised, intended to devise, and participated to defraud and obtain money and property from CPS by means of materially false pretenses, representations, and promises, and by concealment of material facts, to defraud and deprive CPS and the CBOE of their right to the honest servies of BYRD-BENNETT through bribery and kicbacks.
“3. It was part of a scheme that defendant Barbara Byrd-Bennett solicited and agreed to accept bribes and kickbacks in the form of personal benefits from, and future employment with GARY SOLOMON, THOMAS VRANUS, and the SUPES ENTITIES, in exchange for acts in BYRD-BENNET’s official CPS capacity that were designed to promote and bring about the awarding of contracts to the SUPES ENTITIES.
“4. It was a further part of the scheme that on or about April 29, 2012,
defendant BARBARA BYRD-BENNETT sent GARY SOLOMON an email in which SOLOMON stated in part:
” ‘When this stint at CPS is done and your are ready to re- re- re- retire, we have a spot waiting for you, hopefully with even more work and opp (opportunty / ies?). In the meantime, if we can figure out a way to do deep principal PD (professional development classes) at CPS, I can find a good home for (friends of BYRD-BENNETT), and others, and make sure principles (sic) in CPS get kick ass training and kick ass and kick ass coaching.’ ”
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… and on it goes for pages and pages of minute detail of Byrd-Bennett’s criminal conduct.
Here’s another bit from an email from SOLOMON to BYRD-BENNET, where SOLOMON gushes about how — on DAY ONE of her return SUPES/Synesi — how richly BYRD-BENNETT and two unnamed relatives of Byrd-Bennett will be rewarded for Byrd-Bennett’s actions as Chicago Public Schools CEO that led to tens of millions of contracts being awarded to Gary Solomon’s SUPES/Synesi.
PAGE 19 (of the document, not the PDF counter)
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GARY SOLOMON email to BYRD-BENNETT:
“Like we have discussed, we have accounts that, upon withdrawal, we will pay down the taxes and distribute. You can distribute to (BYRD-BENNETT Relative A and BYRD-BENNETT Relative A) as you deem appropriate. It is our assumption that the distribution will serve as a signing bonus upon your return to SUPES / Synesi.
“If you only (re-) join (SUPES/Synesi) for the day, you will be the highest paid person on the Planet for that day. Regardless, it will be paid on DAY ONE.”
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Read the whole thing:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/ct-barbara-byrd-bennett-indictment-20151008-htmlstory.html
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Any person put in place by Rahm, is suspect!
The Millions syphoned from public education during this endless decade of privatization has stolen unbelievable educational opportunities from children, resources from teachers and schools.
How can this go on?
Where are the public investigations, public hearings, TV crews, the NATION?
Oh, yes, Billionaires call the shots and bought everyone.
Total Control!
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As a vendor for the NYSED and NYCDOE for over thirty years without incident UNTIL I reported MASSIVE procurement fraud No bid contracts..bidding with two companies..fabricated documents to eliminate bidding..OVERCHARGING districts as much as $187,000 on one job with forged documents MILLIONS and MILLIONS of school tax fraud and abuse…ALL documented and reported and I am blacklisted and eliminated from bidding for NOT keeping my mouth shut as I was told.. Maybe the Chicago Tribune will investigate NYSED and NYCDOE???
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Should we assume the unwillingness to discuss the plea deal is based on what has become precedent…..no jail time for the politically connected?
The second article at the provided link, makes the case that teachers will lose their jobs
as a result of the criminality, exposed in the investigation of the SUPES contract. Teachers had no influence on the decision and no part in the fraud but, they and defenseless students suffer the consequences.
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That’s my question also. You can haul in big money and walk, but if your data doesn’t pass muster you lose your job.
Isn’t Paul Vallas also connected with SUPES? Did he incorporate it?
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Looting, looting, looting the public sector to enrich cronies and the private sector, the big story of the last 35 years.
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Is this what these Broad Academy CEO/Supts learn their as the business model?
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Meant..”learn there as their business model”….so overcome at how similar these low down Broad toadies operate.
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As they say, “The apple does not fall far from the tree…”! Hired by Rahm???? Hmmmmm
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“… a scheme to secretly profit from schools.” Indeed, there’s a big swath of so-called education reform bandwidth right there: straight-up, old school theft
Alas, to her presumed chagrin, Ms. Byrd Bennett seems destined to take a fall for her secret schemes, while the workaday lootings of so-called reform continue on in plain sight. How frustrating it must be for her, to see so many others legally gorging on the remains of the public school system, while she gets pinched for stealing chump change.
It’s one step closer to the inevitable moment when “education reformer” finally becomes synonymous in the public mind with grifter, grafter, scammer, flim flam man, con artist, snake oil salesman.
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In the press all we hear are “crickets.”
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And Rahm and CPS can’t throw her under the bus fast enough. It would be funny if it weren’t so destructive.
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Yes, we could enjoy some schadenfreude over this except that we know that real children and real communities continue to be shortchanged because of this kind of destructive, for-profit chicanery.
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Hoe all the sups in the country are taking note. I’ve gotten used to saying Bern, baby, Bern. This time, burn, baby, burn.
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I don’t understand why this wasn’t taken into consideration when she was hired in Chicago:
“While nothing in her background appears to have been the subject of a federal investigation like the one underway in Chicago, her tenure in Cleveland was marred by controversy that resulted in wide criticism and a state financial audit.
From 1998 to 2006 she was the CEO of Cleveland Public Schools, the first such title they had ever handed out there.
During that time, there was a report that the Cleveland Public Schools had inflated attendance figures; Byrd-Bennett fired 800 teachers but was found in a TV investigation to have kept on 206 spare bus drivers at a cost of $3.5 million a year.
She enjoyed first class travel and an expensive on-the-road lifestyle paid by private donors, a practice that resulted in a State of Ohio audit, no charges of misconduct but a recommendation of tighter district financial controls.
It was a pair of needed tax levies that failed and a $30 million deficit that sunk her time in Cleveland. She resigned in 2006.”
http://abc7chicago.com/news/byrd-bennett-faced-controversy-in-cleveland-school-system/664595/
It’s like how you see a corrupt charter chain start in Florida and then expand to Ohio, and no one seems to look at the Florida record, or how a corrupt charter chain starts in Ohio and then expands into Pennsylvania. It isn’t 1910. This information is widely available. It’s not like if something happens in Ohio there is NO WAY for Illinois to find out about it until it’s too late. I understand a bad hire, but why the same bad hire over and over?
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Chiara: good catch.
And don’t be surprised when the rheephormsters try to make this a twofer: got their “value-added” out of Byrd Bennett and then whine and complain that “public school” educrats like her is precisely why public schools need to be turned into charters.
😎
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It’s like they are rewarding bad performance by failing up everytime. Boy, the damage we allow bad organization like the Eli Broad super academies spawn. If they come from there, they are already compromised to do whatever to achieve their goals. Ethics, law, decency be damn.
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And the dominoes continue to fall. There will be more because evil cannot resist being evil.
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Good. May she go to jail. Meanwhile, no one is investigating Broad Academy of Scammers?
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Now if the attorney general would go after Deasy and the other criminals who fleeced LAUSD,
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/06/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/03/lausd-and-utla–connecting-the-dots-of-blattant-corruption.html
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John Deasy, Jean Claude Brizzard, Barbara Byrd Bennett. Who runs the Broad Academy – Tony Soprano?
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Great comment, Christine…laughing out loud.
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He is their personnel director, no referrals needed.
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Are we surprised at this malfeasance among supporters of charters? This type of behavior is widespread. It is to Chicago’s credit that they exposed these illegal activities now. Los Angeles school district was and is engaged in these types of activities and they still haven’t exposed it . How long does it take the FBI to expose activities that a blind person could have seen?How long will they allow the fleecing of public education and false accusations and widespread denial of civil rights of veteran teachers go on? The shock of this dismantling of public education should be over, now the repair and exposure of criminal behavior should be the agenda.
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Don’t give the Tribune any credit, they are only reacting to the Feds. All this looting of public assets was and is pointed out by the CTU and in the alternative press for years – the biggest criminals have had nothing happen to them – David Vitale, Tim Cawley and others.
The whole AUSL turnaround model is a multiple no bid contract conflict of interest scandal. http://progressillinois.com/quick-hits/content/2014/05/19/chicago-education-coalition-calls-inspector-generals-investigate-possi
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What a lovely role model for our students to look up to and emulate…sickening.
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The corporate buyout of United States has become so rampant that the FBI needs a special division just to handle it. The participants in these crimes have become so callous to their crimes that feel free to write about it as if it is nothing to hide. The FBI doesn’t have the time or resources to investigate all these thieves, they just get information from caring people that is so damning that they have to investigate and prosecute, a shut and closed case.
Until we actually prosecute one of the billionaire corporate moguls that are controlling all of this corruption in Politics and Education our Democracy will suffer.
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Exactly.. Everyday I marvel at the scams, the lairs and scoundrels. i an ‘anything goes’ culture. I experienced that in NYC when I witnessed principals who were lawless. hat goes on at the top, is found int he microcosms at the bottom.
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