The former CEO of Chicago public schools, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, pleaded guilty to charges of participating in a kickback in exchange for a $23 million contract for SUPES Academy, her former employer.
Prosecutors recommended a reduced sentence of 7 1/2 years in prison in return for her cooperation. Her sentencing comes later.
Further down in the story, one reads that Mayor Rahm Emanuel concealed his knowledge of the deal. Even more interesting, Byrd-Bennett’s co-conspirator is a close ally of Rahm Emanuel. He recommended Emanuel’s first CEO, J.C. Brizard, then recommended Byrd-Bennett. Emanuel claimed that his administration asked “hard questions” about the no-bid contract before it was approved.
This story illustrates what is wrong about mayoral control: no checks or balances. A perfect set-up for corruption.
“A federal indictment unsealed Thursday accused Byrd-Bennett in a massive scheme with the co-owners of SUPES Academy, a company she worked for before joining CPS. The federal probe was revealed in April after CPS acknowledged receiving grand jury subpoenas seeking an array of documents on the SUPES contract. Soon after, Byrd-Bennett took a paid leave of absence and then resigned in May.
“SUPES owners Gary Solomon, a consultant with ties to the Emanuel administration, and partner Thomas Vranas also were charged in the 23-count indictment, as was SUPES and another education consulting company the two ran. Solomon and Vranas are scheduled to be arraigned at 2 p.m. Wednesday, records show.
“The heart of the indictment involved more than $23 million in no-bid contracts awarded to SUPES to train CPS principals and other administrators beginning in 2012. A CPS committee set up to evaluate no-bid contracts initially balked at awarding SUPES a noncompetitive deal but less than a month later approved the plan, records show.
“According to the charges, Solomon agreed to kick back 10 percent of the total value of any contracts awarded to SUPES while Byrd-Bennett held the No. 2 post with CPS. She was later elevated by Emanuel to CEO.
“Much of the indictment centers on emails sent between Solomon and Byrd-Bennett that seem to make no effort to conceal the alleged kickback scheme. In one message, Byrd-Bennett even implied she needed cash because she had “tuition to pay and casinos to visit,” according to the charges.
“In a December 2012 message, Solomon assured Byrd-Bennett that trust accounts had been set up in the names of two of her young relatives — identified by sources as twin grandsons — and that they would be funded with a combined $254,000 as a “signing bonus” for her help in obtaining the contracts.
“The cash would be hers once she stepped down from her public post and rejoined his firm, Solomon wrote in the email….
“While Byrd-Bennett became the public face of the scandal, the Tribune has reported previously that Solomon’s ties to the Emanuel administration go back to the beginning of Emanuel’s tenure in office, predating the arrival of Byrd-Bennett. In fact, Solomon helped recruit Emanuel’s first schools CEO, Jean-Claude Brizard, at the request of the mayor-elect’s transition team in February 2011.
“Solomon went on to recommend Byrd-Bennett, who was the lead trainer at SUPES when CPS hired her as chief education officer in April 2012.
“Emanuel and his aides have maintained that the mayor’s office had nothing to do with the SUPES contract. When asked in April if his administration had any role at all in the SUPES contract, Emanuel told reporters, “No, you obviously know that by all the information available. And so the answer to that is no.”
“On Monday, Emanuel acknowledged for the first time that his office had prior knowledge of the deal, saying his staff “asked some very hard questions” about the no-bid contract before the Chicago school board approved it.
“The comments came on the same day the Tribune reported the mayor’s office was more involved in the $20.5 million contract than previously disclosed and was fighting the release of public records that could shed more light on how the deal came to be.
“As part of that fight, the Tribune in June sued the city under the state Freedom of Information Act after the mayor’s office redacted or withheld about two dozen emails emanating from Emanuel’s office.
“While much of the picture remains missing, the email logs and documents the administration did release show frequent communication among key Emanuel aides, Chicago school leaders and the heads of the SUPES Academy consulting firm in the months, weeks and days leading up to Emanuel’s hand-picked school board awarding the contract.”
We are left to wonder: What did Mayor Emanuel know and when did he know it?
An afterthought: I served on two different boards with Barbara BB. I thought she was smart and honorable person. I liked her. I am sad for her. She swam with sharks, and she lost her moral center. Very sad.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hooray…some justice at last. Hope Deasy is next.
You read my mind.
But of course.
“Further down in the story, one reads that Mayor Rahm Emanuel concealed his knowledge of the deal.”
Okay then, isn’t it a slam dunk? Shouldn’t he be in a cell now too?
And what about Deasy and Rahm?
She’s college and career ready!
One article said Rahm described her as the “best and brightest!”
Does any other field run phrases into the ground like education? I’m so sick of both of those phrases.
Oh yes – automotive engineering has tons of phrases and “buzz words”. For example, instead of saying “issue”, we need to say “opportunity”. We also overuse the phrase “best practice”, which, ironically, isn’t necessarily the best approach depending on what we are engineering to. Oh – and a lot of best practices are developed using data!
The difference though, is that even though this data can be skewed, we can recommend to the program team to go against certain “best practices” with other supporting data that’s customer-centric to build a good car. We are also currently discussing revamping these “best practices” because they aren’t really the “best”, but are a good basis as a means for initial automotive architecture development – especially, too, due to our advances in technology and modeling software, virtual reality rooms, common sense, customer complaints/data found online, etc.
The sooner the American public realizes that our 21st century school reform dwarfs the California gold rush of 1849 the better off we’ll all be!
fish >rot head
fish >rot<> head
Barbara Byrd-Bennett: Broad Superintendent Academy, March 2006–2009:
At this rate, Broad will have more alumni in the pokey than controlling school systems.
Yes…hopefully Deasy is next.
Indeed. Anyone aware of a compiled list of Broadies who have been found guilty of crimes? It would be useful information for us here in Broad’s hometown.
I too have wondered about this.
They should conduct a thorough investigation of Rahm Emanuel, and the citizens should push for it. If he is guilty, he should join Byrd-Bennett in the ‘big house.’
Good.
How long till someone asks Rahm’s friend Solomon what the hell he was thinking when he suggested Rahm hire (rescue) Brizzard, an incompetent loser who had just been evicted from Rochester by their elected school board who were looking hard at revoking the remainder of his contract so they wouldn’t have to pay him. http://failingschools.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/94-6-no-confidence-and-the-following-storm/
I knew BB in the 90s when she ran the Chancellor’s District in NYC – she was highly competent and a pleasure to work with … sad …
That’s interesting…I wonder if this is reflective of a larger culture among the reform crowd. They see so many truly rich people and other people getting outrageously rich by doing very little. And they work their butts off and feel entitled to get what seems to them to be a pittance compared to what the powers above are taking from the system. So it no longer seems ethically questionable.
I recall thinking this about some of the Enron guys. One of them — I think it was the Accounting officer — seemed to get most of the blame without getting all that much money. He came in at the end and his role was to manipulate the financial reports that allowed other people to take millions in compensation while the company was essentially going bankrupt. He got rewarded for this, not nearly in the amount that the “big boys” did, and yet all the risk was his. But he was probably a guy that in a different culture, would never have done what he did. But it all seemed acceptable.
The suicide note of one of the smaller Enron players, reportedly included his concern about loyalty to his managers. He should have known there’s no loyalty at the top and there’s no expectation of loyalty in return.
If Byrd-Bennett can implicate others, I hope she squealed like a pig for her deal.
That sounds familiar to the story of an accountant (she’s a personal friend) who worked for Columbia-HCA Hospitals in Nashville, TN. Sen. Bill Frist’s family merged 2 hospitals to form one of the first for-profit hospital conglomerates in the 1990’s. CEO of Columbia-HCA was now FL. Gov. Rick Scott. She said they were told by management repeatedly to overcharge Medicare. Scott so hated the government that gouging taxpayers would be a form of retribution.
She was so worried that she would be implicated for fraud that she took early retirement. Columbia-HCA was charged by the Justice Dept for fraud & paid the largest fine in history in 2001. Scott got off scott free in spite of his complicity in massive fraud.
http://www.theledger.com/article/20100819/NEWS/8195066
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/hca-whistleblower-revives-claim-that-scott-knew-of-fraud/2200916
She was dealing with a lot of these same people when she was in Detroit and Cleveland though, so who knows how long this has been going on.
mets2006 & NYC public school parent: thank you very much for your comments.
They go in tandem with the last paragraph of the posting by the owner of this blog: “An afterthought: I served on two different boards with Barbara BB. I thought she was smart and honorable person. I liked her. I am sad for her. She swam with sharks, and she lost her moral center. Very sad.”
Barbara Byrd-Bennett did not decide all on her lonesome to become immoral: she hung out with the wrong crowd, aka the heavyweights of self-styled “education reform,” and learned all the wrong things. She is not alone. Rheephorm is toxic.
Remember this the next time the the rheephormsters swarm this blog and declare that they have the moral high ground.
While simultaneously declaring that BBB has nothing to do with them at all in any way whatsoever.
😳
Today, tomorrow and forever clinging desperately to their Marxist axioms:
“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
Groucho is always in their hearts.
😎
I dunno, I work with lawyers – “highly competent and a pleasure to work with” don’t really mean much. Most high-ranking people have very polished social skills, at least when they want to use them – it’s a lot harder getting ahead if you’re a jerk and you piss enough people off that they want to derail you. It’s more a matter of what they use those social skills for. Just because someone is “nice” doesn’t mean they’re a good person.
Your adjectives don’t preclude dishonesty?
Apparently no one told her the golden rule of wink wink is you never talk directly about what it is you expect – had she not written emails dictating what she wanted would she still be facing prison?
If she spends much time in jail I’ll be surprised. She is a non violent first time offender whose opportunity to strike again should be non existent after this.
No children can directly prove they were harmed by her so no tearful parents and children sharing stories of how what she cost them hurt children.
She will get a lesson and spend some time in jail but it really depends how much the judge wants to set an example. Again if it was a significant amount I’d be shocked.
Taxpayers will shed a tear for misspent money, intended for students.
Interesting thing is that some of the Atlanta teachers that were found cheating the standardized test got a similar amount of jail time. So i guess cheating on a test is the same as embezzling funds.
I thought the same thing. The teachers didn’t even really financially benefit from their cheating, except perhaps to keep their jobs.
“Reform” MIGHT have started out with good intentions, but soon the hustlers and grifters gained control of it. I always knew the truth would come out and now it’s happening.
Read The Prize by Dale Russakoff. Everything we predicted has happened. Chris Christie’s chances at the presidency have possibly been destroyed by his “reform” efforts and that makes me happy. (“What do you people want anyway?” asked Christie.
“I want for you to be defeated, you big, ___ ____” said Linda.)
Similar to a mafia don, Mayor Emanuel keeps the crimes below him so others fall if caught. That way it is difficult to impossible to link him to what I think he knew was going on all along, because he gave his approval.
I’m sure the deformers have a job for her (and are paying her legal bills). This little public humiliation will soon be forgotten and she will be rewarded for her efforts.
Good. Now they should investigate RELAY GRE or GSE whatever the heck it is called, and Broad FAKE Academy of Thieves and see what all of its graduates have been up to, what havoc they have wreaked, what deals they made, what paybacks they got, and all the grief and disenfranchisement they have caused to neighborhoods and public schools. Oh, but its the greedy unions, and its all about the kids. Smack my head!
Oh, and let me not forget Wendy Kopp, her thieving husband, Rhee and Teach for Awhile.
Speaking of thieves & scoundrels, there’s more on Mr. Michelle Rhee, Kevin Johnson’s past sex & fraud allegations. ESPN was planning a story on Johnson’s good deeds and last Fri. decided to pull it.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/10/adventures-in-hagiography
“Johnson’s more recent exploits, some as mayor, include intentionally bankrupting a historic black mayor’s conference, flagrant misuse of federal funds, and the installation within his city hall of paid staff members of an aggressively pro-charter school organization, who often failed to disclose their other employer. These revelations, as well as his long history of alleged sexual abuse, have been brought to the nation’s attention by the veteran sportswriter Dave McKenna, who has been meticulously detailing the dealings of Johnson for Deadspin. But even before that, thanks to the dogged reporting of the Sacramento Bee, a paper Johnson has battled with recently, ESPN had to be well aware that the protagonist of its film was not even close to the near-messianic figure he was being made out to be.”
WOW!! Unbelievable!
What I would like to know is how Byrd-Bennett’s sentence compares to what would have potentially been that of the late Beverly Hall and others arrested with her down in Atlanta, GA.
Me too. Another black female in jail while the white guys above her skate.
Roll over Madame Byrd-Bennett & Arne Duncan then tell Paul Tudor Jones II the news!
PUBLIC EDUCATION led by Arne Duncan under OBAMANOMICS has for 7 years doubled down on its own iteration of ZOMBIE E-CON (see Australian Economist\Princeton author John Quiggin’s ZOMBIE ECONOMICS: HOW DEAD IDEAS STILL WALK AMONG US) with its cherry-picking FAILED CHARTER SCHOOLS & PROFIT MAXIMIZING TRADE COLLEGES LIKE THE 55-Campus Corporate Bankruptcy of the CORINTHIAN COLLEGES SCANDAL.
See where we tax-payers covered the obscene profits of “FREE MARKET EDUCATORS” while students were left with federally-guaranteed loans for diplomas that are worthless. There is no corporate bankruptcy protection for students who took federally-backed loans to enrich the SNAKE OIL SALESMEN ARNE DUNCAN & BAIT & SWITCH OBAMA pushed!
We the people need to trim the sails (or sales) of these hucksters of ZOMBIE E-Con policies and politics that have shifted the Commonwealth into the Off-Shore Wealth. The Clinton Foundation’s Outlaw In-law Fast Eddie Mezvinsky (Iowa’s 1st Congressional District should remember his innovative financial fraud years and the victims even if mass media has suffered the usual amnesia) & Fast Eddie’s Son’s Hedge Fund are now in bed with the Clinton Foundation, the DNC, Bait & Switch Obama who has proven himself the Stealth Romney as well as the whole sick ICAHN RAIDER crew on both sides of the 2-Party Corporate-Captured Cartel. Neo-Liberal I-Con Trumps Neo-Con yet all roads lead to OLIGOPPOLY.
Regulate Hedge Funds with ENFORCEMENT more powerful than Hedge Clippers. Criminally prosecute the designers of fraudulent business models that subvert PUBLIC TRUST and undermine the PUBLIC INTEREST. Like former Texas Ag Commissioner Jim Hightower opined on Community Radio after reports surfaced of the secret Obama Trade Team’s negotiations with the corporate partners of proposed TPP: “Anybody not seated at the table for international trade negotiations is ON THE MENU!”
See Sunday NY TIMES article by Gina Bellafante although it was published on-line 3/27/2015 titled: “EXPOSING HEDGE FUND POLITICS” for a better understanding of why the investment brought to corruption-plagued Chicago or touted for the rest of U.S. was never going to create a charter school educational miracle. Nor was it going to cause on-the-ground sustainable job growth or bring social stability as so many day laborers blooming in hollowed out American cities not at all like so many freshets in the Negev. Further undermining the social contract and job security post WW II economy the first Clinton Administration advocated dismantling in the name of a high tech entrepreneurial economy we now call the Reagan-Greenspan-Clinton Neo-Liberal economic model. It has been a failure for all but the off-shore cash hoarders and private equity corporate raiders the whole destabilized world over.
As Bellafante’s profile of billionaire Hedge Fund director and ‘philanthropist’ Paul Tudor Jones II, an EDUCATION REFORMER don’t you know, illustrates about what these oligarchs (and the Clintons became such not long after leaving office while their Outlaw In-law U.S. Rep. Mezvinsky used his time in government to become an oligarch) fail to appreciate about the unregulated Hedge Fund path to obscene accumulation and trading of unproductive wealth is this key observation about such business models and their innovative movers of OPM (Other People’s Money): “(W)HOSE INDUSTRY THRIVES ON EXTRACTING ECONOMIC VALUE RATHER THAN PRODUCING IT, AND YET IS COMFORTABLE SPEAKING ON THE CORROSIVE IMPACT OF INEQUALITY.”
Put the Hedge Clippers to OBAMANOMICS, ZOMBIE E-CON that compounds policy failures by doubling down on the dis-proven ZOMBIE IDEAS. Nobel Prize-Winning NY Times columnist Krugman has written on the “Responsible Professionals” perpetrating such E-Con political scams & his Princeton colleague John Quiggin whose book called ZOMBIE ECONOMICS: HOW DEAD IDEAS BROADCAST AMONG US studied the persistent proliferation of discredited E-Con ideas like SUPPLY SIDE-LAFFER CURVE-TRICKLE DOWN both in mass media orthodoxy and within policy-making circles. Even the elder George HW Bush running against Ronald Reagan in the GOP primaries called these ‘Reaganomics’ VOODOO ECONOMICS because their outcomes were tried and proved disastrous for the Public Interest. Now see what Bill and HILLARYNOMICS did to the economy after REAGANOMIC VOODOO E-CON while Bait & Switch Obama was quoting Reagan favorably in establishing his own electoral cred.
Each secretly negotiated FTA (FREE TRADE AGREEMENT) including the one signed by Obama in 2012 called KORUS, FTA (look up its results on economyincrisis dot org) with full GOP & TEA PARTY SUPPORT as it was the deal W. Bush could not push through the unions and DNC-controlled congress, this media blacked-out KORUS, FTA (KOREA-U.S.) has tripled the IMBALANCE OF TRADE disadvantageously for U.S. That is a ZOMBIE POLICY, PROVEN FAILURE YET PROMOTED & PURSUED FOR EXPANSION INTO TPP despite FAILED OUTCOMES.
Corruption and insider trading among trans-national oligarchs explains why non-profit humanitarian orgs like DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS are calling from their web pages and paid advertising to FIX THE TPP (designed in secret to extend BIG PHARMA monopolist intellectual property rights so more millions have to die without medication because the GENERIC BIG PHARMA competitors would be barred for another decade from undercutting the CUT-THROAT PRICING of the CRONY CARTEL CAPITALISTS.
Or in the case of WORKING CLASS people on the NORTH AMERICAN & ASIAN sides of the PIVOT TO THE PACIFIC (watch YouTube folksinger Dave Rovics simply sing why we should FLUSH THE TPP) calling to UNDO ALL PREVIOUS SOVEREIGNTY SURRENDERING FTA’s BEFORE PUBLICLY NEGOTIATING THEIR REPLACEMENT. GLOBAL TRADE WILL NOT SUFFER, ONLY THE TRANS-NATIONAL OLIGARCHS WHO HAVE NO COMMUNITY LOYALTIES EXCEPT TO THEIR CARTEL CRONIES.
(C) Mitch Ritter
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa
Rightfully outraged. Thanks for the expository comment. Congress has no interest in conducting hearings about the Russian style oligarchy in the U.S.
Copy that, Linda. Pointing the finger at the dictatorial ways of other countries to divert public attention as to what goes on in ALEC-owned U.S.A. has been our (did I say “our?” I meant, corporate America’s) modus operandi for more than 40 years. (Coincidence that ALEC is 40+-years-old, & that there was no national media coverage of the huge protest when the 40th birthday party was held at the very fancy Palmer House Hilton in Chicago?)
Wish I knew how to link you from a very clever & succinct scene in Sacha Baron Cohen’s film of several years ago, The Dictator, where he very clearly points the finger at the heavy-handed tactics of D.C.
Very clever, well-done & to the point. In fact, can someone else find it & post it? Thanks.
Agree.
The rhetoric of “school to prison pipeline”, deflects from the role that Koch-funded ALEC played in making penalties harsher. ALEC members from the private prison industry, benefitted from the legislative efforts. It took fancy PR footwork to link schools (which, conveniently, were under ALEC attack) to a prison pipeline. Causality has everything to do with ALEC and nothing to do with schools. Thanks to Lloyd Lofthouse for pointing it out.
For a black woman in racist America, money and power can be strong incentives to get ahead. Considering that she probably wouldn’t have gotten the job unless she understood and accepted the scheme from the beginning. I’m tired of slime like Rahm and Broad/Dz, profit ting from the moral breakdown of everyday workers while elite sit back and claim innocence and the workers are disgraced and jailed. It’s hard not to see the racism and exceptioalism in these illegal systems. This in no way absolves this woman for her participation in illegal activities but she was not the mastermind or even the person who benefitted the most. Equal justice for all who participated in this scheme. You hear that Rahm,they should be coming for you.
Precisely. It’s so easy to nab the little fish/minions. Until some bigger fish are fried, I’m not really impressed.
The U.S. Justice Department has been co-opted by plutocrats.
So none of the swimming partners get punished? Like those who bribed her, those who got the contracts, those who are above her?
And get this, wierdimate–today, in The Chicago Sun-Times, formers CPS President David Vitale was quoted as saying, “We got what we paid for. The whole thing was not a fraud.”
Outspoken hero CPS principled Principal Troy LaRavierre, please weigh in on this statement!