The Inspector-General of the Chicago Public Schools called out a former board member, Deborah Quazzo, for significant financial conflicts of interest.
Blogger Fred Klonsky invented a new verb for corruption: “We got Quazzoed.”
Disgraced former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, now in prison for a kickback scheme involving millions of dollars in school contracts, accepted lavish meals at some of the city’s priciest restaurants from a CPS vendor whose investors included Deborah Quazzo, who at the time was a Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointee to the Chicago Board of Education.
That’s according to a new report from CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler, whose investigation led the FBI to Byrd-Bennett.
Among the findings Schuler has reported confidentially to the school board:
• Byrd-Bennett steered a $6 million contract to Think Through Math, a company in which Quazzo was invested.
• Byrd-Bennett and the coterie of top aides she brought with her to CPS had a series of expensive meals on that company’s dime during the bidding process for that deal.
• 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.
“While Quazzo’s ethical violations were arguably less egregious than Byrd-Bennett’s violations involving her dealings with TTM,” Schuler wrote in the 26-page memo, obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, “Quazzo’s violations were significant, nonetheless.”
According to the inspector general’s memo, CPS’s ethics policy violates state law and needs to be changed. Schuler wrote that it’s not enough for board members to decline to vote on matters in which they have a significant financial interest. He says CPS can’t do business at all with those companies — unless the board member with an ownership stake either divests or resigns.
In 2015, Quazzo said she saw no conflict of interest but asked Emanuel not to reappoint her after a Sun-Times investigation revealed that companies in which she had a stake had seen their business from CPS triple in the year since her appointment, taking in more than $3.8 million from deals with the city’s schools. Also, the Quazzo companies had gotten $1.3 million from CPS-funded charter schools.
It just goes to show that the person who gives the graft gets off easier than the one who took it.R
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hi Diane,
I want to let you know that last night a huge event took place in the Illinois State Assembly: the Equal Rights Amendment was passed. Since the Illinois State Senate passed it last month, Illinois just became the 37th state out of 38 needed. Last year Nevada ratified the ERA, the 36th state and most importantly the first state in 40 years, launching this new campaign forward.
One more state needed- and then back to Congress to lift the ridiculous and unnecessary deadline that was originally put in place.
Thank you Illinois and the Democratic AND Republican State Representatives who voted yes!
Judith Scheuer
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EVOLUTION….so slow sometimes, but still moving forward.
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Ed reformers sold these boards as people who would be above icky, dirty politics.
I have no idea why they thought this- based solely on the fact that they’re rich and powerful? That makes them ethical?
It’s such a bad value system. What is it based on? We got rid of icky dirty politics but now we get secret self-dealing and profiteering? Why were these people considered pure in the first place? Are they just inherently better for some reason?
On this, though, we can ask that public schools stop getting snookered:
“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.”
Public schools themselves are buying into this. There’s no law that says we have to purchase every product and scheme these people push. Say “no”. ESPECIALLY to ed tech, which is so wildly oversold it’s ridiculous. These are products and they’re being sold by salespeople- no different than any other product one would buy for a school. It’s not magic and the salespeople are not disinterested, they’re not “scientists” or “donors” or “visionaries”- they’re people pushing product. This is a business. It’s a big business and they want to get into your school. Make them work for it.
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The moral superiority of ed reformers is a constant theme in ed reform, and it should be questioned. Especially because ed reformers don’t extend the same to public school employees:
“But, the vast majority of charter schools are non-profits led by dedicated educators heroically trying to make the system work better for the neediest kids. The best of them are proving poverty isn’t destiny.”
Hmmm. Interesting. “Heroic” But public school employees are all self interested and invested in the status quo and only worried about a paycheck? Greedy, greedy, greedy.
What is this assumption of motives based on? If your ideology dictates that people who get paid for work are “self interested” then why doesn’t it apply to charter employees?
If a charter chain is aggressively expanding the assumption is they’re doing that out of service, pure and unsullied by any base concerns about market share or anyone keeping their job? Why? Just all around better people?
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In Buffalo, School Board member, Carl Palodina, regularly voted on items which ultimately put money in his personal coffers. A charter school advocate, his company earned money by selling or renting their property to newly designated or expanding charters. He claimed there was no conflict of interest.
While this was not illegal, it definitely was unethical if not immoral.
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It should also have been illegal.
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Go to jail…go directly to jail! Do not pass go. Do not collect $2,000,000!
–from modern day “Monopoly.”
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