The 'end of Camelot'? Not quite. Rahm gives crooked company new lease on life.

Chicago Public Schools officials are digging out from another Barbara Byrd-Bennett scandal, three years after the former CPS CEO departed the district in disgrace.  -- Chicago Tribune

Camelot CEO Andrew Morrison said in a statement. “We are proud of our track record over the past seven years and of the achievements of our students." -- Unsolicited confession

The top line above is from a July 31st Tribune editorial called, "The end of Camelot at CPS". Camelot is a network of privately-run alternative and charter schools that serve "at risk" students. Their owners have fleeced Chicago Public Schools for more than $67M in bid-rigged contracts over the past decade.

Camelot's operators have long been criticized for their brutal, "prison-like" disciplinary policies directed nearly exclusively at African-American children.

But the title of the editorial is misleading. It's definitely not the "end of Camelot" at CPS. Despite the recent findings of illegal bid-rigging schemes by Camelot and now disgraced and imprisoned Byrd-Bennett that go back to 2014, it looks like the company will be given another run in Chicago at the cost to taxpayers of millions more.

Camelot Education, which still runs six schools for about 850 at-risk students, has agreed to pay a $1M fine. But they dodged a permanent ban on doing any business with CPS as the schools Inspector General Nicholas Schuler had recommended in July when he released his report outlining the misconduct.

The excuse for not shutting down Camelot offered by CPS officials is that, "closing schools and transferring students elsewhere risks disrupting these students’ education. What hypocrisy! If you do the math, six schools for 850 students comes out to about 140 students per school. The board has closed dozens of schools with larger student populations for "underutilization". I guess "disruption" wasn't an issue back then, when it came to public school closings.

According to Lauren Fitzpatrick at the Sun-Times:

Schuler found that Camelot — in order to skirt the district’s procurement rules — paid Byrd-Bennett’s former employers and co-defendants Gary Solomon and Thomas Vranas to work as lobbyists to help the company land big contracts to open publicly-funded schools for students who are close to dropping out or have already done so. The emails about the Camelot scheme came to light as Schuler continued to dig through the records that helped imprison Byrd-Bennett, or “B3” as Mayor Rahm Emanuel affectionately called her, along with Solomon and Vranas, in a separate contract-kickback scandal with a principal training firm.

As part of the slap-on-the-wrist $1 million settlement, Camelot will be granted a new CPS contract and submit to a monitor of CPS’ choosing “to ensure Camelot is held responsible for its conduct,” CPS officials said. But the fines under the settlement terms are limited to $1 million, with $700,000 paid directly to CPS and another $300,000 worth of “compensatory services.” A Camelot spokesman said the settlement will be paid over five years.

Camelot must exclude two unnamed officials (why not name them?) from any CPS work during the monitoring term, and subject its executives to training on the school board’s Code of Ethics.

According to Fitzpatrick, CPS also said in July that it would tighten ethics rules for anyone bidding on work, and would publish a searchable database of the additional disclosures on its website. It’s not yet clear whether either has taken place.

All this of course, begs the question. Why does CPS need to contract with privateers in the first place? There's lots of great CPS teachers and 38 boarded up school buildings sitting empty as a result of mass school closings five years ago. Why not provide public education in them for our neediest kids?

CPS buys into the Covey Hustle

Reposted from Fred Klonsky's Blog

A parent wants to know why an expensive corporate training program is being implemented at his neighborhood CPS school.

Logan Square’s Darwin Elementary School.

A few years ago there was some controversy over Steven Covey’s The Leader in Me program which was purchased by CPS. CPS had spent over a quarter of a million dollars on The Leader in Me by that the time.

Supporters of the program, started under former CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard before he resigned in October, say it fosters a disciplined approach to education and helps with so-called social emotional learning. But some critics say there is not enough proof it works and argue it is costly at a time when the district is facing financial woes.

The program, called “The Leader in Me,” was created by the Utah-based Franklin Covey, a publicly-traded company that CPS has paid more than $263,000 since 2005, including more than $111,000 this year.

This year’s spending was for The Leader in Me, the brainchild of the company’s founder, Stephen Covey.

Covey, who died last year, is the author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” the centerpiece of leadership training programs run by Franklin Covey that have been used by Fortune 500 companies.

The Leader in Me is a version of Covey’s book adapted for younger students and used by more than 1,000 schools worldwide, though company officials admit evidence that it works is mostly anecdotal and say it’s still too soon to fully measure the impact of the program on the schools where it’s used.

Offered to all CPS schools before the start of the 2012-2013 school year, Andrew Jackson, Walsh Elementary, Pershing West Elementary and South Loop Elementary were the only schools to sign on, a CPS spokesman said.

Brizard is long gone as CPS CEO.

But The Leader in Me is still around.

And a Logan Square’s Darwin Elementary School parent and LSC member, Jeff Young, wonders why?

In a letter sent by Jeff Young to the other members of the Darwin LSC following a school walk-through.

I am concerned about a video we were shown, prior to the walk, in which students and teachers from Darwin appeared. This video, as it was explained to us, was produced by the FranklinCovey company for use with it’s “Leader In Me” program.

In a later letter Jeff Young lays out his objections to a corporate training tool being used at a public elementary school:

1) There is no objective, 3rd party analysis as to whether Leader In Me is any more effective than any other program with similar goals that doesn’t cost as much nor require as much from our school (see 3).

2) Principals in Kentucky and Missouri have been disciplined by their districts for consulting for Franklin Covey while implementing Leader In Me at their schools. Links to articles discussing these situations are below. It concerns me that this program has a financial incentive for it’s adoption with no proven, verifiable academic benefit.

3) Leader In Me contractually obligates our school to share student absenteeism and disciplinary data with Franklin Covey, as well as hold Leadership Day annually. Federal laws tightly controls the disclosure of student data outside of the school; I’m not certain the data we are providing is publicly available or not. By hosting Leadership Day at Darwin, we are essentially holding a sales event at our school for Franklin Covey during which our children help sell their product.

My 'plan' for funding CPS sports programs. So crazy it just might work.

Lease back the Skyway.

I just heard the news that CPS claims to be so broke that they're cutting elementary school sports programs out of the budget. As a former CPS coach, I'm horrified at the prospect. So I've come up with a funding plan that's so crazy, it just might work.

It came to me after reading about the Canadian consortium that just purchased the lease to the Chicago Skyway from the Spanish/Australian consortium which had originally leased it from us for 75 years, via former Mayor Daley. The original deal was all part of Daley's plan to solve the city's debt problem. It didn't. But it sure made a bundle in profits for the consortium.

That original Skyway concession company was a partnership of Cintra Infraestructuras of Spain and Australia’s Macquarie Group. Their $1.83 billion payment in January 2005 was nearly $1 billion more than the next highest bid, which prompted speculation that the investors had overpaid.

But this week, the Canadians agreed to fork over $2.8 billion to Cintra and Macquarie to acquire the company that holds the deal to run the Skyway until 2104. Do the math. The Spaniards and Australians walk away with a cool billion return on their investment. 

Oriole Park's 6th grade volleyball team facing cuts.

Side note -- Nearly a billion of that money came from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. So, in a weird way, Canadian teachers are maintaining their pensions with profits from their investment in a scheme that's bankrupting Chicago and its schools. 

So here's my plan. Rahm puts together a $3-billion package of loans from his Infrastructure Trust pals and Billy Daley over at Morgan Stanley and we buy back the lease to our own Skyway. If the profit margins from Skyway traffic could enrich the Canadians, Spaniards and Australians, why not Chicago? A billion or two in profits should even cover the high cost of the loans due to Chicago's lousy credit rating. A win-win for the banksters and the schools. 

And we can even set aside a tiny chunk of those super-profits to pay for the 5th and 6th grade girls’ volleyball team from Oriole Park Elementary School to get to the conference championship game next year.

You're welcome.

Svigos buys another closed Chicago school

Svigos Assets bought Peabody. Put a charter in it. 

After they sat as empty blights on the community for nearly three years, the sell-off of closed CPS neighborhood schools has begun in earnest. Board members on Wednesday approved the sale of three vacant schools that were shuttered in 2013, providing "a small windfall of cash for its struggling budget".

Liza Balistreri is in charge of real estate at Chicago Public Schools and is running the sales of Near North Elementary in Noble Square, Overton Elementary in Bronzeville, and Von Humboldt Elementary in Humboldt Park.

Among the developers looking to make a profit on CPS real estate is Svigos Asset Management Corp. based in suburban Buffalo Grove. Svigos specializes in developing and managing commercial and residential properties, and owns apartment buildings in Lakeview, Logan Square and Albany Park.

Svigos is buying Near North for $5.1 million and plans to turn the school into "residential and commercial development". His company previously purchased the old Peabody Elementary for $3.5 million in 2014 only to turn around and sell space back to Rowe Charter School. Previously, district officials had said no closed school would be used as a charter school. The former Peabody was also developed as market-rate housing.

Paul Svigos has been a regular campaign contributor to Rahm Emanuel. The well-connected Svigos family has also made big contributions to the Daley's and other Democratic Party candidates.

Svigos was a former top Merrill Lynch stockbroker who the firm fired in October 1992. He hasn't been allowed to practice brokering since. But he recently won a huge settlement in his court battle with Lynch over the firing.

Svigos also runs the Fresh Farms grocery chain.

Chuy Garcia: Rahm treating CPS as a 'profit center'

Quazzo  (F. Klonsky)

Mayoral candidate "Chuy" Garcia accused Rahm of treating education "as a profit center for people with powerful connections." He couldn't be more right. Latest case in point in the mayor's defense of his hand-picked board member, Deborah Quazzo, who uses her board seat to protect her ed-biz investments.

According to the Sun-Times:

Quazzo, a millionaire venture capitalist, has invested in five educational technology companies that have been paid about $3.8 million by CPS since 2010, $2.9 million of it since June 2013, when she replaced Pritzker.

Quazzo is the “founder [in 2009] and managing partner of GSV Advisors—part of GSV Capital Corp., “a publicly traded investment fund that seeks to invest in high-growth, venture-backed private companies. GSV Advisors is “a firm that provides advisory services to companies in the education and business services sectors.” In plainer language, GSV Advisors invests in firms that that bring high-tech to solving problems in education. An example is GVS-backed DreamBox Learning, online individualized math instruction that, the company claims, “improves early educational outcomes for every child—regardless of zip code.”

She's also an ex officio board member of KIPP Chicago (Knowledge is Power Program), a charter school operator; New Schools for Chicago, an organization that raises money for charters.

NEEDED--An elected school board.

Reason 1001 Why We Need an Elected School Board in Chicago

Quazzo flies Byrd-Bennett out to Arizona for her annual ed investment conference

“It’s my belief I need to invest in companies and philanthropic organizations who improve outcomes for children,” Quazzo says.

Today's Sun-Times Reports:

Companies that Chicago Board of Education member Deborah Quazzo has an interest in have seen the business they get from the city’s schools system triple since Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed her to the board last year, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Quazzo’s companies have gotten an additional $2.9 million in Chicago Public Schools business in the year and a half since the millionaire venture capitalist joined the board to fill a vacancy left by Penny Pritzker when President Barack Obama named Pritzker commerce secretary.

In all, five companies in which Quazzo has an ownership stake have been paid more than $3.8 million by CPS for ACT prep or online help with reading, writing and math. One of them stands to collect an additional $1.6 million this year from a district contract.

Quazzo says she has recused herself from school board votes on contracts with companies in which she has a stake, including a $6 million, two-year deal with one called Think Through Math. But, of course, nearly every vote of the board in unanimous.

On the website for GSV Advisors, Quazzo lists five companies she has invested in that do business with CPS — Academic Approach, Dreambox Learning, MasteryConnect, Think Through Learning and ThinkCERCA and touts her “dozens of personal investments in dynamic education companies, demonstrating her commitment while deepening her expertise and relationships in this important and fast-growing sector.”

Quazzo also co-hosts an annual education investment conference in April in Arizona with GSV Capital, which is owned by venture capitalist Michael Moe. Barbara Byrd-Bennett, CPS’ chief executive officer, and Quazzo’s fellow school board members Andrea Zopp and Mahalia Hines are among past speakers at the conferences.

Byrd-Bennett’s airfare and hotel bill were paid for by conference organizers, as were Hines’, according to McCaffrey.

Another reason for an elected school board in Chicago.

Chicago principals: If you want poor performing, filthy schools, privatize

Chicago principals don't think so.

If you want schools that dominate the bottom quartile, privatize their management. And if you want dirty, filthy schools, privatize their custodial services. That seems to be what Chicago principals are saying.

Ace Catalyst reporter Sara Karp writes:

The $340 million privatization of the district’s custodial services has led to filthier buildings and fewer custodians, while forcing principals to take time away from instruction to make sure that their school is clean. That is the finding from a survey done by AAPPLE, the new activist arm of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association.

The survey follows by a week, a report put together by AAPLE member Troy LaRaviere showing a list of the 45 lowest-performing (test-wise) schools saturated with privately-run charters while the list of top-performing schools has none.

So the question continues to be asked, what is the source of this great love of privatization among school reform leaders and system bureaucrats? I think it's something in the drinking water at Harvard.

The Ward Room: Chicago charters, "a tangle of insider dealing, cronyism and political favoritism"

NBC's Ward Room report on charters offers an unequivocal assessment.

As charter schools continue to take root, however, one fact is clear: No process this steeped in political cronyism and insider dealing should be allowed to continue.

 The report recounts the way a politically-connected Chicago charter school operator, Concept Schools, Inc. (owned by Turkish billionaire Fethullah Gulen) used it's clout to receive approval and funding to open two schools in Chicago after being turned down by the Chicago Public Schools.

CPS said the charter’s current school, Chicago Math and Science Academy, wasn’t doing a good enough job to warrant expansion. So the company appealed to the Illinois State Charter School Commission, an agency created with the help of House Speaker Michael Madigan, a firm backer of charter schools in general and Concept in particular. Madigan is already implicated in the UNO charter scandal.

Concept is getting 33 percent more funding per pupil than other charters. The agency board included a retired chief executive of Caterpillar, Inc., who serves as president of the board of a Peoria school that’s managed by Concept. Politicians, including Madigan, took foreign trips as guests of an organization tied to the schools. More than half of the state charter commission’s budget has come from private contributions, including powerful corporations that back charter expansion.

The report concludes:

 The whole story is a tangle of insider dealing, cronyism and political favoritism, played out against a backdrop of massive transfer of public education funds from public to private schools in Chicago and across the state.

The selling of Chicago

CFO Lois Scott refuses to reveal specifics of  Midway privatization. 

Like Daley's selling of the city's parking spaces, Rahm is doing his sell-off of Midway Airport in the dark, until after the deal is done.

He's using the manufactured pension crisis to justify the further looting and burning of Chicago the same way that Daley used the city's debt crisis to cut his parking meter deal and the selling off of the Skyway before that. Neither deal did anything to get the city back on sound financial footing.

The victims of all this is what's left of public space -- schools, clinics, mass transit, and housing projects, none of whom will benefit from the Airport deal.

Fran Spielman at the Sun-Times reports:

In a meeting with the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board to discuss the city’s financial crisis, Chief Financial Officer Lois Scott refused to discuss specifics of the competition or the potential for a $2 billion windfall. Nor would she say when final bids are due or even confirm that only two bid teams remain. 

 The only question is whether a reluctant City Council would go along with the idea.

Of course they will. When have they ever said NO?

Last week, Bloomberg reported that the Midway sweepstakes was down to two bidding groups and that a contract could be awarded as soon as this fall. The rivals were identified as Great Lakes Airport Alliance — a partnership between Spain’s Ferrovial and Macquarie Group, which leased the Chicago Skyway for 99 years — and a team that includes Industry Funds Management of Australia and Manchester Airports Group.

Best quote comes from Ald. O'Connor:

“Any time one talks about privatizing a municipal asset, immediately the next words out of their mouth is, ‘parking meters.’ 

Ya think?

Rahm's great TIF school rip-off

David Orr

The city should send any extra development funds to the public schools, says Cook County Clerk David Orr.

"How do we explain to school kids that gym, music and art classes are canceled while profitable businesses are tapping into the city’s tax base?" Orr said Thursday in an annual report on Tax Increment Finance districts. -- DNAInfo

CPS Liar-In-Chief Becky Carroll jumps into the fray.

 "No combination of one-time fixes is going to address a structural financial deficit at CPS that has built up over decades and currently stands at $1 billion, including $400 million from increasing pension payments," said CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll. "We have made more than $600 million in cuts to the central office while doing everything we can to protect critical classroom investments. 

So Wendy Katten  calls her on it -- what $600 million in cuts?

“It just makes me laugh,” says Wendy Katten, who runs the parent advocacy group Raise Your Hand. “If [the savings] are true, they should show us the line items.” 

L-I-C Carroll responds -- um, errr.

 CPS spokeswoman Becky Carroll admits it would be impossible to find evidence of the reductions in the official budget book. “It is not the way it works,” she says... In other cases, the district saved money in one area, but paid more for something else-- and therefore, Carroll says, the reduction is not reflected in a line item. -- -- Catalyst

And she does all this with a straight face.

Where's Daley?

There he is. 

Carol Felsenthal at Chicago Mag asks an interesting question: "Where in the world is Rich Daley?" She asks because the former Chicago mayor has seemingly "disappeared from public life." Since leaving office when his public ratings bottomed out after his selling off of the city's parking meters (and anything else that wasn't nailed down), there hasn't been so much as a peep or a malaprop.

Daley made his mark as the nation's first big city mayor to be handed autocratic control of the public school system which, with help from his former city hall budget director Paul Vallas, he turned into a patronage wing of City Hall. Vallas became the first school supt. to be called, CEO. Daley replaced him with Arne Duncan who sat atop Daley's disastrous Renaissance 2010 plan, a miserable flop when it came to producing any measurable school improvement. It was quietly dropped and never publicly evaluated. But Ren10 did become a national model for closing public schools and turning them over to private charter school management companies and propelled Duncan to the top education post in the Obama administration.

But back to Felsenthal's question -- where's Richie? As pay-back for the parking meter give-away, Daley was given a job at the law firm that swung the deal, Katten Muchin Rosenman where he gets to travel to "do deals" in China. He also was made "an adviser" to JP Morgan Chase, where his brother Bill is a VP.

So don't worry about Richie. Chicago's schools may be in chaos and the murder rate climbing in his wake. But he's doing just fine. Don't they take care of their own?

Political payback for Walgreens CEO

Rahm & Wasson

As Chicago city retirees brace themselves for another hit on their healthcare plans, corporations like Walgreen's are feeling really healthy.

Back in November, I wrote about the scheme Rahm had cooked up with Walgreens CEO Greg Wasson whereby the mayor would offer parents Walgreens gift cards if they would show up on report card pickup day. Rahm called it, "incentivizing responsible parenting." I call it pay-back for Wasson's political support, particularly for contributing between $500,000 and $1 million to help the city cover expenses for the NATO gathering in May.

And now that the wheels have been greased, here comes some more gift giving -- a no-bid city contract worth about $700,000 to Walgreens so they can  "screen government employees who joined a wellness program to avoid a $50 increase in monthly health insurance premiums."

Chicago's version of 'choice'

Excelon CEO John Rowe, former COMED CEO Frank Clark, Senator Dick Durbin, and  Senate Pres. John J. Cullerton, celebrate the grand opening of Excelon Gymnasium on the campus of Rowe-Clark charter school. 

A CPS-promoted school fair featuring "some of Chicago's great public school options, including charter schools," advertised almost no traditional schools -- but still found space for dozens of charter schools with the district's lowest ranking. -- Gapers Block

To Rahm's crew at CPS. a "great" school is any school that bans the teachers union.

CPS announced Friday that  it plans to add four more privately-run charter schools to the nine non-union charters previously approved for the coming year, despite its plan to close more than 100 neighborhood, "underutilized" schools.

"It simply makes their argument, 'We have to close schools,' sound ridiculous," said Julie Woestehoff, executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education. "It would be one thing if charter schools were vast improvements, but what we know is they're not. Essentially (CPS) is cannibalizing the system to privatize it." -- Chicago Tribune

And why did they pick this corporate reformer to head Rahm's rump group that meets in secret to decide which schools will be closed? Frank Clark is the former chairman and CEO of ComEd who, along with John Rowe, CEO of ComEd’s parent Exelon Corp, operate a charter school named after them. Rowe is also the former chairman of the Commercial Club of Chicago.

Isn't it obvious?

We don't need no stinking approval -- we've got Gates $$

The Sun-Times reports that two private charter school operators are planning to open schools in Chicago even though they have yet to be vetted by CPS. Why are the owners of Foundations College Prep and Intrinsic Schools they so sure that board approval is coming -- even while CPS is supposed to be downsizing? Simple. They have Gates money behind them and in Rahm's world, money can buy you as many charters as you want, regardless of your track record or the needs of the community.

 “We have not approved any new charters, and don’t plan to discuss until that process is complete,” says CPS liar-in-chief Becky Carroll, winking at the two charter operators. 

Writes S-T reporter Lauren Fitzpatrick:

 How CPS can be promising in its Call for Quality Schools plan to open more charters while downsizing its buildings is something some 30 aldermen have questioned, demanding the City Council Education Committee hold a public hearing to explore. CPS officials have said they’ll be “right-sizing” the district that has 200,000 fewer children than seats.

Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd), who drafted a resolution, said Wednesday that a hearing is planned but not yet scheduled. “Movement toward charter schools without any reflective approach and analysis is just wrong,” he said.

Foundations College Prep founder Micki O’Neil, is a former investment banker (just what our kids need) who knows damn well her schools will be approved by the School Board.

Zaikos has MBA from Harvard

Intrinsic was founded by Melissa Zaikos, a Harvard business school grad and former Deloitte management consultant, and a graduate of the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems. As far as I can tell, Zaidos has never operated a school before and Intrinsic has no track record. So what is Gates funding exactly?

Illinois Network of Charter Schools hustler-in-chief, Andrew Broy claims he doesn't know who’d been recommended for a new charter (no one, Andrew, according to Becky Carroll)  but says  that a foundation wouldn’t likely hand out money to just anyone.

No question that O'Neil and Zaikos are not "just anyone."

Foreign aid pouring into my Chicago neighborhood

Workmen put finishing touches on our new neighborhood soccer field built with foreign aid.

Corporations have found a safe tax haven here in Chicago and the State of Illinois. So much so that teacher retirement funds are being threatened, mental health clinics are being shuttered along with a hundred neighborhood schools, due mainly to lack of revenue. Under Rahm Emanuel's regime, Chicago is being turned into a beggar city which now operates on the charity and benevolence of the mayor's wealthy patrons and power philanthropists along with foreign aid. 

The latest example:  Down the street from a closed mental health clinic in my Logan Square neighborhood, a new astro-turf soccer field is under construction thanks to foreign aid from the oil-wealthy United Arab Emirates, the benevolence of British soccer moguls, and the Pritzkers, the billionaire union-busting family that refuses to pay their Hyatt Hotel workers a living wage.

“We have a philosophy of giving back to the community — America is a great, up-and-coming soccer market, but first we want to give back,” said Gary Hopkins, head of Manchester City’s international development team in the United States. He said that Manchester City will be providing three years of soccer programming, including training and bringing in coaches to work with kids interested in the game.

Hopkins is also author of Star Spangled Soccer: Selling, Marketing and Management of Soccer in the USA and says that interest in soccer among Americans took off after Chicago hosted the 1994 World Cup. -- Chicago Sun-Times

Hedge-funders underwrite Rahm's post-strike ad campaign

DFER Board member Whitney Tilson is chief of T2 Partners and Tilson Funds . DFER is underwriting Rahm's anti-union ad campaign.

After a devastating political defeat at the hands of Karen Lewis and the CTU in last week's teachers strike and with public opinion moving strongly to the teachers's side. The mayor of Chicago has unleashed a mult-million-dollar damage-control ad campaign. 
From the Chicago Tribune

In a political-style TV and radio ad blitz launched Wednesday, Emanuel says "change is never easy" but declares the outcome "the right deal for our kids." The ads are being paid for by a nonprofit arm of a political action committee started by Wall Street hedge fund managers who believe the creation of privately run charter schools is the best avenue to reform.

The ad campaign is being underwritten by Education Reform Now, the nonprofit arm of the Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) Political Action Committee. DFER represents the interests of a group of New York investment companies who are power houses within the Democratic Party but who favor charter schools, school vouchers and anything else that will weaken or destroy teacher unions.

"Mayor Emanuel was the best person to communicate to Chicagoans all of the unprecedented wins the kids of this city received out of this contract, so he fought for them, and we believe he should be in that TV spot talking to Chicagoans about it," said Rebeca Nieves Huffman, executive director of the group's Illinois chapter of DFER.

The TV ads are being produced by John Kupper of AKPD Message and Media, the same firm used by the Chicago Committee, a campaign fund controlled by Emanuel. That firm, was started by Pres. Obama's campaign chief David Axelrod who still has connections with it and whose son reportedly still works there.

Axelrod's old firm behind attack ads on CTU

Obama, Emanuel, & Axelrod

Well, mercy me! Look who's behind those ads blasting the CTU. Why, it's ASGK Public Strategies and AKPD, David Axelrod's old firms. An embarrassed Axelrod is claiming that he no longer has any connection to the firms since he sold them in 2009, when he became Obama's Senior White House Advisor. But he's still very much connected (the A stands for Axelrod) and he pulls down a nice $200,000/year from them.

Among ASGK clients are Citibank, the financial giant that received $45 billion in bailout money after helping to cause the global financial collapse. Citi is also the driving force behind the Mayor's so-called Infrastructure Trust scheme. Another client is the Ricketts family, owners of the Cubs. You might recall, it was Joe Ricketts, the right-wing family patriarch, whose PAC planned the racist ad campaign against Pres. Obama. Rahm Emanuel then feigned outrage and threatened to turn his back on the Ricketts' demand for about $500 million in public funding for the renovation of Wrigley Field.

Emanuel’s top spokeswoman says hiring ASGK won’t win Citibank and the Cubs any favors from City Hall. “If you think hiring Axelrod’s old firm will get you special access or privileges, you are sorely mistaken,” says spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton. “No person or company has an inside track into City Hall.”

*****

Sorry for the break in this post. It took me a couple of minutes to get off the floor and back onto my chair after that one. My side still hurts from laughter. 

Another Axelrod-founded firm — AKPD Media and Messaging — recently produced ads critical of the Chicago Teachers Union, which is locked in a contract battle with Emanuel, who seems hell-bent on destroying the city's public employee unions. AKPD oversaw Emanuel’s ad blitz during his mayoral campaign, and the firm is a paid consultant to his political committee, state records show.  

Like ASGK, AKPD continues to pay Axelrod for selling his stake in that firm. AKPD owed him $2 million, to be paid over four years, when he became a White House aide, Axelrod told federal ethics officials.

Both AKPD and ASKG are housed at the same River North address that’s also home to Axelrod Strategies, the firm he founded upon leaving the White House last year. “I rent space in my old offices, but I work full-time out of Obama headquarters these days,” Axelrod says.ASGK’s managing partner, Eric Sedler, won’t talk about the work the firm is doing for the Cubs and Citibank.

And no one, it seems, will say anything about the anti-CTU campaign.  

All this calls into question the motives behind AFT President Randi Weingarten's recent visit to Chicago. Weingarten spoke in support of the Infrastructure Trust at Bill Clinton's Global Initiative Conference. To her credit, Randi had been in town a few weeks earlier to support and march with thousands of rallying union teachers. But now, here she was rallying support for the very forces that were attacking the CTU in a massive media campaign. According to the Sun-Times report:  

Emanuel was seated onstage next to Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, whose largest member union, the Chicago Teachers Union, [was] taking a strike-authorization vote this week, frustrated with Emanuel’s administration, which killed a negotiated 4 percent raise for the teachers last year. Emanuel has said he thinks teachers deserve a raise. His board has offered a 2 percent raise in the first year of a proposed five-year contract and no guaranteed raise after that.

Weingarten and Emanuel didn’t go near that issue Thursday.

Why not?

Cross-posted on Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog. 

The Griffins -- hedge fund power couple

Ken Griffin and wife Anne, have become two of the most prominent and powerful names associated with Chicago's corporate-style school reform. As the founder and head of the Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel, Griffin is reported to be worth $2.3 billion, making him the fifth-richest Chicagoan and 159th-richest American, according to the 2010 Forbes 400.

He and his wife, Anne Dias Griffin, have been major players in the world of political money: Campaign finance records show that the Griffins have donated more than $3 million to candidates and political action committees—including $450,000 last fall to Republican Bill Brady in the tight 2010 Illinois governor’s race.

The Griffins, along with other Chicago billionaires like Penny Pritzker and Bruce Rauner, also helped underwrite the anti-union lobbying group Stand For Children, headed by Jonah Edelman.  In 2010, Ken gave $500,000 each to two different political action committees—on October 25th to American Crossroads, an organization, according to its website, “dedicated to renewing America’s commitment to individual liberty, limited government, [and] free enterprise” and on December 15th to Stand for Children Illinois.

He also contributed  $150,000 to Mayor Daley in 2006 and $200,000 to Rahm Emanuel's mayoral campaign.

Noted art aficionados, they own works by Monet, Degas, and Cezanne, and paid $80 million for a Jasper Johns painting reportedly worth $2.3 billion, Ken bundled money for both Obama and John McCain during the 2008 election. In the 2012 election cycle, the couple has given $500,000 to the Republican Governors Association, $300,000 to Rove's American Crossroads, and $150,000 to the Wisconsin Club for Growth. Bonus: Charles Koch named them as part of alist of elite donors who have pledged $1 million to his and his brother David's conservative fundraising machine.

Can Chicago schools afford K12 Inc. exec salaries?

Reader J.C. (not Brizard) makes a good point. If Chicago mayor and school boss, Rahm Emanuel moves ahead with his plan to throw another large no-bid contract K12 Inc.'s way, a big chunk of that money will go towards covering boss Ron Packard's $5 million annual compensation package.

Not to mention other K12 exec salaries, including:

• Chief financial officer Harry T. Hawks earned about $544,000 — significantly less than his 2010 package, which was worth $1.8 million.
• George B. Hughes Jr., executive vice president of school services, received $717,000, down from $799,000 in 2010.
• Bruce J. Davis, executive vice president of worldwide business development, earned $686,000. The company has high hopes for overseas expansion possibilities and recently bought part of a Chinese enterprise that teaches English online.
• Chief marketing officer Celia M. Stokes earned $690,000. Stokes’s job goals included “developing branding strategies for our business units, improving marketing efficiency and developing our call center operations.”

Marie Antoinette, Meet David Vitale

As soon as one speaker was removed by security guards, another stood up to take their place.

"Moral courage comes in many forms, but sometimes not at all. Faced with adversity last week, David Vitale retreated into executive session. Mr. Vitale is a banker who was picked by Rahm Emanuel to be president of the Chicago Board of Education. And as the Missile confidently presided over a cowed City Council on Wednesday, his schools emissary co-starred in melancholy political theater that gave insight into the mayor’s ultimate challenges."  -- "Marie Antoinette, I'd like you to meet David Vitale" by James Warren, CNC