Bill Daley gets big money from school privatizer Finnegan

Paul Finnegan

Bill Daley, who recently jumped into the Chicago mayor's race just received $200,000 from Paul Finnegan, co-CEO of Madison Dearborn Partners investment firm (net worth $1.8B). Through his Finnegan Family Foundation, he's been a major underwriter of Chicago's privately-run charter schools and school privatizers.

He's been one of the biggest donors to the Illinois Network of Charter Schools (INCS). He sits on the board of Teach for America, Inc. and has given millions to KIPP, Noble and other Chicago charter school networks. He's also a big backer of the union-busting group, Stand For Children.

Madison Dearborn had been among Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s most reliable campaign contributors for years. Three executives, including Finnegan, dumped $705,000 into Emanuel’s campaign in June, three months before Emanuel chose political retirement over the uphill battle for a third term.

Finnegan's support for Daley could spell trouble for candidate Paul Vallas the other big charter supporter in the race.

Noble -- The Billionaire's Charter School Network

Former Exelon CEO John Rowe at his Rowe-Clark Math & Science Academy. 

It was 2006 and Mr. Manderschied was president of the Noble Network of Charter Schools. He met with Mr. Rauner, then chairman of Chicago private-equity firm GTCR LLC, in a living room-like suite at the firm's Sears Tower office. But he was nervous because he had never asked anyone for such a large sum. After an hour's discussion, Mr. Rauner agreed to the $1 million donation that would make his name the first one emblazoned on a Noble school. -- Crain's

While parents and Bronzeville community activists had to go on an 18-day hunger strike to win an open enrollment high school at Dyett, all charter hustler Mike Milkie had to do was walk into billionaire Bruce Rauner's office with his well-connected pal Manderschied and ask him for a million bucks to open another in his chain of privately-run charter schools. Then it's over to CPS to win easy approval for another charter school to compete with underfunded neighborhood schools for area students.

Already the state's biggest charter network, Noble expects to teach 15% of Chicago public high school students by 2017.

How they call them public schools, I will never know.

The Noble Network of Charter Schools founded by Milkie, a former Chicago high school teacher, looks more like an ego-boosting tax haven for local billionaires than it does public, neighborhood charter schools. For a meager $1M "investment", billionaires like Gov. Bruce Rauner, Sec. of Commerce Penny Pritzker, Allan Muchin (founding partner of Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP), former Exelon CEO John Rowe and former ComEd CEO and CPS school board president Frank Clark, had schools named after themselves.

According to Crain's: 

Mr. Rauner, a Republican from Winnetka, has backed a number of charter schools, including the UNO Charter School Network now dogged by questions of cronyism. But he has given the most to Noble, just over $3.5 million.

It was a nice boost for Rauner, who while locked in a tight race for governor,had hundreds of students moving around the city, wearing required school uniforms with polo shirts, jackets, sweats, and sports team jerseys bearing his name.

Now CEO of the Noble Network, Milkie says he understands how to talk to business executives.

“Their dollars are a great investment in terms of return,” he says, citing low administrative costs and the “tremendous impact on students' lives.” He provides dashboards of data to document progress on everything from student testing to detentions to teacher bonuses.

“Businesspeople like to measure things,” says retired Exelon Corp. Chairman and CEO John Rowe, who estimates he's given $4.5 million to Noble and for college scholarships to its graduates since 2007.

In its latest capital campaign, Noble has raised more than half the $50 million it's targeting for expansion. That includes $15 million last year from Glenview-based Illinois Tool Works Inc.'s foundation for the ITW David Speer Academy for a school built across the street from Prosser High School. ITW has already been contacting Prosser freshman and their families to recruit them away from Prosser.

But lately, Milke and his wealthy patrons have run into trouble when they tried to expand into more upscale north-side white communities. Parents rose up in opposition and local pols responded by putting the kibosh on Noble's expansion plans.

Big money talks, but doesn't always win.

Former schools CEO Huberman bellies up to the Chicago charter feeding trough

You might remember Ron Huberman. He was the former CTA chief bureaucrat  who ran the system into the ground and who then replaced Arne Duncan as Chicago schools CEO (why not?) under Mayor Daley and went down aboard Daley's sinking ship.

He is notable for little else besides his "data-driven" reforms -- like claiming he could predict in advance, which CPS kids would likely be murdered and which ones wouldn't. He was also the guy who cut foreign language programs (they weren't on the test) and who called in the police to bust the parent protests to save Whittier School's field house.

Most importantly, Huberman was a dear friend of the city's aspiring privately-run charter networks, like UNO, Noble Street, and Chicago International. And after his dismal tenure at CPS, things began looking up for Huberman. He was able to parlay his school system connections and knowledge of procuring insider contracts into an executive position at Chicago Growth Partners and Prairie Capital. Then he started his own firm, and began reaching for some payback in the form of contracts from some of the same government-financed charter-school operators he championed as Daley’s schools chief.

According to today's Sun-Times:

Huberman, who is a member of Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner’s transition team, founded TeacherMatch LLC in 2011.

The company has since gotten contracts worth a total of more than $200,000 from two of the largest Chicago Public Schools-funded charter operators — the Noble Network of Charter Schools and the United Neighborhood Organization’s charter network — and also has gotten work from some schools in the Chicago International Charter Schools network.

TeacherMatch, which provides software to help schools screen job applicants, reported total revenues in 2013 of more than $286,000, according to school contracting records.
That same year, it got an infusion of nearly $1.9 million from investors, the records show — a sign of confidence in its future growth.

Huberman continues to serve as the company’s executive chairman, though records list its primary owner as Prairie Capital, the Chicago private-equity firm where Huberman has been a top executive since 2011.

In 2013, Huberman lobbied UNO’s then-CEO Juan Rangel and other officials, who say they had reached a “preliminary agreement” with TeacherMatch. But Rangel quit in December 2013 amid a scandal prompted by Sun-Times reports on millions of dollars in government-funded deals given by UNO to two brothers of Rangel’s top aide.

Asked how its charter network ended up doing business with TeacherMatch, an UNO official said, “It is not known who initiated those conversations.” Noble officials and Rangel declined to comment.

Huberman says, Charters “help provide options for families". He might have added the words, "especially mine".