IL Senate votes to kill Charter Commission. Bad news for Gülen charters?

Fethullah Gülen

The IL Senate voted to abolish the State Charter School Commission which had the power to override school district decisions to reject charter applications. The bill to abolish was sponsored by Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood and passed the Senate 34-22. It now goes back to the House for possible action next week.

This watered-down version of the bill still leaves rejected charter operators a way into to local school districts. It would shift the Commission's authority to a newly created board to be impaneled by Gov. Quinn appointed Supt. Christopher Koch, with final decisions on rejected charter-school applications resting with the State Board of Education.

The Commission seems to have crossed the line when it overrode a CPS Board vote and cleared Des Plaines-based Concept Schools to open two new charter campuses in Chicago. The Sun-Times reported in December that Turkish billionaire and political intriguer Fethullah Gülen, who essentially owns Concept Schools and runs the biggest network of privately-run charters in the U.S., hosted House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) and many other Illinois lawmakers on trips to Turkey in recent years.

And records show the state charter commission’s Springfield lobbyist is Liz Brown-Reeves  —  a former Madigan aide who accompanied lawmakers on their trip to Turkey in 2012. The Commission also received big funding from Walton and other private, pro-charter foundations.

I suspect this move is an attempt to clean up the the Gülen connection and create a buffer between the corrupt charter operation, Madigan and Gov. Quinn. Nevertheless, a win for school districts and the teacher unions who stood in opposition to the Commission. We'll see what happens in the House.

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.

Boehner says, "guess who's coming to dinner?" It's Mike Madigan

Madigan (L) & Boehner

“The press never picked up on it,” Edelman said about how his group had endorsed twice as many Democratic candidates as Republicans. Those endorsements were a strong indication to Madigan, however, that they were clearly favoring him. “Luckily, it never got covered that way,” Edelman explained. “That wouldn’t work well in Illinois. Madigan’s not particularly well liked.” -- Illinois Times

Now this from today's  Sun-Times (8/24/11)

Talk about strange bedfellows.

Two weeks ago, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) came to Hinsdale to raise money for Republicans to fight the congressional map drawn under the direction of state Democratic Party chief and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. The very next night, the congressman broke bread with Madigan (D-Chicago) at a fund-raiser for Boehner’s leadership fund at the Lemont home of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Chairman Terry Duffy. Madigan’s little-known appearance has left partisans in both political camps in a state of disbelief.

Remember, it was Madigan who helped Stand For Children and Jonah Edelman engineer the passage of anti-union bill, SB7 in Illinois. He's also currently leading the grab of the teachers pension fund.  So these bedfellows are not as strange and they seem.