Yet for all their smarts, apparently the board couldn’t figure out that schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and her pals from Supes Academy were up to no good with their $20.5 million principal-training scam.
Byrd-Bennett pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges Tuesday after a scathing indictment was handed down last week. The feds accused Byrd-Bennett of steering $23 million worth of consulting contracts to Supes officials in exchange for “hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks.”
But the indictment came more than two years after Sarah Karp, education reporter for Catalyst Chicago, figured out the whole scam—in less than a month.
So we have to ask ourselves: Why couldn’t our public school watchdogs see what was staring them in the face? The answer, my friends, is that it’s hard to see when you have your eyes closed.
I haven’t seen such willful neglect since various police and state’s attorney officials looked the other way after Mayor Daley’s nephew R.J. Vanecko killed David Koschman outside a Rush Street bar.
Karp’s exposé, published just a few weeks after the board unanimously approved the Supes deal, tells you almost everything you need to know about the sordid affair that probably will probably send Byrd-Bennett and Gary Solomon, her chief confederate at Supes, to federal prison.
OK, that’s not entirely true. The one thing Karp didn’t have back then was access to personal e-mails exchanged by Byrd-Bennett and Solomon. Those are cited in the federal indictment.
Like the one in which Solomon writes Byrd-Bennett that “When this stint at CPS is done and you are ready to re re re retire, we have your spot waiting for you. Hopefully, with even more work and more opt.”
Or the one in which Byrd-Bennett writes Solomon that she’s looking forward to getting her kickbacks because “I have tuition to pay and casinos to visit.”
No, it took the subpoena powers of federal prosecutors—whose investigation was spurred by Karp’s article—to unearth those nuggets.
But still. Karp revealed that Byrd-Bennett had worked for Supes before she came to CPS. And that she maintained a questionable affiliation with the company after she was CEO. And that Solomon himself had been accused of “sending sexually explicit emails to students,” during his stint at a dean of students at Niles Township High School.
Or the one in which Byrd-Bennett writes Solomon that she’s looking forward to getting her kickbacks because “I have tuition to pay and casinos to visit.”
No, it took the subpoena powers of federal prosecutors—whose investigation was spurred by Karp’s article—to unearth those nuggets.
But still. Karp revealed that Byrd-Bennett had worked for Supes before she came to CPS. And that she maintained a questionable affiliation with the company after she was CEO. And that Solomon himself had been accused of “sending sexually explicit emails to students,” during his stint at a dean of students at Niles Township High School.
And again, Karp revealed all of this way back in the summer of 2013.