A Credit to Our Schools... Rufus Williams and Arne Duncan should at least say 'Thank You' for all that booze they put on our tab
While CPS officials, including Arne Duncan (CEO, above right) and Rufus Williams (Board President) were partying for thousands of dollars and getting $900 per night hotel rooms at Board expense, they were simultaneously telling parents, teachers and children that they were closing schools and moving them around for reasons of "efficiency." At the January 23, 2008, meeting of the Chicago Board of Education (above), Arne Duncan, then CEO of CPS, let Board President Rufus Williams (rear, speaking) do the lying about the proposal to move the Edison program seven miles away from its northwest side Chicago location. The move was ordered by Mayor Daley and completed by Duncan and Williams so that CPS could continue its policy of ethnic cleansing of schools in all-white neighborhoods (Edison was the only school in that part of town that had black children at the time; the Edison move got the last black kids out of that area). At the time of the Board of Education meeting shown above, Williams was denying that the Edison move was a "done deal" and was telling everyone that there would be "hearings" — before the Board voted to make the deal a "Done Deal" a month later. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt. [Editor's note: The following story was posted by Matt Farmer (Chicago lawyer and musician) at Huffington Post on January 5, 2011 10:45 AM. Matt is a Chicago attorney and humorous critic of the Chicago scene — as well as parent of CPS children. The complete 56-page report of the Inspector General can be found at the CPS website, www.cps.edu, at least for the next couple of days. The following is reprinted with permission].
It's been two years, and I still haven't gotten a thank-you note from Rufus Williams for helping to cover the $640 dinner tab he rang up at Table 52 on the Gold Coast back in January 2009.
Who knows? Maybe the former president of the Chicago Board of Education forgot about me. Or maybe he's still working on the note to thank me for pitching in for the food and booze — $6,000 worth — that he and his pals enjoyed in a Soldier Field skybox on September 6, 2008.
Joe Kotowski, parent of a student at Edison, spoke to the January 23, 2008 Board meeting in opposition to the proposed move of the school. After assuring the Edison parents, who formed one of the largest groups to protest that year's changes in schools, that the deal moving Edison was not a Chicago-style "Done Deal," the Board held a pro-forma "hearing," ignored the testimony of the vast majority of parents, community leaders, and experts in gifted education, and voted to move the school. All along, as the parents suspected, it had been a "Done Deal," but the parents stayed active in the years since. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.Of course, Rufus being Rufus, he probably finished writing and addressing my thank-you notes and then accidentally left them on the desk in that $979/night New York City hotel room that I helped him pay for.
On the other hand, maybe Rufus just decided to stiff me. Come to think of it, I never did get invited to those holiday bashes at his house back in 2006, 2007, and 2008. But being the sport I am, I still ended up kicking in my share of Rufus's $12,000 tab for those events.
Call me a fool, but I guess I have a soft spot in my heart for the folks that Mayor Daley picks to head the Board of Education. Why else would I have coughed up cash for Michael Scott's Olympic junket to Copenhagen in 2009?
And let's not forget about my generous contributions to all those charitable organizations that listed Michael or one of his family members as directors. That was just my way of trying to improve our city's schools while making life a little more comfortable for Mayor Daley's guys.
During the objections to the Board's "Done Deal" for Edison, Rufus Williams spoke forcefully against any implication that he and his fellow Board members (like Tariq Butt, above right) had anything but the most noble intentions when they proposed moving around schools and doing "turnaround" a year before it became national policy. At the time the above photograph was taken, during the January 2008 Board meeting, Williams had just finished charging the Board for expensive parties he was hosting. A few months later, he charged the Board more than $10,000 for a Soldier Field skybox during a football game. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.But not everyone understands how things work in this town. Just yesterday, another member of Chicago's "Inspector General Brigade" decided to grab fifteen minutes of fame by suggesting that the mayor's men used their Board of Ed credit cards for "extravagant" purchases that demonstrated "a lack of judgment and fiscal responsibility."
Luckily, this is still Daley's Chicago. And in this town, Inspector Gadget commands more respect than any Inspector General ever will.
The way I figure, if Mayor Daley isn't going to get worked up about these charges, I'm not going to either. And I've yet to hear Rahm Emanuel, Gery Chico, or Carol Moseley Braun suggest that Mayor Daley's guys were playing fast and loose with Board of Ed plastic.
And let's also remember that Rufus cut his teeth as a CPA with Arthur Andersen. So when he told the Chicago Tribune that his "credit card use was fully proper," and insisted that each of his charges "related to our children and to our schools," what's not to believe?
A month after Arne Duncan, Barbara Eason Watkins, and Rufus Williams lied to them about the hearings that would be held on the proposal to move Edison school (they said it wasn't a "Done Deal" Chicago style, so the parents brought more than 300 people to the hearings and put it up on You Tube, to no avail), the Edison parents stayed to witness the vote of the seven corrupt members of the Chicago Board of Education on February 27, 2008 — when the Done Deal became formally done. The vote, which took place at nearly 5:00 p.m. that day, was held at CPS headquarters in what became, for the day, a virtual police state, with security (front and rear in the above photo) soaking the building lobby and the Board meeting to threaten protesting parents, students, teachers, and community leaders as Arne Duncan and Rufus Williams moved their agenda forward. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.If Rufus said taxpayers spent $6,000 for food and booze at Soldier Field so that he and his friends could discuss our schools, who are we to question him? After all, it's doubtful that we'll ever know what they actually talked about, because Board of Ed presidents generally have the skybox swept for listening devices right before kickoff.
The Board of Ed credit card. Don't leave home without it.
Follow Matt Farmer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mifarmer
Comments:
By: Rod Estvan
what the CPS Board knew and when
It seems clear now that some staff working at the CPS went to the IG over spending by both Mr. Scott and Williams because they were becoming fearful that they could get in trouble themselves. Based on statements from the Vice President of the CPS Board following Mr. Scott's death it is clear it was not a CPS Board member that went to the IG. It is also clear that Scott's death at his own hand was related to the IG investigation and possible criminal charges he could have faced.
Is it really possible that none of the other Board members figured out that Mr. Scott had bet everthing on getting the 2016 Olympics and lost? Is it possible that these Board members did not know Mr. Scott was also working for a firm that was asking to create TIF funding for development projects? TIFs that directly related to CPS revenues.
Yes, it is possible because these members just did not want to know. Corruption is all over Chicago so what, as long as I am clean who am I to go after a fellow Board member. Our school system is sick, and political control over CPS is sick.
Rod Estvan
By: George N. Schmidt
Board members, Huberman refused to be interviewed
During this time, as a Substance reporter, I asked to interview all the members of the Board, especially after the big lies about "billion dollar deficits" came rolling out in their name and one of the Board members who should have known better backed up Ron Huberman's "deficit" lie by asserting that he knew finance and even though the "deficit" claims under Arne Duncan (and Rufus or Michael) were bullshit, this time -- i.e., 2010 -- they were really, truly, authentically the TRUTH.
The answer when I asked to interview (a) all seven Board members and (b) Ron Huberman about the actual content of those truncated Power Point slides claiming these huge "deficits" was
"They are too busy to talk with you..."
I gave Monique Bond a copy of the 2009 CAFR in January 2010 following a brief press conference on the "deficit" at which Huberman ran out before any serious and detailed questions could be asked. I gave her the CAFR, which had been presented to the Board the month before, and told her I wanted to interview Huberman about the realized losses that had begun to leak out in the famous "Note 10" that the auditors had insisted be included in the CAFR each year. Note 10 explains, in the most Orwellian and obtuse language possible, the situation regarding swaps and derivatives that CPS began utilizing (illegally, but doubtless with the approval and knowledge of the members of the Board) during the Duncan years (by 2003 at the latest, even though they didn't establish a policy until 2008!).
Now the FY 2010 CAFR, in Note 10 in that still obscure language, says that CPS has lost (in Orwellian language) more than $100 million on these smart guy deals. And the losses will mount, just as they are for every other public body that was fast talked into entering these "I win either way" with the big banks (and the little local clout outfit, "State Street Capital").
Meanwhile, the rest of the Chicago media simply takes dictation and repeats the nonsense on budget that someone like Huberman is scripted to say. After all, he's the "numbers guy", remember (even though his degree and experience are all in narrative obfuscations and doubletalk, from his English major at Wisconsin to his "Public Policy" studies at my Alma Mater, the University of Chicago).
Neither the Sun-Times nor the Tribune bothers to send anyone on these financial stories, so the public is simply kept in the dark until the next explosion (which will be as big as 1979) happens. And as to the other "reporters" covering this, my favorite quote from the past year comes from the publisher of Catalyst, Linda Lenz, on WBEZ.
Everyone knows, she said during a finances discussion, that the Board was facing a something or other of "gazillions" of dollars.
So why read the fine print, since everyone knows (a) that Ron Huberman knows the numbers and (b) a "gazillion" is really nasty, so CPS had to raid the teachers' pension fund last April (when Huberman told John Cullerton to his face that if the General Assembly didn't take that $1.2 billion from the CTPF the schools would not open in September).
The lies were just signed off on by the seven Board members, all of whom are probably indemnified against their malfeasance anyway (although apparently Michael crossed some major line, even on that).
I gave a bet about which Board member charged that $200 Hewrmes scarf on the P Card (see the complete IG report), but I'm going to actually ask each of the three Board members who might sport a Hermes directly, just to be accurate. Maybe taxpaying Chicago citizens can't get their heads around the idea of a "gazillion" dollar deficit, but I think they can understand neckwear that costs more than their whole tie rack.
By: I Love this Guy!
Reality Check
You can't make this sh-- up. What a travesty.