By George N. Schmidt

Consultants and vendors on payroll also help Board of Education justify charter and school closing programs to public, media...

At the April 2006 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education, Board President Michael Scott repeated what to many was a familiar refrain: “How can I make a fair decision when the community is obviously divided?” Scott asked in his solicitous manner.

Please note: To view an exhaustive list of vendors and consultants in PDF format, please click here (very large download)

The semi-rhetorical question was supposed to indicate to the television audience which would later view the meeting that Scott was trying to balance competing claims on the public’s education dollar. Scott’s words had been repeated over and over in the nearly five years since he became school board president — after a stint at privatizing services at the Chicago Park District — in 2001. In the carefully rehearsed version of reality, Michael Scott is representing a balance between rival factions in various communities, with Scott always seeking to do the right things when conflicts arise.

But a careful review of the record, from the Chicago Park District to the Chicago Board of Education, shows that Scott’s well rehearsed lines always end up with the same result: the furtherance of the Daley administration’s privatization agenda and the further destruction of public services in Chicago.

The April 2006 scene at the Chicago Board of Education was typical of a scene that had unfolded for years in different places. A main issue before the Board in April 2006 was whether the Board would continue in the creation of another charter school operated by UNO, the United Neighborhood Organization. UNO, wose ties to the Hispanic Democratic Organization (HDO) that has been in the center of many City Hall scandals in recent years, is portrayed in public education debates as a dedicated community organization, not as a political arm of the Daley administration’s corporate agenda.

When UNO CEO Juan Rangal ( at the hearings on the Renaissance 2010 plan on September 15, 2004) speaks publicly in favor of “Renaissance 2010” , he doesn’t mention that between 2001 and 2005, his United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) received more than $1 million in consultant fees from the Chicago Board of Education. In public presentations such as the one at left (at the “hearing” on whether CPS should proceed with “Renaissance 2010”), Rangal claims to speak on behalf of the community and routinely attacks public schools and public school teachers. By March, 2005, Rangal’s organization had received CPS approval to operate three charter schools, despite widespread community opposition. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

By April 2006, UNO had opened two charters and had been granted a third charter (and possibly a fourth and fifth). Despite the fact that Chicago is only supposed to have 30 charter schools and already had 35, a few months earlier the Board passed the motion, signed by CEO Arne Duncan, to grant UNO a charter for a school in Pilsen. The expansion of the UNO charter schools, like the expansion of several others run by groups with close political ties to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, had been made possible by a rhetorical sleight of hand.

Here is how it works.

The Illinois charter school law originally said that Chicago could only have 15 charter schools, and the state could only have 45. The remaining 30 charter schools were divided between the suburbs around Chicago and “downstate.”

By 2001, it had become clear that neither the suburbs nor downstate wanted charter schools, and only a handful existed outside Chicago. Despite scandals in Chicago’s charter schools from the very beginning, the Board of Education relentlessly expanded Chicago charters, eventually breaking through the cap (which by 2003 had been raised to 30 charters for Chicago).

What enabled more than 30 to equal less than 30? Instead of calling each new Chicago charter school a “school,” the Chicago Board of Eeducation, under Michael Scott and Arne Duncan, declared that the new schools became “campuses.” Once a group had been granted the charter to create one charter school, the school board, with Daley’s blessings and in full view of Chicago’s compliant news media, created additional charter schools by making each new one a “campus” of the first charter.

Even in the Alice in Wonderland world of Chicago “school reform”, this campusing policy for charters created a cognitive problem for the mayor’s many layers of public and private apologists and propagandists. Campusing would have led to some serious questions had there been any independent media examination of the divergence between the claims of Chicago’s school reform and its realities, or had there been independent community or civic checks and balances on corporate school reform during the Daley era. This is because in Chicago’s public schools today, “campus” has two meanings, completely different from each other and different from anything anyone else might think of the common sense meaning of the term. In one part of Chicago’s school reform, “campuses” were charter schools separated by as many as 20 miles with nothing in common but a common corporate sponsor.

But in another part of Chicago’s school reform world, “campuses” meant “schools within a school” created as part of the “small schools” movement and squeezed into one high school building less than a block in size. Thus, UNO or the Chicago International Charter Schools could locate their campuses a distances of more than five miles from one another. Meanwhile at Orr High School (and at least six other high schools across the city) there were three or four “high schools” on the Orr “Campus” — which was in fact the building that had once simply been known at Orr High School.

Thus, by April 2006, the UNO charter “school” was on its third (or fourth) “campus”. Although miles separated the different “campuses”, the Board ignored the apparent violation of state law. Other charter operators had expanded even further and farther since the proclamation of “Renaissance 2010” in July 2004 by Mayor Daley. By April 2006, the Chicago International Charter School had nine campuses, with more than 20 miles between the one farthest north (Chicago International Northtown, at Peterson and Pulaski) and the farthest south (Chicago International Longwood, at 95th and Throop). The Aspira charter schools were expanding as well, from the run-down “Mirta Ramirez Computer Science” charter high school at on Western Ave. just north of Fullerton to the new Aspira Haugan Middle School on the northwest side. The list had been growing for two years growing as Scott placidly described his supposed dilemma in April 2006.

What Scott failed to mention, although he was well aware of the fact, was that one supposed faction in the supposed community debate consisted of virtual employees of the Board of Education. Like their counterparts before them over the previous four years, the UNO supporters speaking in April 2006 were regularly permitted time off from work (or school) to attend Board meetings and promote the mayor’s Renaissance 2010 and charter school plans. (By contrast, teachers and students who had opposed the school board’s policies during the same four years had been threatened with punishment for exercising the same free speech rights which were praised when they were being exercised by the Board’s supporters. Some students had even been threatened with arrest to “truancy” for showing up at the school board to question policies during the day when they were supposed to be in school).

UNO was just one of several groups and individuals that appeared to the Board’s television audience as if it were an independent group supporting the Renaissance plans.

In fact, UNO had received more than one million dollars from the Chicago Board of Education — and millions more from other entities, ranging from government to private foundations — precisely because it was pushing the privatization and deregulation agenda that lay beneath “Renaissance 2010.”

But by April 2006, the rapid expansion of privatization at public expense within the city’s public school system had run into greater and greater opposition, most of it from the communities that were supposedly to benefit from “Renaissance 2010”. It had taken Chicago’s diverse communities and hard working citizens some time before they had realized that privatization cuts both services and jobs in poor minority communities when Michael Scott was President of the Board at the Chicago Park District, but by then Scott had moved on to the school board. And at the school board, it had taken time for communities to figure out that the same privatization agenda was unfolding through charter schools and other patronage as Michael Scott sat smiling at the podium at meetings of the Chicago Board of Education.

At the March 2006 Board of Education meeting, representatives of five Pilsen-area elementary schools and a Catholic priest from the community’s largest parish took the floor to oppose the new UNO charter. Another UNO charter had been approved at the previous Board meeting without public discussion. Despite the fact that the community representatives in March were shuttled from the floor of the Board chambers to a conference room (out of sight of the TV cameras), the issue was squarely before the Board and Scott. Pilsen, one of the most powerful Mexican-American communities in Chicago, did not want a charter school. The community wanted better public schools, and the people who were speaking against the UNO charter had learned the difference, in many cases the hard way.

So behind the scenes, a tested script was rehearsed and replayed. By April, the TV audience saw that the community was again “divided” – at least for Michael Scott’s purposes. When additional representatives of the Pilsen community took the floor to continue their opposition to the latest UNO charter, they were met by a delegation of people who were supporting UNO’s charters. Scott was able to maintain his smile and muse publicly about the sad responsibilities of power in the face of such divisions.

What Scott knew, but didn’t say, was that many of those speaking in favor of the additional UNO charter were UNO employees or those who were benefiting directly from UNO’s activities. Scott also knew that UNO gets a large part of its considerable annual budget from the Chicago Board of Education and from other public bodies whose budgets are carefully controlled by Mayor Richard M. Daley. In fact, the pro-UNO faction at the April 2006 Board of Education meeting consisted of employees of UNO and their relatives, and UNO itself is a major contractor with CPS. Were those with a financial interest in the UNO charter subtracted from the equation, Michael Scott did not face a “divided” community. Pilsen leaders opposed the expansion of the UNO charters. Only UNO employees and their families were speaking in favor of the plan.

But neither Scott nor the rest of the press noted these important facts. And to the television audience, a sage Michael Scott was once again able to hold up his hands and express his dismay at having to make the “tough” decisions that come with leadership.

The origins of “Renaissance 2010”

Although Mayor Daley announced “Renaissance 2010” in June 2004, Michael Scott and Schools CEO Arne Duncan — along with their corporate sponsors — began laying the groundwork for the program two years earlier. The most complete script they’ve been following since 2004 was laid out by the Civic Federation of the Commercial Club in 2003 in a report calling for the privatization and charterization of Chicago’s public schools entitled “Left Behind.” “Left Behind” was authored by a conservative ideologue and corporate multi-millionaire named Eden Martin. Although Martin attended the April 2002 Board of Education meeting (behind a phalanx of security), unlike Barbara Sizemore and Coretta McFerren he did not speak in favor of the first steps in the “renaissance”.

By the time of the formal announcement of “Renaissance 2010” by the mayor in mid-2004, the groundwork had been laid in corporate Chicago and in the media. A large piece of the preliminaries required the deploying of patronage contractors in minority communities who were dependent on the mayor and school board for their financing. These people were then deployed for public speaking duties in support of the mayor’s corporate programs. These individuals were crucial to the television versions of the events, which form the central media portion of the strategy of selling massive privatization in the face of widespread public opposition.

Four years before the display of “division” in Pilsen over the every expanding UNO charter schools, at the April 2002 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education, Michael Scott faced a similar situation. In April 2002, Scott chaired the last meeting the Board of Education held at a public school when the board met on the stage of the auditorium of the Herzl Elementary School a few blocks from Scott’s opulent west side home. The turmoil at the meeting was caused by school closings and the inception of the “renaissance” (which then was still rendered with a small “r”). Earlier that month, Scott and Duncan had announced that they were taking the bold step of closing three schools for persistent academic “failure” (as measured by standardized test scores). More than 1,000 people turned out to protest the plan, announced a week earlier, to create a “renaissance” in the public schools by shutting down three schools that Arne Duncan said were “failing.” The plan to close Dodge, Terrell, and Williams elementary schools was new in 2002, but some of the methods used by the Board of Education were the same.

At the April 2002 Board meeting, one of those who spoke in favor of the plan to close Williams, Dodge and Terrell was Coretta McFerren, who introduced herself as a community organizer. What McFerren left out of her speech, which supported the first iteration of what became “Renaissance 2010”, was that at the time she was receiving money from the Chicago Board of Education. During the 2000 - 2001 school year, McFerren had received $67,000 as a consultant for the Board of Education. During the school year when she took the floor to speak in favor of the first three “Renaissance” school closings, McFerren was being paid $74,700 by the Chicago Board of Education. During the next three years, as the “Renaissance” grew and needed more and more community voices in support of the Mayor’s plan, McFerren continued to speak regularly in favor of the “Renaissance” and to work for the Board as a consultant. Between 2001 (when Arne Duncan became CEO of the CPS) and July 1, 2005, McFerren was paid more than $339,000 by the Chicago Board of Education, more than the average teacher earned during the same period of time. But each time McFerren appeared on television, she identified herself as a community activists speaking in support of the school board, not as one of the school board’s highest paid consultants.

McFerren wasn’t alone. Another person at the Herzl school meeting in support of the early “renaissance” was DePaul University education professor Barbara Sizemore (no deceased). Sizemore was there to give her support to Duncan and Scott, without mentioning that during the previous seven years her program at DePaul had received more than a half million dollars from the Chicago Board of Education to function as an external partner at schools with low test scores. Despite the fact that test scores still showed most of those schools to be “failing,” Sizemore’s program continued to receive CPS support, and Sizemore was at the beginning of the renaissance to provide support for the latest attack on urban public schools by Mayor Daley’s school board.

The list of those who take the floor at Chicago Board of Education meetings or at other meeting to provide support for Mayor Daley’s “Renaissance 2010” plan is longer than the leaders of UNO, Coretta McFerren, or various professors who had been well subsidized during the years since “school reform” in Chicago has meant direct dictatorial control by the mayor.

Prominent in public in praise of the mayor’s plans are Leon Finney, whose career centered on the Woodlawn Organization, and James Compton, who retired last year as head of the Chicago Urban League. Between 2001 and 2005, the Woodlawn Organization received $298,763 from CPS. The Urban League was paid $1,421,816.

Whenever Scott, Duncan and the board needed prominent minority leaders to support its latest programs, there was a long list of available apologists. As long as the rest of the Chicago media ignored the fact that everyone on the list was, in effect, a patronage employee of the school board, the claim that the programs had “community support” would appear across the city’s mass media and be fed to the general public. And not once has the other media in Chicago noted the fact that all of them were in fact employees of the school board.

Through the looking glass

It is an Alice in Wonderland version of nearly a billion dollars in spending.

Information provided to Substance under a request filed under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) shows that the Board of Education is now spending money on consultants and “outside vendors” in record amounts. Between 2004 and 2004, the amount increased by at least $34 million, while CEO Arne Duncan claimed the Board was facing financial problems. Also, while the Duncan administration is reducing the number of full-time and part-time workers at the school board — especially in the lower ranks, from teachers to custodians — the number of people working in various privatized contract situations (including the at-will employees of the city’s growing number of charter schools) is increasing at an even faster rate.

Since the year 2000, the Board has spent more than $1 billion on vendors and consultants. In 2005 alone, the last fiscal year for which the information is publicly available, the amount spent on consultants and vendors was more than $200 million. Yet unlike employee records, which are maintained and scrutinized with obsessive precision (and which often result in severe discipline or even termination for teachers and principals), these billion dollar records are maintained in what can only be described as “Alice in Wonderland” organizational principals.

The information published with this story was received by Substance in March following a detailed request for information under the Freedom of Information Act. It was originally sought as a companion to the Board’s position files, the materials on employees which provided the background for the story on the expansion of expensive executive employees published in the April 2006 Substance. This information is now available on line on the Substance website at www.substancenews.com . In order to obtain the list of all employees currently being paid $100,000 or more, the reader has to go to the PDF files of the April 2006 Substance. The list begins on Page Twelve. A complete list of all employees currently being paid in excess of $90,000 is pending, but will not be on the Substance website until June 2006, and at that time will only be available to Substance subscribers who obtain a password from the editor.

Substance’s request for the position and vendor files from the Chicago Board of Education came after CEO Arne Duncan began claiming in January 2006, without financial data to back up his claim, that the school board faced an “unprecedented” deficit of more than $300 million.

The theory upon which Substance based the two main requests was that the combination of the position files (listing employees) and the consultant vendor files (listing consultants and vendors) would add provide the information necessary to analyze factually how the school board spends most of its money. It turned out that all data on the city’s more than 35 charter schools is secret and not currently accessible under FOIA requests. This is despite the fact that the Chicago Board of Education is paying charter school salaries, insurance, and building costs in excess of $200 million this school year. Substance has challenged the claim that charter school information is exempt from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. The Illinois School Code itself states that charter schools are subject to the Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act.

The information published with this analysis is part of a much larger spreadsheet that was provided to Substance in late March 2006 in response ot a FOIA request. Although the information in the consultant vendor files originally appeared to be in some kind of logical order, and it was on a spreadsheet. It soon became clear, however, that the 4,335 lines of data, which go back to the fiscal year 2001 (the 2000-2001 school year), were posing a challenge that doesn’t exist when examining the school board’s employee data. The consultant vendor files contain expenses totaling more than $800 million in expenditures going back to the last year Paul Vallas served as CEO of CPS. Although the information was compiled under two administrators appointed by Mayor Daley supposedly because of their business skills, the data were organized very poorly. It was almost as if the huge data sets were designed to make it impossible for the public to organize, let alone evaluate, the vast expenditures of CPS on outside vendors and consultants.

When was the last time any government agency, school, or corporation organized material in alphabetical order on a spreadsheet by first name?

The material provided to Substance was not in alphabetical order — at least not in alphabetical order according to the last name of the individual or corporate entity receiving the money. In most cases (but not all) entries are under the first name of the individual, not the last name.

For example, anyone looking for Taft High School, Wells High School, Harper High School, or Bogan High School (all of which, for reasons yet to be explained by Duncan, received consultant and vendor money during the five year period in question) had to look under the letter “W”.

Why are Bogan, Harper, Taft and Wells high schools listed under “W”? Because the first name of each school is “William.” So they are listed (as the accompanying list shows) as William Howard Taft High School, William Rainey Harper High School, and William Bogan High School (not “Bogan, William…”).

Since the receipt of the consultant and vendor contract information more than two months ago, Substance staff and others spent more than 100 hours sorting and examining the data for those who received more than $10,000 in consulting or vendor work during any one fiscal year. A separate list, consisting of those receiving less than $10,000, was also received, but it has not been analyzed for this Substance.

Repeated requests to Arne Duncan for an interview to answer questions about the vast expansion of vendor and consultant spending under his administration were ignored or denied.

A review of Board policies and procedures regarding vendor contracts and the oversight of outside contractors reveals a number of inconsistencies – if not downright illegalities – in the manner in which the Board has operated its consulting and vendor affairs since Mayor Richard M. Daley was given complete control over CPS with the passage of the Amedatory Act in 1995. Since 1995, Chicago’s school have been governed by a school board appointed by Daley and by a “CEO” (rather than a schools superintendent) also appointed by Daley. The first “CEO” of CPS was Paul G. Vallas, who served from July 1995 until the end of June 2001. Since July 2001, Arne Duncan has been CEO of CPS. Neither Vallas nor Duncan had any educational administrative experience prior to being appointed to head the nation’s third largest school system by Daley.

Originally hailed (without irony) as the “Miracle Management Team” in much of the Chicago media, Daley, Vallas and then school board president Gery Chico took advantage of favorable economic conditions and the release of the city’s public schools after more than 15 years of strict accounting under the School Finance Authority to spend more than $3 billion on capital projects (that had been deferred for more than a decade) and additional billions on corporate “school reform” projects. Despite the failure of these expensive programs to dent the problems facing public schools in the harshest parts of the city’s vast ghettos and barrios, the media chorus in favor of the mayor’s school reform has continued in uncritical adulation to this day.

Yet a careful analysis of some of the most expensive projects undertaken since Daley took over reveal that they have been poorly managed, corrupt, rife with patronage, and often bearing little relationship to the real needs of inner city teachers, parents, and school children. Key to their success is their ability to sustain massive doses of propaganda while avoiding any scrutiny. The apparent disorganization of the enormous consultant/vendor files of the Chicago Board of Education is one example of how this is done.

Duncan and Scott violate Board policy by retaining long-term consultants

Like Enron, the success of Mayor Daley’s “school reform miracle” depends on shoddy accounting and massive, almost cultlike propaganda. This report begins an examination of how the shoddy accounting serves the propaganda purposes of the school board, the Daley administration, and the privatization forces behind them.

Every month, the Chicago Board of Education disciplines or fires employees, often for the most trivial of reasons. At the present time, many administrators (often with no experience in the complex realities of the classroom or the school) are being trained in management theories which demand that a certain number or percentage of workers be subject to discipline, not matter what the underlying realities.

At the same time, Duncan and his administration are subject to almost no oversight, and they pass the same favors along to those who fall under their patronage, especially among contractors, consultants, and other vendors.

One of the many places where the Duncan administration seems to be in violation of explicit Board policy — and possibly Illinois school law — is in the use of long-term consultants. As noted, Arne Duncan refused to be interviewed for this article, despite repeated requests.

The vendor and consultant files provided to Substance and being analyzed over time reveal that dozens of individuals, some former Board employees, have been employed as consultants for more than one year.

Yet the Board of Education’s Policy Manual (Section 506.1) explicitly states that full-time consultants are not to be retained for more than one year without review by the Board:

“Full-time consultants are to be retained only to work on specific projects of limited duration when specialized skills and training are required. Such consultants may be retained by board action for one year or the duration of the project, whichever is shorter. If a project will run for more than one year, annual renewals by the Board of Education must be obtained for full-time consultants. Full-time consultants whose services are required for less than five days may be retained without prior Board approval.”

Several of the consultants currently working at the Board of Education have been employed for several years, according to the consultant and vendor lists provided to Substance. Also, more than 100 of the individuals listed as having been paid as vendors between the 2000-2001 school year and the 2004-2005 school year continued from year to year (a minimum of two years, according to the manner in which Substance analyzed this group) without any public explanation of their duties or any public review on the agenda of the Chicago Board of Education’s monthly meetings. Once every year or two, the Board of Education simply passes another Board Report extending their high-priced work as consultants.

Because the list of consultants and vendors is organized in a manner that deliberately makes it difficult to locate individuals, as noted above, it was not possible to detail all of the individuals who received money over multiple years for consulting work at CPS in time for the deadline for this issue of Substance. As noted, key entries are often listed by first name, while in the same portion of the list suddenly someone will be listed by last name. Corporations and partnerships are listed in no reliable manner.

Below, for example, are the eight individuals and one entity (“Buckney Associates”) listed in the “A” and “B” entries whose total pay during the five-year period was in excess of $100,000. Most were listed by first name. In none of these cases does the public record reflect that the Board has received any public evaluation of the services rendered by these individuals, let alone an audit which would inform the Board whether the services are appropriate over the course of several years, instead of simply hiring employees to do the same work.

• Albert Pessah. $327,187. 2001-2005 (5 years total)
• Allan Goldin. $273,247. 2001-2002. 2004-2005. (4 years total).
• Angela Hill-Rivers. $125,595. 2002-2003; 2005. (3 years total).
• Anton Jones. $153,862. 2002-2005. (4 years total).
• Arthur Berman. $300,772. 2001-2005. (5 years total).
• Bania, Thaddeus. $127,925. 2004-2005. (2 years total).
• Bonita Chapman. $436,880. 2001-2005. (5years total).
• Buckney & Associates. $326,786. 2001-2005. (5 years total).
• Buzz Sawyer. $558,904. 2001-2005. (5 years total).

Substance has obtained no information whether these costs were consistent with the value of the services performed, and an examination of the Board Reports and Agendas of Action for the time periods in question (usually, for consultancies of four years or more!) indicates no examination by members of the Board to determine whether these services were necessary. In most of the above cases, the individuals were paid more annually than the average teacher earned working full-time in a classroom. In some cases, the pay over the period was higher than that earned by principals.

About that “$300 million deficit”?

Between January and the beginning of May 2006, Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan talked repeatedly about a $328 million “deficit” he claimed the school system was facing for the 2007 fiscal year, which begins July 1, 2006. Duncan provided no details of the supposedly massive deficit, and he carefully avoided press conferences where he might be asked factual questions rather than simply permitted to repeat talking points and scripted sound bites. Nevertheless, Duncan’s version of financial reality dominated policy debate in Chicago during the first four months of 2006.

Little noted during the public discussion of the supposed “deficit” (which never rose to the level of a debate because Duncan’s public relations handlers ensured that he was never challenged), Duncan had been ordering program cuts that caused many of the security problems now besetting the city’s schools — especially Chicago’s remaining general high schools. Nor was there any discussion as to whether expensive privatization programs — ranging from charter schools to the oversight and management of much of the school system’s custodial and transportation services — were necessary and proper. Under Duncan, employee costs (and future pensions) were subject to massive cuts. During the same years, multi-million dollar privatization programs which had already far exceeded the costs of their predecessor programs (viz., the management of services within the board, with board employees providing the services) were expanded. The most recent massive privatization programs are the charter schools being expanded under “Renaissance 2010.”

But at the same time he was claiming a massive “deficit”, Arne Duncan was increasing the amount of money spent on “consultants” and other vendors who do business with the Chicago Board of Education at the highest rate in Chicago history.

The nformation released through the request under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to Substance shows that the annual cost of major consultants and other major “vendors” to the Board of Education has risen from $146 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2001 (when Duncan became CEO) to $197 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2005, the most recent year for which the data are available. The amount has continued to increase during the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2006. A major vendor or consultant — for purposes of this analysis — is one who is paid more than $10,000 at any one time and is therefore subject to certain rules that are not applied to vendors and consultants who receive less than $10,000 at any one time.

Additionally, the Duncan administration has paid more than $24 million to minor vendors (those who receive jobs valued at less than $10,000 at any one time) since it took office. No audits of either major or minor vendor programs have been made available to the public at the monthly meetings of the Chicago Board of Education, despite the fact that the majority of the members of the Board are either bankers or financial people. Nor have any of the Board members ever requested that such information be provided to the public.

While cuts have been made in many program areas, and have been especially harsh in the city’s high schools, the money being paid to outsiders who do business with the school system has increased at an unprecedented rate. The following report is based on data covering the fiscal years 2001 through 2005. The Board of Education’s fiscal year begins July 1 and ends June 30, with each fiscal year named for the year during which the spending ends. Data for the current fiscal year — FY 2006 — which ends June 30, 2006, are not yet available. Substance filed a Freedom of Information request for the information as of April 1, 2006, which has yet to be answered.

The largest increase in payments to consultants and vendors has come most recently. Between FY 2004 and FY 2005, the amount paid to consultants increased by more than $34 million — from $163 million to $197 million, according to the documents provided to Substance by Board officials.

There are many discrepancies in the data, which would require an explanation from the CEO in any major corporation. Repeated requests to Duncan for an interview on this topic since Substance received the information have been ignored. [This has been typical since Duncan became CEO five years ago.] Rather than answer detailed questions about his policies and practices, Duncan simply reads from prepared scripts and then avoids anyone who asks for clarification of the details. Press conferences and other events are often ended abruptly by Duncan’s publicity staff when the questions become too factual and Duncan is unable to handle them. [See sidebar].

The increases in the money paid to consultants and other outside vendors, a significant number of whom received their contracts without competitive bidding, has come during a time when the Duncan administration has cut school programs and other parts of the Board of Education’s nearly $5 billion annual budget in ways that have been charged with creating chaos. Problems resulting from the cuts have been especially acute in the general high schools serving the most academically challenging students. Instead of providing teachers, additional staff, and lower class sizes to the general high schools, however, Duncan has joined in a national campaign to attack the high schools. Some sources even view the combination of cuts in the high schools and an increasing clamor for “high school reform” as an attempt to destabilize the high schools, thus creating the demand for the kinds of changes Duncan and his corporate supporters are scripting.

Much of the information regarding the use of consultants and other outside vendors by the city’s public school system is still shrouded in secrecy. The information published here is based solely on data provided regarding contracts that were in excess of $10,000. A separate request for information regarding consultants who were paid less than $10,000 was incomplete and is not reported here. (The information on contracts less than $10,000 did not even provide the amount each consultant was paid).

Increased costs. There has been a significant increase in the use of consultants and outside vendors and the cost of consultants, with the cost increasing from $150 million to $197 million during a time when the school system was cutting back on the number of classroom teachers and other school-based services.

Lack of public accountability at the monthly meetings of the school board. Fewer than half the consultant contracts awarded by the Chicago Board of Education since 2003 have been reported in Board Reports at the public meetings of the Chicago Board of Education, which take places once a month throughout the year.

Ghost consultants. A number of high profile consultant contracts are not reported at all in the information compiling the total cost of consultants provided in response to the Substance FOIA request. Two officials of the Consortium on Chicago School Research (Melissa Roderick and John Easton) are not reported either as consultants or as employees during the five-year period since Duncan took over as CEO.

The chief of the Board of Education’s public relations department, Peter Cunningham, is also not listed either as an employee or as a consultant in the documents provided to Substance, although the documents show that more than $400,000 was paid to “Cunningham Communications”. Roderick, Easton and Cunningham were all paid more than $100,000 per year during a number of the years since Duncan took over the school system, but neither the Board’s employee records nor the Board’s consultant records lists them. Duncan has refused to be interviewed for this article and Board officials have been unavailable to discuss this and other discrepencies in the records provided to Substance.

Community based patronage. Several million dollars were paid to groups and organizations — including the Chicago Urban League — whose leaders then represented their opinions in support of programs like “Renaissance 2010” as being based on independent community work.

Creation of internal consultants and vendors. More than $20 million was paid to departments inside the Board of Education and to individual schools under circumstances that are legally an professionally unclear. The greatest amount, more than $7 million, was paid to the Board of Education’s “Office of Accountability” during a time when that office had an annual budget ranging from $5 million to $10 million.

Preacher patronage. A number of religious organizations and leaders have been on the consultant payroll at CPS for several years and have apparently been encouraged by the Duncan administration to provide public support in their communities for controversial policies — such as “Renaissance 2010” — which have little or no grass roots support in the communities themselves.

By Substance deadline (which was extended two weeks because of this analysis), it was clear that the examination of the Chicago Board of Education’s billion dollar spending on vendors and consultants since the beginning of the new century was going to take a great deal of time and the cooperation of a large number of people.

This analysis will continue in the pages of Substance on a regular basis.

The 2005 list of consultants and vendors receiving more than $10,000 from the Chicago Board of Education is published in this Substance.

Please contact Substance by e-mail (Csubstance @ aol.com) or by phone (773-725-7502) if you have information that can assist in this ongoing project.