Chutzpah is the only word for Byrd Bennett's claim for a lighter sentence so she can go back to 'helping children'... but the support she received from the union(s) in New York, Cleveland and Chicago has yet to be analyzed!....
Barbara Byrd Bennett at the April 2015 meeting of the Chicago Board of Education. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.Former Chicago Public Schools "Chief Executive Officer" Barbara Byrd Bennett will be in federal court on Friday April 28, 2017, to hear the sentence she will serve because she admitted to federal fraud charges in relation to the SUPES principal training deals. Byrd Bennett is expected to appear before U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang at 1:00 this afternoon at the federal building in Chicago to hear her sentence. She is also expected to make a statement.
Reporting has been extensive since Byrd Bennett was first exposed for lying to FBI agents as early as April 2015 about how she pushed through massive (more than $20 million) contracts to privatize principal training in the nation's third largest school system in exchange for promises of money later.
But a lot will be left out of the discussion of Byrd Bennet and her crimes. Left out will include how the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and four of its locals (New York, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago) helped grease the way for Byrd Bennett to become one of the most corrupt public education leaders in the history of the United States of America. Noteworthy in the early coverage just before Byrd Bennett's sentencing is the silence of the leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union about the corruption that Byrd Bennett helped lead during her time at CPS. By the end of 2016, CTU officers had terminated their own independent analysis and critique of CPS finances and had joined with the Board of Education and the current CEO (Forrest Claypool) in placing the entire burden of Chicago public school finances on the State of Illinois.
Earlier, and over several years, CTU had regularly joined other groups in criticizing the Board's spending priorities as well as how the Board received its revenues. But by the time Byrd Bennett was in trouble with the feds, CTU and CPS officials were virtually joined at the hip in a joint critique of "Springfield" -- as if CPS spending (only a part of which included the corrupt deals orchestrated by Byrd Bennett) were not questionable. Ironically, a CPS lawsuit blaming all of the district's financial problems on "Springfield" is also scheduled for April 28, 2017.
And to add to those facts, the only word for Byrd Bennett's plea for a lighter sentence is a New York word -- Chutzpah.
In her pleading on sentencing, she claims that is she is given the lightest possible sentence she can return to the word of helping children!
Prior to the federal court hearing the Chicago media weighed in again on the Byrd Bennett story:
SUN TIMES...
Barbara Byrd-Bennett finally due for sentencing Friday, Chicago Sun-Times, CHICAGO 04/27/2017
Former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett apologized to students, parents and educators in a statement to the media as she exited federal court on Oct. 13, 2015. Now, on Friday, April 28, Byrd-Bennett, 67, is finally expected to learn her fate. She's due for sentencing at 1 p.m. in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang.
Two years have passed since the FBI confronted the woman hand-picked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to teach the children of Chicago.
Barbara Byrd-Bennett sat down with federal agents that day in April 2015. And then, the CEO of Chicago Public Schools “lied about just about everything,” prosecutors say.
She had a lot to hide.
In an extraordinary chapter in Chicago’s long history of graft, the feds ultimately learned a greedy businessman had engineered Byrd-Bennett’s installation at the top of CPS, the third-largest school district in the nation. Educational consultant Gary Solomon hoped Byrd-Bennett would steer millions to his companies. In return, he promised to pay her hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks.
Not only did Byrd-Bennett oblige, but in their substantial correspondence she authored a nine-word, emoji-punctuated email that secured her place in Chicago’s corruption hall of fame: “I have tuition to pay and casinos to visit (:”.
Now, 18 months after a grand jury hit Byrd-Bennett, Solomon and businessman Thomas Vranas with a 23-count indictment, Byrd-Bennett, 67, is finally expected to learn her fate Friday. She is due for sentencing at 1 p.m. in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang.
Before Chang hands down his sentence, Byrd-Bennett’s lawyers have promised she will explain why “a highly educated professional of incredible accomplishment” would “engage in such blatantly wrong and deplorable conduct.”
“Nobody has struggled more with this question than Barbara herself, and at her upcoming sentencing, she will address the issue candidly with the court in her own words,” Michael Scudder, Byrd-Bennett’s attorney, wrote in a memo to the judge earlier this month.
Prosecutors will ask the judge to send Byrd-Bennett to prison for 89 months. Byrd-Bennett, who never actually pocketed the promised kickbacks, will ask for only three and a half years. She also wants a chance to perform “very substantial community service, including helping public school systems and their officials adhere to complete integrity and transparency.”
Byrd-Bennett pleaded guilty to wire fraud in October 2015. Vranas, 36, pleaded guilty to a bribe conspiracy in April 2016 and is also set to be sentenced Friday morning. Last month, Chang sentenced Solomon, a 49-year-old former dean at Niles West High School, to seven years in prison for wire fraud. Solomon has indicated he plans to appeal. All three still face a lawsuit filed by CPS that seeks to claw back any of the millions spent in the fraud.
Byrd-Bennett worked as a consultant for Solomon and Vranas at The SUPES Academy LLC and Synesi Associates LLC after running school systems in Cleveland and Detroit. She was then sent to CPS in 2011 to coach a short-lived Emanuel appointee, but she was quickly tapped to be Chicago’s “interim” chief education officer in April 2012.
That same month, she secretly signed a “consulting agreement” with Solomon and Vranas, agreeing she would receive a percentage of the gross revenues from any contract she could steer their way. Solomon promised to stash the money away for her in accounts for her twin grandsons and turn it over to her as a “signing bonus” when she later returned to his payroll.
Solomon was also working behind the scenes. He told the mayor’s deputy for education in a July 2012 email that CPS’ CEO at the time, Jean-Claude Brizard, wanted out of his job — and Byrd-Bennett was “all in.”
By July 24, 2012, Solomon was applauding Byrd-Bennett in an email that read, “Congrats Madam CEO!!!” The rest of the city wouldn’t learn of Byrd-Bennett’s promotion for three more months.
Once in charge of CPS, Byrd-Bennett steered some $23 million in no-bid contracts to Solomon’s companies in late 2012 and 2013. The guilty pleas stemmed from the first one, a $2 million contract for principal training that the school board approved the same day as her $250,000-a-year contract to be CEO.
“She sold her integrity and sold out the students of the Chicago Public Schools, and then she worked to enrich herself and her co-schemers at the expense of CPS, its students, its teachers, its administrators, and the City of Chicago,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Megan Church wrote.
But before the scheme was revealed, Emanuel fondly referred to Byrd-Bennett as “B3.” She led CPS through much of his first term, guiding the schools system through a 2012 teachers’ strike and the high-profile controversial shuttering of a record 50 schools in 2013. Her lawyers referred to both as “accomplishments” in their recent memo to the judge.
Her tenure ended when FBI subpoenas landed at the district in April 2015 — days after voters gave Emanuel a second term as mayor. Byrd-Bennett, Solomon and Vranas wouldn’t be indicted until October of that year. Byrd-Bennett pleaded guilty days after she was charged.
Prosecutors said at the time they would recommend a sentence of roughly seven years in exchange for Byrd-Bennett’s cooperation with their investigation. Acknowledging that Byrd-Bennett first lied to the FBI when confronted by agents, Church has said Byrd-Bennett ultimately “cooperated first, and she cooperated fully.”
After admitting her role in the scheme to the judge, Byrd-Bennett also gave a tearful apology to the schoolchildren of Chicago, and their families.
“They deserved much more,” she said, “much more than I gave to them.”
TRIBUNE STORY APRIL 28, 2017 (Print edition) below here....
Ex-CPS chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett to be sentenced Friday in bribery case, by Juan Perez Jr. Chicago Tribune, April 28, 2017
Barbara Byrd-Bennett's fall began in April 2015 when a pair of FBI agents investigating a kickback scheme at Chicago Public Schools knocked on her door.
Byrd-Bennett, a Harlem, N.Y.- raised former teacher handpicked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to steer the city's district in the wake of a 2012 teachers strike, agreed to speak to the agents that day.
But federal prosecutors allege nearly everything she said was a lie.
On Friday, two years and 14 days after that first interview, Byrd-Bennett faces sentencing at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse for her role in a bribery case that added an embarrassing chapter to the troubled history of CPS.
Byrd-Bennett pleaded guilty in October 2015 to steering more than $23 million in no-bid contracts to the SUPES Academy education consulting firm where she once worked in return for kickbacks, other perks and a promise of a lucrative job once her time as CPS CEO was over.
Prosecutors are seeking a prison sentence of nearly 7 1/2 years for the disgraced educator, more than double the 3 1/2 years in prison that her attorneys have asked U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang to consider.
Byrd-Bennett is scheduled to be sentenced hours after one of her co-conspirators, former education consultant Thomas Vranas. In a filing early this month, Vranas' attorneys asked a judge to consider a sentence of three years of probation. Prosecutors will ask that Vranas instead serve a 39-month prison sentence.
Gary Solomon, whom prosecutors called the "mastermind" of the bribery scheme, was sentenced last month to seven years in prison. He has appealed his prison term. Solomon and Vranas, who co-owned SUPES Academy and Synesi Associates, also entered guilty pleas.
Byrd-Bennett will learn her fate as CPS struggles to avert insolvency and awaits a ruling — also set to come down Friday afternoon in Cook County Chancery Court — on a lawsuit filed in an effort to wrest more money from the state.
Byrd-Bennett's case has also deepened what officials and observers sometimes describe as a "trust deficit" that CPS faces with the public it serves.
"I think she's a byproduct of a very flawed system," said Wendy Katten of the Raise Your Hand parent advocacy group, which has long pushed the city to dump its current mayor-appointed school board for an elected body.
Much of the case against Byrd-Bennett centered on emails sent between her and Solomon that seemed to make no effort to conceal the kickback scheme. In one message, Byrd-Bennett even implied she needed cash because she had "tuition to pay and casinos to visit," according to the charges.
Prosecutors say she hired her friends at CPS and exploited her knowledge of the district to enrich herself and secure college and wedding funds for her twin grandsons. Byrd-Bennett "expected to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars" when she went back to work for SUPES after leaving CPS. Solomon and Vranas received payments of more than $2.9 million, the government said.
Prosecutors said Byrd-Bennett eventually sought to cooperate with the government's investigation. She provided what authorities described as "truthful information regarding other areas of interest" to the government and the school system's inspector general and also met with law enforcement from outside the Northern District of Illinois.
She apologized after pleading guilty following a formal indictment that came three years nearly to the day after Emanuel described her as "the best and the brightest" when he tapped her to lead CPS.
Katten plans to be in court for Byrd-Bennett's sentencing but doesn't see an opportunity for much closure.
"Yes, an individual did a bad thing, but the Board of Education was negligent in their role and should've cut off that long before they did. It shouldn't have taken a federal investigation to stop that," she said.
By: AlKorach
BBB
Great comments on BBB. I would say that she is only the tip of the CHICAGO political corruption mess. SPRINGFIELD IS out of money because they allowed administrators to give it away. Every day I'm glad I retired