Educator Gerald Bracey's last article before his Oct. 20 death has yet to appear at Huff Post.

madfloridian

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Sun Dec-06-09 12:41 AM
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Educator Gerald Bracey's last article before his Oct. 20 death has yet to appear at Huff Post.

It just seems odd to go to his blog there and see no mention of his sudden death a few weeks ago. There is not even an acknowledgement of his death.

Well, actually public school education advocate Susan Ohanian wanted to post his last article at her own blog to make sure it was not forgotten, as a tribute to him. However it has yet to appear on her blog at Huffington Post. There is a tribute there to him, but not his last article.

It is still waiting on approval by the Chicago editor.

It is critical of Arne Duncan, and presents some facts Chicago might like to forget. But in my mind he was a Huffington Post blogger. It deserves to be posted either at his blog or Ohanian's blog there.

It IS posted at the Schools Matter blog, though. It is an interesting situation of how Chicago schools paid too much for the services of the Save a Life Foundation.

What Does Arne Duncan Know About Carol Spizzirri, And When Did He Know It?

Susan Ohanian's comments in introduction.

Note by Susan Ohanian: Jerry Bracey had just finished this column when he died on Oct. 20. He had planned to release it at his Huffington Post blog on Halloween. Hence the rattling skeletons theme. I found out about it and posted it at my Huffington Post spot on Nov. 18, where it still waits "approval" by the Chicago editor.

News delayed is news denied.

It has been 46 days since his death as best I can figure.

Spizzirri formed the Save a Life Foundation when her daughter died in car accident. It is long article, and there appears to have been numbers of students taught that did not make sense...and about the amount the Chicago public schools paid to them.

Chicago TV investigative reporter Chuck Goudie did some checking.

But official records indicate that the daughter's alcohol level was twice the legal limit, that she flipped the car, and died a half hour after reaching a hospital. Confronted with these facts by Chicago TV investigative reporter Chuck Goudie in 2006, Spizzirri terminated the interview and stomped off the set. Over the next year, Goudie did another three reports raising more questions about SALF.

Those stories appear to have been the first time a Chicago reporter did any fact checking about the foundation. For instance, in an uncritical 2002 Sun-Times article, Spizzirri claimed that her foundation trained 400,000 Illinois school children in 2001 alone. Do the math. In a 180-day school year, that's 2,222 children per day.

During his years as CPS big dog, Arne Duncan was apparently close to Spizzirri. He was a featured speaker at a 2003 SALF conference and a 2006 press statement has him receiving a SALF "Sponsorship Award" from Spizzirri, his second such prize. Duncan is quoted saying, "Carol is one of my heroes. I really appreciate the partnership." Duncan even appeared as an animated pitchman on SALF's website, cheerily hyping kids on the program: "Hi, friend, I'm Arne Duncan ... Ask your school teacher today if the 'SALF-Town' heroes can visit you!"

The video is at the link.

Here is more:

After Goudie's reports, Spizzirri filed a defamation suit against three people who criticized SALF (including Dr. Heimlich's son), claiming the criticisms cost it 11 contracts, including CPS. But the lawsuit resulted in only more scrutiny. For example, in response to a subpoena from the defendants' lawyer for all their SALF records, CPS produced a grand total of 19 invoices from 2000-2007 totaling $12,855.

Three more invoices from 2004/2005 -- which CPS failed to provide to the defendants' attorney -- have since turned up via a public records request. The first 19 invoices produced by the subpoena appear to have gone through regular CPS payroll. But the three later invoices, totaling $49,000, were processed and signed off by CEO Arne Duncan's office. One includes this handwritten notation: "per AD per Ann Whalen 9-14-05." Whalen was Duncan's personal assistant. She now works for him in Washington ( see docs here).

There is more on this topic at Substance News this week.

Save-A-Life Fundation scam may be just the tip of a corrupt CPS contract iceberg. No-bid contracts increased during the years Arne Duncan was CEO of Chicago's schools

While the recent revelation that Arne Duncan helped promote the fraudulent "Save-A-Life Foundation" during the years the group was receiving funds from Chicago's public schools continue to raise questions that Duncan has so far refused to address. These questions include when (if ever) he debarred the Save-A-Life Foundation from doing business with CPS and whether he ordered any attempt to recover the funds CPS spent on the non-existent � or barely existent � Save-A-Life training. The Chicago Board of Education, which meets once a month, routinely approved the proposals (called "Board Reports") that were submitted to it by Duncan, and there is nothing in the public record to indicate that Duncan informed the Board members in public when it became clear that the Save-A-Life Foundation was a charity fraud.

But Duncan's negligence with the taxpayers' dollars in the Save-A-Life scandal may be just the tip of the iceberg, to use an overused metaphor. A more complete review of the Duncan years shows that dozens of contracts, some amounting to millions of dollars, were routinely awarded by Duncan to corporations and individuals without competitive bidding, and that once the contracts had been awarded, minimal oversight was done by Duncan or his staff. Because the Chicago Board of Education conducts most of its business in secret (and has since mayoral control began in July 1995), there is little in the public record to indicate how duly diligent Chicago's CEO or his Board were when spending taxpayer dollars on a vast number of privatization programs, schemes, and planning.

An ongoing review of the Chicago Board of Education's expenditures by Substance since the beginning of mayoral control (1995) and focusing especially on the seven years (2001 - 2008) that Duncan served as Chief Executive Officer of CPS shows that the number and amount of contracts awarded without competitive bidding increased during the Duncan years.

At the same time that Duncan was pursuing what has now been revealed to be a ruthless program of closing schools and laying off regular CPS teachers, he was simultaneously awarding contracts ranging from computer hardware and software to consultancies without going through the legal competitive bidding processes.

Substance News indicates they will continue the investigation.

Thanks to Susan Ohanian for posting this at School Matters and at her own blog.

She did get the attention of the editor at Huff Post.

She added his comments without comment.

Please Note: An editor at Huffington Post feels my comment below about "news delayed" is unfair. He requests that I post this further explanation: The author of the post is posthumous, so we have no way of going through the usual back and forth with its author during the editing process. That is a critical factual point missing in your introduction, and to leave it out misrepresents a major reason for the delay in editing. I hope that you will add it.

Further, the Huffington editor states, I'm sorry that the hours we have already spent and had planned to spend on this post weren't apparent to you.

Perhaps they will acknowledge his death soon. It's only been 46 days.