post-img to 642x310px - Zoom Crop of 0 - Quality 75% -->by REBECCA VEVEA and CRYSTAL YEDNAK | Apr 19, 2011
This article is part 1 of 4 in the series Emanuel's New Education TeamMayor-Elect Rahm Emanuel’s pick to guide the Chicago Public Schools is a New York superintendent who raised test scores and the union’s ire in Rochester, closed under-performing schools and opened new ones–and has quite a task ahead if he is to fulfill the education agenda outlined by his new boss.
“I’ve decided to have a fresh start and hit the reset button on education,” Emanuel said Monday in announcing Jean-Claude Brizard as his choice for chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools, along with an entirely new school board and new CPS leadership team.
The appointment raised concerns among the Chicago Teachers Union about Brizard’s contentious relations with Rochester’s teachers. In Brizard, Emanuel has chosen a proponent of charter schools and merit pay who also now must deal with an $820 million budget deficit.
The Chicago Teachers Union, with whom Brizard must start negotiating a new contract, criticized the selection. “We’re disappointed both by the choice of Brizard and by the entire tone that the mayor-elect has adopted,” said Jesse Sharkey, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union.
During Emanuel’s press conference Monday, Brizard read from prepared remarks but did not answer any questions. Emanuel intervened when reporters tried to question his appointee.
Brizard, a native of Haiti, began his career in the New York City Public School system as a middle school science teacher in Brooklyn and later a high school physics teacher. He moved through administrative ranks, first as a principal, then a New York City regional superintendent in charge of 100,000 students.
Before moving to Rochester, Brizard served as executive director for secondary schools, experience touted by Emanuel as important for the challenges facing Chicago’s high schools.
The son of a teacher and a principal, Brizard spoke of his role as an educator and said “there is no greater calling.”
Emanuel said he interviewed several individuals, one of whom was from Chicago and came recommended by U.S. secretary of education Arne Duncan, himself a former Chicago schools chief. But Brizard’s students-first philosophy “tipped the scale,” Emanuel said.
“In all of my discussions with J.C., it was not a commitment to reform for the sake of reform,” Emanuel said. “He never left the focus that children were the goal here.”
While Brizard is an educator, as opposed to a candidate from the corporate world that some thought Emanuel might select, he has been a polarizing figure in the Rochester City School District. An overwhelming majority of teachers there gave him a vote of no confidence earlier this year.
Union leaders in Rochester say their relationship with Brizard became strained as he sought to expand charter schools and institute merit pay. “Rather than understanding and valuing the collective wisdom of teachers and parents, he proceeded with his reforms so he was doing it to teachers and not with teachers, to parents and not with parents,” said Rochester Teachers Association president Adam Urbanski.
“I’m a little puzzled as to what went into the thinking for Chicago. If you want a leader, and you select someone with a no confidence vote of teachers?” Urbanski said. “One can only hope that he learned from his mistakes.”
The CTU’s Sharkey said Chicago teachers will try to keep an open mind about Brizard. “We hope that his past practice does not predict the future,” he said.
Promoters of charters schools in Illinois expressed the opposite wish. Andrew Broy, president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, said Brizard shows a “willingness to make tough decisions even if it doesn’t please labor.”
Brizard will also have to attack looming budget problems and institute major changes to the system all while learning how Chicago works. Since 1995, CPS has had chief executives steeped in the city’s politics. Paul Vallas had served as Mayor Richard M. Daley’s budget director. Arne Duncan, a Chicago native, worked inside CPS before heading the system. Ron Huberman, a former mayoral chief of staff, also headed the Chicago Transit Authority.
Emanuel’s choices for a new school board would surround Brizard with people who know how to navigate the system. David Vitale, Elizabeth Swanson and Penny Pritzker are familiar faces in Chicago’s corporate and education reform communities.
In revealing his board choices, Emanuel acknowledged that the school board will play a role.
“The challenges facing the Chicago public school system are great, and addressing them will take much more than a single law or a single person,” Emanuel said.
Still, parents and community groups are hopeful the new administrative team and board will engage outside of the board room and CPS headquarters. Patricia O’Keefe, a CPS parent and organizer for parent organization Raise Your Hand, said the board appointees are a powerful group of people. “But if they don’t bring everyone along with them, the children are going to lose. You just can’t bulldoze your way through it,” she said.
Brizard still has to exit his job in Rochester before he can get to work in Chicago. On Monday, Brizard sent a letter to the Rochester district saying he would resign by the end of the school year. In that letter, Brizard listed what he saw as the district’s accomplishments in his three years there: closing under-performing schools, opening five new schools, moving the district in alignment with the National Common Core Standards, significantly cutting down on out-of-school suspensions, and giving principals more control of their budgets.
Over the weekend, as rumor spread Brizard was under consideration for the Chicago job, four members of the Rochester school board who recently signed a new contract with Brizard appealed to him in the local newspaper to not abandon the work he had started in Rochester. Board members scheduled an executive session Monday night at which they were expected to discuss Brizard’s future.
Once Emanuel takes office and the board makes his appointments, “it’ll be interesting to see how he’s received,” said Robin Steans, executive director of Advance Illinois, an education reform group. “It’s in everybody’s interest to see him be successful.”
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Success, Baggage Follow New Schools CEO - Chicago News Cooperative
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