Chicago’s Bloodied Streets and Board of Education

By: Tonya Mead, CFE, PI, MBA, MA Educational Psychology

“We haven’t had a president yet, including Obama, who has cared about Chicago,” exclaimed Rep. Bobby Rush in an interview. The entire interview can be read here.

The Washington Post surmised that the murder rate is so high that it has driven up the murder rate for the major US cities. But, this blog is about fraud, waste and abuse in education, you say—how are the two connected?

A few days ago the Chicago Public School System froze $69 million in school spending in an attempt to close a $215 million budget gap. According to American Interest, in 2016 the Chicago Board of Education intended to sale almost $800 million in tax-exempt bonds but because the bonds have been set at the “Puerto-Rico grade yield… the district is on an unsustainable path,” says Matt Fabian, a partner at Municipal Market Analytics.

So the skirmishes on the streets of Chicago are but a microcosm of the macro- economic battles waged between politicians, public sector unions and school leaders in the marbled floors of the state house and governor’s mansion. I hope that we could live by “the supreme art of war [which]  is to subdue the enemy without fighting as  “there is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.” Sun Tzu.

Tonya J. Mead, CFE, PI, MBA, MA, Certified K-12 Administrator and School Psychologist is author of Fraud in Education: Beyond the Wrong Answer and president of Shared Knowledge, LLC https://ishareknowledge.com