New documents have revealed the Chicago Board of Education President hired a law firm to target alleged leakers and attempted to interview members of the media. <\/p>\n
The district spent tens of thousands of dollars on the investigation, but the results leave more questions than answers. <\/p>\n
Late last year, Board President and Chicago Teachers Union ally Sean Harden was upset when I and a WBEZ reporter published information he didn\u2019t believe the public should know \u2013 so in November, he brought in a law firm to investigate what he suspected were leakers among his board. <\/p>\n
The report mentions a WBEZ reporter for her story on the CPS CEO search and me\u2014for a December social media post revealing the scheduling of a special board meeting where members voted to raise property taxes. <\/p>\n
Public notice was required by law for that meeting. Both the WBEZ reporter and I declined requests from the law firm to be interviewed.<\/p>\n
The potential cost to taxpayers for the five-month investigation?<\/p>\n
Up to $65,000 dollars to the law firm Salvator Prescott Porter and Porter, according to Chicago Public School records.<\/p>\n
And the verdict, according to the report, which was leaked to NBC 5 by multiple high level CPS officials:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026.there is insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion as to the source of the leaks with the investigative tools available to us.\u201d <\/p>\n
The report says it interviewed two dozen witnesses, 19 board members, some bringing counsel. <\/p>\n
Elected Board member Jennifer Custer says it was all unnecessary.<\/p>\n
\u201cit was just an unfortunate, I think, waste of taxpayer dollars, a lot of time and energy, certainly from the law firm to interview all of us and do that,\u201d Custer said, acknowledging she brought her own legal counsel to the interviews. \u201cBut I think that our time and energy and money could have been better spent in other places doing other things.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Friday, elected board member Jessica Biggs reacted on social media, saying \u201cthis \u201cinvestigation\u201d is an example of everything that is misguided about our current leadership. <\/p>\n
Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson, one of the city\u2019s top municipal government watchdogs, agrees.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe pay a lot of money to have a reputable law firm conduct an investigation against a backdrop in which it isn’t really clear what was being violated, what regulatory procedure, what standard we’re operating from,\u201d Ferguson said.<\/p>\n
Board President Harden responded over the phone to our questioning, saying he believes the investigation was worthwhile \u2013 in that it established a standard for the board of maintaining confidentiality, saying:<\/p>\n
“We have to protect the sanctity of this effort and say we’re not going to allow the foolishness, don’t hurt the process. When we were dealing with the CEO search, it was such a precarious environment that we were trying to manage..we would lose good candidates if we couldn’t demonstrate we could maintain confidentiality.”<\/p>\n
The report reveals that elected Board of Education members Ellen Rosenfeld and Che \u201cRhymefest\u201d Smith refused to participate in the investigation.<\/p>\n
Both Custer and Biggs have expressed intent to run for the newly created position of elected Board of Education president \u2013 that election happens in November. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New documents have revealed the Chicago Board of Education President hired a law firm to target alleged leakers…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":785075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,5386,1818,40983],"class_list":{"0":"post-785074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-illinois","11":"tag-nbc-5-investigates"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116546651367742559","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}