This just in. A taxpayer-funded investigation into how reporters who cover Chicago Public Schools manage to break news predictably turned up nothing.
Read the Chicago Board of Education report on its probe of who among the 21-member board might have leaked super-secret information like plans to hold a (checks notes) public meeting to raise property taxes, and you almost have to feel sorry for the law firm of Salvatore Prescott Porter & Porter. After all, for the $25,000 or so that the firm was paid, it had to generate some sort of work product and hope said report wasn’t too much of an embarrassment.
Alas, mission not accomplished.
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Here’s the TL;DR. The firm scanned a bunch of emails of school board members and saw no leaks to reporters. They asked the board members if they leaked to reporters and asked to examine their personal cellphones. The board members who spoke to the firm said no, and 12 of the 21 members declined to hand over their phones or refused to talk to the lawyers at all. The lawyers asked two reporters if they’d tell them who leaked to them. The reporters said, um, no.
Shrug, concluded the law firm. We don’t know. Here’s the bill.
Chicago Board of Education President Sean Harden, who ordered this foolish “investigation,” said he was satisfied with the outcome. Essentially, Harden said, the board got a lesson in how to conduct itself.
“Hopefully, this will be an investment the community can benefit from,” he told Chalkbeat.
Say what? An investment?
The billable hours logged as Salvatore Prescott Porter & Porter chased their tails obviously amounts to a rounding error for a school system exceeding $10 billion in annual spending. But the symbolism of taxpayer funds wasted on Harden’s temper tantrum over news leaks reverberates well beyond the price tag. This is not evidence of a school board president focused on the right priorities.
Harden, an appointee of Mayor Brandon Johnson, isn’t running in November to keep the post as Chicago mercifully pivots next year to a fully elected school board rather than the current awkward setup of 11 mayoral appointees and 10 elected members.
Leaks are a fact of life in government, whether at the local, state or federal level. Chicago’s unwieldy 21-member board, far larger than is typical for school boards, makes leaking to the press even more likely. Those doing the whispering in reporters’ ears have plenty of cover.
Here are a few other realities. The politics of public education in Chicago are divisive and hot. The Chicago Teachers Union managed to get its own former organizer elected mayor of Chicago and has used its clout with the Fifth Floor to impede the inevitable consolidation to come given that a third of CPS schools are less than half full.
It’s no surprise, then, that we have a divided school board, since six of the 10 elected members weren’t endorsed by the union. Harden is carrying water for an unpopular mayor and his CTU backers, so, of course, Harden’s CPS agenda won’t be universally embraced.
Among the shocking revelations in the report: “Many witnesses commented on the tension and distrust within the Board between the appointed and elected members.”
Yes, that’s what happens when those elected to serve as a check on the fiscally reckless CTU/Johnson agenda confront a majority made up of mayoral appointees. There might well be some tension. And distrust.
Egads.
We didn’t need to spend taxpayer dollars to have a law firm tell us what anyone paying attention can see with their own eyes.
Harden’s successor, who will have to win a citywide election to the post, hopefully will have learned from this example. Focus on the job at hand, which is improving the unacceptable educational outcomes CPS produces while stabilizing the finances of a district flirting with insolvency, and worry less about a daily news cycle you won’t be able to control anyway.
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