This piece was originally published in the TRiiBE. Visit the TRiiBE Election Center to learn more about the 2023 Chicago municipal election.
On April 4, Chicago voters will decide between two candidates with starkly different visions for the city and its 340,000 public school students. One is Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, a former public school teacher and seasoned organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). The other is Paul Vallas, the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) from 1995 to 2002 and a longtime proponent of charter schools in districts he’s managed around the country.
The election is a flashpoint not just in the struggle for the direction CPS will take, but also in the battle for the future of public schools nationwide: whether it will be one of school choice—which broadly includes expanding open enrollment programs, vouchers, and charter schools—or reinvestment in traditional neighborhood schools staffed by unionized teachers. The battle is one that Vallas has often found himself at the center of in the cities where he has been a school district administrator.
Between stints as an administrator, Vallas occasionally sought higher office: He ran for Illinois governor in 2002, flirted with running again in 2010, ran for lieutenant governor in 2014, and first ran for mayor of Chicago in 2019. Now, running on a law-and-order campaign that capitalized on white voters’ fears of violent crime, Vallas is poised to take charge not just of a school district but America’s third-largest city.
Mercedes Schneider is a longtime educator who has written extensively about the privatization of education and published three books on the topic. “He was always, I think, trying to get back to Chicago,” she told the TRiiBE.
After departing Chicago in 2002, Vallas ran Philadelphia’s school district for five years, then took over the New Orleans Recovery School District from 2007 to 2011, and ran the Bridgeport, Connecticut, school district from December 2011 to November 2013. In each city, he opened charter schools, promoted military schools, and expanded standardized testing and zero-tolerance disciplinary policies. He also ran school districts in Haiti and Chile between 2010 and 2012.
“He liked not answering to anyone,” said Schneider, who has taught in St. Tammany Parish, just across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans proper, since 2007. “Wherever he goes, he leaves and there’s questions, and a mess, and promises didn’t pan out.”
Vallas first began championing charter schools and standardized testing in Chicago in 1995. The Republican-controlled state legislature had just given total control of CPS to then–Mayor Richard M. Daley, who appointed Vallas, his budget director, as the school district’s first CEO. It was an unusual pick: Previously, the district had been led by superintendents, not chief executive officers, and they had backgrounds in education, not finance. Vallas was also the first white CPS administrator since the district was desegregated in 1981.
His approach to managing the school district reflected his fiscal background. He balanced the budget, but did so partly by redirecting tax revenues that had previously been exclusively dedicated to the teachers pension fund to its general education fund instead. He also took out $666 million in capital bonds that will cost the city $1.5 billion with interest, according to a newly released report.
Vallas greatly expanded standardized testing and non-neighborhood schools like charters and selective enrollment high schools, and he started 13 International Baccalaureate programs in public high schools. His tenure also coincided with the institution of zero-tolerance discipline policies and the opening of some of the district’s first public military schools, the Carver Military Academy in Altgeld Gardens and the Chicago Military Academy in Bronzeville on the city’s South Side.
Little Rock
Vallas has been involved in opening at least 12 militarized charter schools around the country. He is currently listed as the CEO of the Arkansas Military and First Responders Academy (AMFRA), a charter school that is slated to open in Little Rock in August. According to minutes posted on AMFRA’s website, Vallas attended a board meeting most recently on Dec. 15, 2022, as CEO.
Vallas’ campaign did not respond to the TRiiBE’s requests for comment.
According to its website, a first responder curriculum is “central to the school’s mission.” The school’s commandant, Marine Corps Lt. Col. Jason Smedley, has a background in legislative and public affairs, but said he has volunteered with youth through his church and has experience mentoring young Marines. Kevin Durand, the school’s “chief academic officer,” is described as a long-time educator on its website, and he has worked in charter schools in Little Rock.
Smedley said Vallas’ involvement in AMFRA predates his own employment at the school, which began in August 2022.
“[Vallas] played an intricate part in the application process, approval from the Arkansas Department of Education as far as getting the charter, and establishing all the requirements of a school in Arkansas,” Smedley told the TRiiBE. “He’s given me the opportunity and leeway to move forward with his initial guidance and, basically, this model that he has for these types of schools.”
Vallas wasn’t paid for the work. Asked why, Smedley said, “I can’t speak for him, but I will say that I know that he loves the model, and he was looking for new areas to have this model, and it just so happened that Little Rock [was] the best place for that to happen.”
Kristy Mosby, president of the Little Rock Educators Association, the teachers union there, is not enthusiastic about AMFRA.
“We really don’t believe that charter schools are good for our public school students,” Mosby told the TRiiBE. “When public charter schools have opened in our city, they don’t fare any better than regular public schools.”
Students who encounter challenges in Little Rock charters tend to be sent back to the traditional schools they started at, and “typically come back with more deficits than when they left,” Mosby said. Smedley said students will not be expelled from AMFRA for poor academic performance, but could be expelled if they break rules in the student handbook, which is still being developed.
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Educators in Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Bridgeport also described the expansion of charter schools and hiring of TFA members as a means to undermine unions and relax requirements for educators. They described similar practices in every district Vallas ran, including promotion of military/first-responder schools and heavy reliance on standardized testing, zero-tolerance disciplinary policies, and privately managed alternative charters with draconian
Vallas took over the School District of Philadelphia as CEO in 2002, after the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania legislature disbanded the Board of Education and replaced it with the School Reform Commission (SRC). Initially hailed as a financial whiz, Vallas left the district four years later when a “surprise” budget shortfall of $73 million evaporated any support he had on the SRC.
“Last April, I was told we were on solid financial ground,” SRC commissioner Martin Bednarek told Vallas at a November 2006 meeting about the deficit. “I really feel betrayed.”
Under Vallas’ tenure, Philadelphia underwent what was then the largest privatization of a public school system anywhere in the country. He opened 15 new charter schools over the protests of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, who called for a moratorium on new charters in 2006. Charter school teachers are typically nonunionized, and Pennsylvania state law only requires that three-quarters of teachers in charters are required to be certified to teach.
“The charter expansion really caused a lot of the funding problems in Philadelphia,” Deb Grill, a former Philadelphia public school librarian, told the TRiiBE. “We now have 83 charters in Philadelphia, and once they’re open, they’re almost impossible to close.” https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/03/vallas-chicago-mayor-charter-schools-philadelphia-new-orleans.html
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