Thursday AM News: Bribes, Beasley, Attendance

Ex-city schools official admits taking bribes Tribune
A former operations manager for Chicago Public Schools admitted in federal court Wednesday that he took $1,000-a-week bribes to hand out fencing and snow-removal contracts to a politically connected contractor.

Metro briefs Sun Times
A teacher at a West Side high school has been suspended amid allegations she was having an "improper relationship" with a student.

Did dirty tricks stop toy giveaway? Sun Times
Chicago hip-hop artists Kanye West and Common star in a documentary about his life, but when Harold "Noonie" Ward asked to distribute 2,000 toys to low-income students at four 9th Ward schools, the idea was rejected -- allegedly because of political pressure.

CPS Students Win Prizes For Perfect Attendance NBC5
There are 414,000 students in the CPS system. Of those, about 22,000 had perfect attendance this year. School officials randomly picked 32 kids with perfect attendance and awarded them special prizes.

Fired up for service Tribune
Now an 18-year-old high school senior, Thornton has transformed his boyhood passion into an unprecedented apprenticeship at a Northwest Side firehouse.

Comments

A couple of comments are in order on the James Picardi plea story. The first is that at least one CPS inspector general was looking at what was going on. The second was for years no one was looking at what was going one and that is why Tru-link kept getting contracts from 1998-2001.

The Board itself voted for these contracts without one no vote ever. The Board itself has no committee meetings to publicly discuss the millions of dollars in contracts it regularly approves.There is generally no discussion on these contracts at the Board meeting and it would be illegal for these discussions to take place in closed session unless it involved litigation. The Board is not doing its job and is counting on Duncan to be both the executive and exercise oversight at the same time.

Daley had better wake up and make this Board do its job or he will have another major corruption problem on his watch.

Daley has no major corruption problem.
The board will continue as is. I'd lay good money on this.