“They deserve much more, much more than I gave to them”, Barbara Byrd-Bennet stopped long enough to say to the reporters gathered outside the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago – where she had just pleaded guilty to one-count of wire fraud.
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They headed two businesses that landed more than $23 million in no-bid CPS contracts – SUPES, which trained district leaders, and Synesi, which helped improve troubled schools. Solomon and Vranas also face charges of bribery of a government official and conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
66-year old Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the former chief executive of Chicago’s public school system, has plead guilty in federal court to her crimes of corruption.
An indictment returned last week accused Solomon and Vranas of arranging to pay Byrd-Bennett hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks and other perks in exchange for her using her influence to steer more than $23 million in no-bid contracts to train principals and other administrators to SUPES. Jonathan takes readers through how better accountability in CPS leadership – ahem, Mayor Rahm Emanuel – could have also prevented this scandal. She also once led the Cleveland public schools system and had worked for SUPES Academy and Synesi Associates as a consultant. Emails released in the indictment illustrate an agreement that Byrd-Bennett would receive $2 million in bribes and kickbacks in exchange for steering the business their way. The mayor has said that his aides were aware of the $20 million SUPES contract that sparked the scandal and asked tough questions before Byrd-Bennett complained that she was being micromanaged.
Meanwhile, she expected Solomon and Vranas to funnel payments for her into funds for her twin grandsons, according to the plea agreement.
However, Byrd-Bennett’s plea agreement indicates an anticipated sentencing range of 135 to 168 months imprisonment, or roughly 11 to 14 years. She resigned earlier this year.
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Prosecutors said they would dismiss the other 19 counts Byrd-Bennett faced, including those tied to emails like the one the grand jury said she sent Solomon on the first day of the historic 2012 Chicago teachers strike.
