School Daze Doozy: Huberman Jumps Ship!

  Watching the curtain pulled on the inner workings of "Education Mayor" Richard M. Daley's Chicago Public Schools administration is an eye-opener. 

  Two months into the 2010/11 academic year, Daley's CPS Chief Executive Officer Ron Huberman announced he would resign his post effective November 29th. 

  What kind of professional educator, leading a school system serving over 435,000 children, quits in the middle of the first semester? 

  Oh, that's right...uber-bureaucrat Huberman is not and never was a professional educator!

  The former policeman, mayoral chief of staff, OEMC and CTA boss is jumping ship at a time when CPS is already without a Chief Education Officer (Precinct7, Sept 1, 2010).  

  Dr. Barbara Eason Watkins' post still has not been filled after she resigned "in a huff" last Spring.  Sources say that Eason-Watkins--the system's ranking professional educator--felt "dissed" when the mayor appointed his "go-to guy" Huberman in 2009.

  Huberman's exit will leave the "lame duck" Daley without a top administrative team to run over 600 schools until the end of hizzoner's term next May.   Expect even more turmoil when the new mayor takes charge during the second semester.  

  Perhaps Daley sees no real purpose in continuing the political confidence game/public relations effort to convince Chicagoans what a great job he's done "transforming" the city's public education system since he took it over in 1995.

  Isn't he concerned that the system he'll bequeath his successor is an administrative basket case? 

  And that's not to mention the ballooning CPS budget deficit and test scores showing that over 70% of the system's high school juniors do not perform at grade level on the Prairie State Achievement Exam.

  And what's up with CPS still pretending it has a reknowned professional educator in charge of its academic programs?

  The system's website (http://www.cps.edu/About_CPS/At-a-glance/Pages/At-a-glance.aspx) continues to list Dr. Barbara Eason-Watkins as its Chief Education Officer even though, as mentioned earlier in this post, the PhD left CPS and has worked the past six months as the Superintendent of Schools in Michigan City, Indiana. 

  We pointed out the misinformation in this space two months ago and nothing has been done to correct the website.

  Maybe no one at CPS is paying attention.

  Maybe no one at CPS has reason to care anymore.