Lit­tle about that lega­cy can be seen as pos­i­tive. Near­ly every major deci­sion that Bar­bara Byrd-Ben­nett made as the CEO of Chica­go Pub­lic Schools ben­e­fit­ed wealthy white pow­er bro­kers at the expense of poor and work­ing-class black stu­dents, par­ents and teachers.

After serv­ing as the CEO of Chica­go Pub­lic Schools from 2012 to 2015, Bar­bara Byrd-Ben­nett was recent­ly forced to resign from her posi­tion in the wake of a scan­dal over her approval of a major school lead­er­ship devel­op­ment con­tract with her for­mer employ­er. Now that Byrd-Bennett’s tenure at the head of the third largest school dis­trict in Amer­i­ca has end­ed, it’s a good time to assess the lega­cy she leaves CPS.

Dur­ing her three years as CEO, she closed an unprece­dent­ed num­ber of pre­dom­i­nant­ly black neigh­bor­hood schools and fired hun­dreds of black teach­ers while open­ing char­ter schools run by wealthy white mem­bers of the cor­po­rate edu­ca­tion reform move­ment and approv­ing a $20.5 mil­lion con­tract for her for­mer employ­er, SUPES Acad­e­my, an orga­ni­za­tion whose co-own­er has an alleged his­to­ry of using overt­ly racist and preda­to­ry lan­guage in emails to students.

Her time in Chica­go was defined by an exac­er­ba­tion of the school system’s racial and eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty. Time and again, wealthy whites gained while poor blacks lost. And, in spite of her posi­tion at the top of this prej­u­di­cial sys­tem, the final black loss was hers.

Where it started

Bar­bara Byrd-Ben­nett began her career in edu­ca­tion at 19 years old, after she received a post­card invit­ing her to teach at an exper­i­men­tal dis­trict in East Harlem, New York. After 12 years in the class­room, she became a prin­ci­pal in Harlem and even­tu­al­ly a super­in­ten­dent in Brook­lyn. In 1998, after more than two decades work­ing in her home­town, she moved to Cleve­land, where she became the CEO of the city’s pub­lic school sys­tem. There, her per­for­mance received mixed reviews. She resigned from her posi­tion in 2006 amid alle­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion. From Cleve­land, she moved to Detroit, where she worked as Detroit Schools’ Chief Aca­d­e­m­ic and Account­abil­i­ty Offi­cer while the city closed 59 schools and laid off hun­dreds of teach­ers.

Dur­ing this peri­od, she would also become heav­i­ly involved in the cor­po­rate edu­ca­tion reform move­ment, which has worked to trans­form pub­lic edu­ca­tion into a free mar­ket-based sys­tem. That move­ment esca­lat­ed after the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 cod­i­fied the cor­po­rate ideals of com­pe­ti­tion and data-dri­ven deci­sion-mak­ing into fed­er­al edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy; its agen­da is seen clear­ly in the famous pro-char­ter school and anti-teach­ers union doc­u­men­tary Wait­ing for Super­man.

One of the orga­ni­za­tions at the cen­ter of this move­ment is the Broad Foun­da­tion, where Byrd-Ben­nett became an ​“Exec­u­tive Coach” in its Super­in­ten­dan­t’s Acad­e­my in 2006. The Broad Foun­da­tion, along with cor­po­rate-backed politi­cians like May­or Rahm Emanuel and influ­en­tial non­prof­it insti­tu­tions push­ing free-mar­ket reforms like the Gates Foun­da­tion, advo­cates for char­ter schools, high-stakes test­ing and mer­it pay among oth­er reforms that, while often prof­itable for them and their allies, have neu­tral to neg­a­tive effects on stu­dents and teachers.

Regard­less of these out­comes, how­ev­er, elect­ed offi­cials like Emanuel con­tin­ue to enact poli­cies that advance these reforms while insti­tu­tions like the Gates Foun­da­tion pro­vide grants to fund them and orga­ni­za­tions like the Broad Foun­da­tion train bud­ding school admin­is­tra­tors to imple­ment them. Such train­ing is also the focus of anoth­er reform orga­ni­za­tion, SUPES Acad­e­my. Byrd-Ben­nett began work­ing for it around the same time she joined forces with Broad.

Byrd-Ben­net­t’s ties to these orga­ni­za­tions and her deci­sions as an admin­is­tra­tor in New York, Cleve­land and Detroit sealed her rep­u­ta­tion as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the cor­po­rate reform move­ment — mak­ing her the per­fect per­son to imple­ment Chica­go May­or Rahm Emanuel’s vision for his city’s pub­lic edu­ca­tion system.

And so, on Octo­ber 12, 2012, Emanuel announced that he had cho­sen Byrd-Ben­nett (or ​“Triple B” as he would come to call her) to become the new CEO of CPS, the fourth in four years. She would replace Jean-Claude Brizard, who had resigned after only 17 months on the job not long after the Chica­go Teach­ers Union’s 2012 strike. BBB, how­ev­er, was con­fi­dent that she would be in Chica­go for a long time.

At the press con­fer­ence where Emanuel announced her appoint­ment, she told reporters, ​“I’m not sure if it’s 8 years, it could be 10, it could be 12, but I’m here. I don’t intend to go any­where. … I’m here, and I am not going.” She last­ed less than three years in Chica­go — but Byrd-Ben­nett did leave a mark.

White gains, black losses

On March 21, 2013, Byrd-Ben­nett announced that CPS planned to close 54 schools. She also stat­ed that CPS would hold two com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings and one pub­lic hear­ing on each of the 54 schools, as required by state law. What she did not say, how­ev­er, was that this attempt to get ​“feed­back from school com­mu­ni­ties” would be par­tial­ly fund­ed by the Wal­ton Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion, an orga­ni­za­tion that had a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar stake in char­ter school pro­lif­er­a­tion. This omit­ted detail, along with the fact that some pre­vi­ous­ly closed schools in Chica­go had been sold to char­ter school oper­a­tors, fueled some com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers’ sus­pi­cions that the meet­ings were a farce and that CPS planned to close neigh­bor­hood schools and then open char­ter schools in their place no mat­ter what they said.

Still, thou­sands of stu­dents, teach­ers, par­ents and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers attend­ed the meet­ings and shared their con­cerns, fears, griev­ances and, in rare cas­es, sup­port, until May 22, 2013, the day the Board would final­ly vote on which schools to close. In the days lead­ing up to vote, oppo­nents of the Board­’s pro­pos­al held sev­er­al protests as a final show of resis­tance. On the day itself, a crowd wait­ed out­side CPS head­quar­ters to get a spot inside the room. The group would grow so large that many peo­ple would be forced to watch the meet­ing on a live feed from a sep­a­rate ​“hold­ing room” inside the building.

The meet­ing began at 10:47 a.m. For sev­er­al hours, nine alder­men, CTU Pres­i­dent Karen Lewis, Chica­go Prin­ci­pals’ and Admin­is­tra­tors’ Asso­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Clarice Berry and an array of teach­ers, par­ents, stu­dents and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers read their clos­ing argu­ments as those who would decide the fate of near­ly 12,000 stu­dents looked down on them from raised bench­es at the front of the room. There was yelling, cry­ing, pray­ing and heck­ling; micro­phones were ripped away from those ruled ​“out of order”; secu­ri­ty guards car­ried peo­ple out of the room; and, activists recit­ed famil­iar chants from the months of protests they had led in the build up to this moment.

After every­one, includ­ing Byrd-Ben­nett, had said their piece, it was time to vote. One by one, each mem­ber of the may­or-appoint­ed Board sto­ical­ly and unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to close 49 schools. They would also choose to close a 50th, although two mem­bers vot­ed to keep this one open.

In the fol­low­ing weeks, oppo­nents of the clos­ings con­tin­ued to hold protests around the city. Many of those who opposed the Board­’s deci­sion also renewed pre­vi­ous accu­sa­tions that the clos­ings were racist. The alle­ga­tion, which Byrd-Ben­nett had pre­vi­ous­ly called ​“an affront to me as a woman of col­or,” had been notably made two months ear­li­er by CTU Pres­i­dent Karen Lewis who, at a protest ral­ly against the clos­ings, remarked, ​“Let’s not pre­tend that when you close schools on the South and West sides, the chil­dren affect­ed aren’t black. Let’s not pre­tend that’s not racist.”

Those who shared Lewis’s per­spec­tive point­ed to a CTU analy­sis of the 54 schools CPS orig­i­nal­ly planned to close. The report showed that 90% of the schools had a pre­dom­i­nant­ly black stu­dent body and 71% had a pre­dom­i­nant­ly black teach­ing staff. In addi­tion, a 2015 study by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go would lat­er reveal that 88% of the stu­dents who attend­ed closed schools were black, even though black stu­dents con­sti­tut­ed only 39% of all stu­dents in the district.

Regard­less of such sta­tis­tics, how­ev­er, Byrd-Ben­nett want­ed every­one to move on. Indeed, dur­ing a lun­cheon at the City Club of Chica­go, less than a week after the vote, she told to a room of busi­ness elites, ​“What­ev­er has hap­pened this past year, it’s done. We are putting the past behind us. It is time to turn the page.” Byrd-Ben­nett had deliv­ered for May­or Emanuel, and thou­sands of black stu­dents, par­ents and teach­ers would have to deal with it.

Turn­ing point

The acute rage over the clo­sures devel­oped into chron­ic dis­trust, and while peo­ple con­tin­ued to crit­i­cize Byrd-Ben­nett, the School Board and May­or Emanuel for the clos­ings, the city turned its atten­tion towards new prob­lems, includ­ing mass teacher lay­offs, the city’s use of pub­lic mon­ey to fund projects in wealthy dis­tricts over poor­er ones and res­i­dents’ anger at red light cam­era tick­ets. But two years lat­er, most Chicagoans would be focused on the 2015 may­oral elec­tion and the unprece­dent­ed run-off that Emanuel found him­self in with unlike­ly can­di­date Jesus ​“Chuy” Garcia.

Gar­cia, a Cook Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er, posed a threat to Byrd-Bennett’s job. He was, after all, con­vinced to run by CTU Pres­i­dent Karen Lewis after she exit­ed the race due to a can­cer diag­no­sis. He had also crit­i­cized Byrd-Ben­net­t’s job per­for­mance sev­er­al times over the course of his cam­paign. Ulti­mate­ly, how­ev­er, Byrd-Ben­nett would not have to wor­ry. Emanuel man­aged to defeat Gar­cia by 66,000 votes and that meant that she was safe. Until April 15.

On April 15, 2015, sev­er­al local news­pa­pers report­ed that the FBI had launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into the $20.5 mil­lion con­tract that Byrd-Ben­nett had qui­et­ly approved between clos­ing schools and fir­ing teachers.

While the major papers in the area ini­tial­ly report­ed con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the con­tract as if it was fresh news, the city’s small, but dogged, edu­ca­tion news net­work knew that the news was any­thing but fresh. Sarah Karp, from Cat­a­lyst Chica­go, first ques­tioned the con­tract in 2013, four days after it was approved:

With­out fan­fare, CPS board mem­bers recent­ly approved a three-year, no-bid $20 mil­lion con­tract to pro­vide exten­sive pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment for prin­ci­pals and net­work chiefs in what is being dubbed the Chica­go Lead­er­ship Academy. The size and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the con­tract have raised eye­brows among some out­side observers. The con­tract with Wil­mette-based Supes Acad­e­my is by far the largest no-bid con­tract award­ed in at least the past three years, accord­ing to a Cat­a­lyst Chica­go analy­sis of board doc­u­ments. In addi­tion, CEO Bar­bara Byrd-Ben­nett worked for the com­pa­ny as a coach up until the time she came on board at CPS as a consultant.

Oth­ers, includ­ing the Chica­go Teach­ers Union (CTU), picked up on the con­tro­ver­sy and became loud­er with their crit­i­cism in July 2013 when CPS announced that 1,036 teach­ers and 1,077 sup­port staff, many of whom were black, would be laid off because of finan­cial strain on the city. Ben Joravsky of the Chica­go Read­er wrote, ​“While CPS is sup­pos­ed­ly so broke it’s mak­ing prin­ci­pals lay off their teach­ers, it found $20 mil­lion for three years of [prin­ci­pal] train­ing ses­sions. And some­how the no-bid con­tract [for the ses­sions] went to the Supes Acad­e­my, a con­sult­ing firm in Wil­mette for whom schools CEO Bar­bara Byrd-Ben­nett used to work.”

The sto­ry gained lit­tle trac­tion else­where until the FBI began its inves­ti­ga­tion two years lat­er. And six weeks after the inves­ti­ga­tion became pub­lic — after it became an embar­rass­ment for Byrd-Ben­net­t’s new­ly re-elect­ed boss, Rahm Emanuel — she resigned and her now for­mer boss was able to dis­tance him­self from the scandal.

Her lega­cy

As the CEO of Chica­go Pub­lic Schools, Bar­bara Byrd-Ben­nett did what May­or Rahm Emanuel, the Wal­ton Foun­da­tion, char­ter schools lead­ers and her for­mer employ­er need­ed her to do — even when it meant that many of the stu­dents, teach­ers and par­ents she pur­port­ed to serve were hurt in the process. She dis­placed thou­sands of black stu­dents while pre­sid­ing over the largest mass school clo­sure in Amer­i­can his­to­ry and then, adding insult to the injury of res­i­dents who fought the clo­sures, she opened sev­er­al new char­ter schools—schools that would expand the pri­va­ti­za­tion of pub­lic edu­ca­tion at the expense of qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion for stu­dents. She decid­ed that CPS need­ed to lay off hun­dreds of black employ­ees in order to save mon­ey and then award­ed her for­mer employ­er a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­tract for a pro­gram that atten­dees con­sid­ered ineffective.

She ran a sys­tem that helped rich white pow­er bro­kers at the expense of aver­age black cit­i­zens. Yet her posi­tion at the top of that sys­tem still was­n’t enough to stop it from aban­don­ing her in the end.

In Decem­ber 2012, two months after accept­ing Emanuel’s offer to become CPS’s CEO, Byrd-Ben­nett was inter­viewed by a Cleve­land news­pa­per. She told the inter­view­er that she was ini­tial­ly reluc­tant to accept Emanuel’s offer, but recon­sid­ered after she real­ized that she ​“need­ed” to take the job because she felt that she could ​“make a dif­fer­ence.” Had she decid­ed to turn down the offer, Rahm Emanuel would have like­ly found some­one else to per­pet­u­ate the inequities with­in CPS−perhaps anoth­er per­son of col­or whose race could be used to answer accu­sa­tions of racism with­in the sys­tem. But even if Byrd-Ben­nett would not have been able to cut the loss­es of Chicago’s black stu­dents, teach­ers and par­ents by stick­ing with her orig­i­nal deci­sion, she may have, at the very least, been able to cut her own.