Indicted ex-Chicago schools chief to appear in court

CHICAG0 — Former Chicago Public Schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett is set to make her first court appearance on Tuesday on charges that she attempted to steer more than $20 million in no-bid contracts to her former employers in exchange for millions of dollars in kickbacks.

Byrd-Bennett, who was indicted on Thursday, has already indicated through her attorney that she is cooperating with investigators and plans to plead guilty. She was charged with 15 counts of mail fraud and five counts of wire fraud for her part in the scheme to push contracts to suburban Chicago SUPES Academy and Synesi, firms that provided executive training services for schools.

When Byrd-Bennett was questioned by officials at city hall about the no-bid contracts, she indignantly pushed back -- even suggesting she might quit her post, according to a report published Friday by the Chicago Sun-Times. The paper obtained transcripts of e-mails from the school system.

“I cannot be second-guessed like this," Byrd-Bennett wrote to Emanuel's then-top education aide, Beth Swanson, days before the Chicago Board of Education approved a $20.5 million no-bid contract to SUPES in June 2013. “The level of micro-managing by people who have no track record and have not (led) or managed anything is in some way insulting.”

It’s unclear if Byrd-Bennett will enter a guilty plea when she first appears for an arraignment before Judge Edmond Chang in federal court on Tuesday.  A spokeswoman for Byrd-Bennett’s attorney, the white collar crime specialist Michael Scudder, said on Friday she has “no further information” about when Byrd-Bennett intends to enter her plea.

Byrd-Bennett, who resigned her post in May, had worked as a consultant for SUPES and Synesi before she was picked in 2012 by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to serve as the chief executive officer of the nation’s third largest city’s public school system. She was paid $313,000 annually in salary and benefits.

She previously had run the Cleveland and Detroit public school systems.

SUPES were also charged in the indictment as corporate defendants, as were the respective owners of the companies, Gary Solomon and Thomas Vranas. Solomon, who advised Mayor Rahm Emanuel's transition team after he was elected in 2011, and Vranas are set to appear in court on Wednesday.

The ex-CPS chief also had an agreement with the companies that called for her to be paid in the form of a “signing bonus” after she left the Chicago Public Schools and the companies re-hired her as a consultant. The men agreed to give her 10% of every contract she steered their way.

The indictment also alleges that Solomon offered to arrange for jobs for friends of Byrd-Bennett in exchange for contracts.

Federal investigators relied on a series of e-mails between Byrd-Bennett and Solomon and Vranas to help build their case.

In one e-mail in which the defendants discussed  the scheme, Byrd-Bennett allegedly wrote to Solomon and Vranas, “I have tuition to pay and casinos to visit (: [.],” according to the indictment.

The companies also planned to conceal some of the kickback money by funneling it into accounts set up in the names of two of Byrd-Bennett’s relatives, according to the indictment.  Solomon and Vranas allegedly presented Byrd-Bennett with two college fund accounts, each containing $127,000, that were set up for two of her relatives, according to the indictment.

The Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune identified the relatives as Byrd-Bennett’s grandsons.

Nailah Byrd, who is the Cuyahoga County, Ohio clerk of courts, described herself as Byrd-Bennett’s only child in a 2012 profile for Cleveland Magazine. At the time of profile, she served as the Cuyahoga County inspector general. She was also a former federal prosecutor.

In the Cleveland Magazine profile, Byrd shared a pearl of wisdom her mother gave her when she took the job, “Just do good work, and do what’s right, and you’ll be fine.”

Ex-Chicago public schools chief to plead guilty in contract kickback scheme

Byrd did not respond to a request for comment, but the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that she informed the county executive, Armond Budish, that an indictment was imminent before federal prosecutors in Chicago announced the charges on Thursday.