I think they probably deserved a little better. But Arlene Ackerman casts such a long shadow, it's hard for anyone else to bask in the sun.
She took time out from a family gathering in New Mexico last week for some more shadow-casting. Her telephone interview in The Public School Notebook challenged the mayor to release a study by his chief integrity officer, Joan Markman, about the murky dealings involving plans to turn Martin Luther King High School over to a charter operator.
The way that was supposed to work was that the district was going to honor the wishes of the MLK parents advisory group, who wanted the school to be run by a firm called Mosaica. Ackerman sanctioned that choice and the SRC approved it in a public meeting.
Moments later, in a cozy corner of school district headquarters, Archie, state Rep. Dwight Evans, a representative of Mosaica and then-deputy superintendent Leroy Nunery held their own meeting. When it was over, the man from Mosaica had backed out of a contract that was projected to bring in $60 million in revenue over the next five years.
Apparently the people's choice wasn't as compelling as Evans' choice, which was Foundations Inc., a regular and generous donor to Evans' campaigns. A potential conflict that kept Archie from voting in the public meeting because his law firm had represented Foundations was no problem in the less-public meeting.
Later, as the details oozed out of the back room, Foundations decided that it didn't want the contract, and the district decided to run MLK itself.
Neither Nunery nor Archie nor, indeed, self-styled whistle-blower Arlene Ackerman has been willing to say what happened in that secret meeting.
Which is why Ackerman's sudden outrage at the backroom dealings rings a bit hollow to me.
