Mayor Rahm Emanuel keeps telling us that Chicago’s school system is too broke to adequately fund the schools it already has, but that hasn’t stopped him from gearing up to open as many as 21 new charter schools in the next two years.
Folks, this is a championship bout. Mihalopoulos’s determination to force UNO to reveal how it’s spent tens of millions of public dollars is matched only by UNO’s determination to keep that information secret.
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This is what’s going on. Former CEO Juan Rangel built UNO’s charter machine by cultivating mutually beneficial alliances with some of the state’s most powerful politicians, including Mayors Daley and Emanuel.
That’s a no-no, even in Chicago, where our politics have advanced enough that we’re at least supposed to pretend that clout and nepotism don’t exist.
Here’s UNO’s explanation—but get ready, because it’s a complicated one.
Undeterred, Mihalopoulos appealed, making the rather obvious point that UNO and UCSN are, for all intents and purposes, one and the same. After all, UNO created UCSN, the two share the same corporate office and the same governing boards, and Rangel ran—or used to run—both of them.
On July 3 the public access counselor ruled in favor of Mihalopoulos. UNO and UCSN are “inextricably intertwined” and “operate as the same entity,” the opinion stated. As a result, any records that UNO has must also be in the possession of UCSN.
