Emanuel to retain some City Colleges leaders

By Kristen Mack and Jodi Cohen, Tribune reporters


Rahm Emanuel is keeping some of outgoing Mayor Richard Daley's leadership team at the City Colleges of Chicago so it can see through a plan to "reinvent" the system.

The mayor-elect announced Monday that Cheryl Hyman will stay on as chancellor and Martin Cabrera Jr. will remain board chairman.

"I am bringing the rest of the board to the table, not to waver, but to double down on this type of reform and reinvention of City Colleges," Emanuel said of several new trustees he named to oversee the seven community colleges in Chicago.

New to the board is Ellen Alberding, president of the Joyce Foundation, who will serve as board vice chairman. The Joyce Foundation was one of four nonprofit groups that provided money for Emanuel's mayoral transition.

Also new are Charles Jenkins, senior pastor at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church; Marisela Lawson, a partner at management consultant firm the Sagence Group; Larry Rogers Sr., a trial lawyer; and Paula Wolff, the former president of Governors State University who is a senior executive at Chicago Metropolis 2020. Staying on is Everett Rand, who is part owner of Midway Airport Concessions.

City Colleges began the "reinvention" plan in November, an effort to rethink which programs to offer and to improve students' dismal transfer rate to four-year colleges and universities. About 16 percent of students make such transfers, and only 4 to 5 percent receive a bachelor's degree, according to data provided by the system.

Last year, Hyman suggested City Colleges reconsider its open-enrollment policy because many of its students needed remedial classes to prepare for college-level work. Providing that extra help cost the system $30 million a year. Emanuel said it's his preference to maintain an open-enrollment system, but that doesn't mean the board will necessarily agree.

Searches are under way for presidents at all but one of the seven city colleges. The current presidents had to reapply for their jobs.

Also Monday, Emanuel once again defended his choice of Jean-Claude Brizard to lead Chicago Public Schools.

"Did he ruffle feathers? I sure hope he did," Emanuel said of Brizard's three-year tenure as schools superintendent in Rochester, N.Y. The Tribune reported last week that Brizard was the target of least two federal lawsuits, including an ongoing discrimination case.

Emanuel noted that Arne Duncan, the former Chicago schools CEO who is now U.S. secretary of education, faced similar lawsuits.

Emanuel keeps City Colleges leaders, signals support for open enrollment

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter fspielman@suntimes.com Apr 26, 2011 2:08AM

The leadership team chosen by Mayor Daley to re-invent Chicago City Colleges got a new lease on life from Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel on Monday, but their plan to end open enrollment may bite the dust.

Emanuel declared his preference for retaining the open-door admissions policy after announcing his decision to keep City Colleges Chancellor Cheryl Hyman and Board Chairman Martin Cabrera Jr. and “double-down” on their reform agenda — by appointing five new board members.

“I’m not gonna nit-pick different decisions. I expect them to offer and present the leadership that’s necessary. But, I want that type of open enrollment. That’s my preference,” Emanuel told reporters at Olive Harvey College, 100001 S. Woodlawn.

Last year, Hyman and then-Board Chairman Gery Chico raised the revolutionary idea of ending the open door admissions policy.

They argued that the financially-strapped system could no longer afford the $30 million-a-year cost of providing remedial classes for students who can’t cut it. They maintained that those students might be better and more inexpensively served throughout programs run by alternative high schools.

Daley was all for the idea.

“How can you take someone who has an eighth-grade reading level into a college. ... If they have to put ‘em all in remediation, they’re really not in a college system,” Daley told reporters last spring.

“There’s a huge remedial program of $30 million they’re running now. If you want to make it a quality City College [system]. You need quality.”

Hyman is the former Orr High School drop-out who left home to escape drug-addicted parents, attended Olive-Harvey College and rose to become a Commonwealth Edison executive, then chancellor.

“Her life path is a testament to the enormous potential of City Colleges,” Emanuel said.

Hyman, Cabrera and board member Everett Rand will be joined by five new members: Joyce Foundation President Ellen Alberding; former Governors State University President Paula Wolff; attorney Larry Rogers Sr.; management consultant Marisela Lawson and Charles Jenkins, pastor of Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church.

Their mission is to speed the “re-invention” of a City Colleges system that, Emanuel claims, is still not serving inner-city kids.

“This is their ticket to the middle-class. It may be their ticket to a four-year institution and it may be their ticket to a job. But when they graduate, that diploma has to mean something,” Emanuel said.

“You cannot have a school system with a seven percent graduation rate when others are competing at 22 or 25 percent. You cannot have a system that has declining enrollment when other city colleges around the country are seeing enrollment expand. That says something.”