Joravsky Strikes Again

So what do CTA people know about running the CPS? Everything, judging by Claypool's hiring binge:

• It's budget season at the Board of Education, which means we've entered that twilight zone of misdirection where the bosses say one thing and do something else.
  
  In this case, Forrest Claypool, Mayor Emanuel's latest schools CEO, is making a big public to-do about how he's cut central office spending to the bone. All so that teachers, facing a 7 percent pay cut, and principals, worried about millions in budget cuts, will not feel so alone. Or as Claypool, who the mayor brought in from the CTA, recently put it during a press conference: "Everybody's got to pitch in."
  
  Meanwhile, very quietly—with nary a press conference—Claypool's padding the payroll with various rubber stamps, most of whom have no experience in public education. (If you think you've seen this trick before, you're right: Ron Huberman, Mayor Daley's last schools CEO, tried much the same thing.) As exasperating as this practice sounds to anyone who has to teach or attend a public school, it's sort of a field day for reporters looking for examples of double standards in Chicago.

Ron Luberman, who went from patrol to exempt in something like a year without ever taking a promotional exam, then went to Chief of Staff, then CTA, then CPS, then lord knows where, always at the public teat, always at the big salary, and always over his head every place he went as evidenced by his short stays.

This is what we touched on the other day, noting that Claypool had cut $1 million in CPS salaries while adding $1.2 million in the "Friends of Forrest"payroll.