The following article was selected from the Internet Edition of the Chicago Tribune. To visit the site, point your browser to http://chicagotribune.com/. ----------- Chicago Tribune Article Forwarding---------------- Article forwarded by: Cayata Dixon Return e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Article URL: http://chicagotribune.com/news/metro/chicago/article/0,2669,ART-52288,FF.html ---Forwarded article---------------- Parks chief to take over Chico's post By Ray Quintanilla<BR>and Michael Martinez Michael Scott, an AT&T executive and a political appointee under Mayor Richard Daley and two other mayors, will be named the new Chicago Board of Education president Friday, Scott and City Hall sources said. Scott becomes the first member of a new team charged with the daunting mission of keeping Chicago Public Schools a national model of reform. Acknowledging the enormous undertaking before him, Scott said he will spend his first days learning the complexities of the system's $3.5 billion operating budget and its long list of initiatives aimed at deeply entrenched problems such as low reading scores and high dropout rates. "There is no magic bullet, no one solution to these problems. I do know that any effort, large or small, will not have an immediate impact," Scott said. "The Park District is a $450 million organization. This is $3.5 billion. Fiscal health is a must. The notion of getting your arms around that is the first step," Scott said. Scott, who started in Chicago politics as a housing activist in the West Side's Lawndale neighborhood where he was born and raised, has proved savvy enough to serve under Mayors Jane Byrne, Harold Washington and Daley during some tumultuous times. He will need those political skills to manage a school system that enjoyed early success in education reform but is undergoing a leadership overhaul as Daley's impatience over stagnating reading scores reaches a breaking point. Scott, who will step down as Daley's handpicked board president of the Chicago Park District, is regarded as a consensus builder who prefers to forge alliances without limelight. Those who know Scott say he is in some ways like the person he is replacing, Gery Chico, a longtime Daley aide who resigned abruptly as board president two weeks ago after some falling test scores wiped out two years of improvement. Chico preferred to do his work outside of the media spotlight and relied heavily on staff to carry out his orders. And like Chico, Scott is a registered lobbyist. He is an executive representing AT&T Broadband in maintaining and monitoring its 325 franchise agreements with area municipalities, including Chicago, that allow his firm to provide cable television service to 1.7 million customers, AT&T representatives said. The company, which employs 5,700 people in the area, also provides digital phone and high-speed Internet service. Scott generated controversy in 1990 when he went to work for Prime Cable after having served as the city cable administrator who oversaw the transfer of two franchises to Prime. Prime Cable was acquired by AT&T Broadband last January, an AT&T spokesman said. Scott said he will rely on his management skills to lead the mayor's second generation of school leaders. "I put together the Taste of Chicago and supervised hundreds of individuals. And what you have to have is a great team of people with one goal, one page, working together supporting one another, and be clear about it. And clear about where you are going. To the extent you don't have that, it's a problem," Scott said. Scott's selection continues Daley's use of a corporate model to run the school system. Instead of appointing education professionals to the system's top posts, Daley relies on people from his loyal corps of aides and appointees to control the bureaucracy and manage a team of educators. On Wednesday, schools CEO Paul Vallas announced his resignation in the wake of the mayor's growing criticism about the system's faltering reading scores. Other leadership changes deeper into the bureaucracy are also expected. Chico and Vallas had been the helmsmen of Daley's direct takeover of the city's school system since 1995, when the Republican-controlled General Assembly gave the mayor sweeping powers to void teachers union strikes until 1997 and to sanction the worst schools. This is not Scott's first experience as a member of the Board of Education. In 1980, Byrne appointed Scott to the board, but he became entangled in controversy when his 8-year-old child attended a Catholic school instead of a public one. He also became a target for controversy when he opposed student busing, a racially charged issued. His two children, now 25 and 29, later graduated from public schools, he said. Byrne dumped Scott after his 1-year term expired, and she replaced him and another African-American board member with two whites as re-election approached in 1983. Scott, 51, will come under immediate scrutiny on whether he is prepared to go from a relatively sedate Park District post to leading the nation's third largest public school system. "Mike is a very nice fellow and very good in a setting that is not crisis management," said one City Hall insider. But Scott will face public accountability of a much higher order as the system is judged annually by such benchmarks as test scores, graduation rates and dropout rates, he said. "This time next year we will have an idea of how their first year has gone. It is not something you can hire a good PR firm for and spin the hell out of it and buy yourself another year," the official said. Observers agree that Scott is politically adroit and has a direct pipeline to Daley, two assets that will serve him well as he navigates a complex bureaucracy that will soon begin sizing him up. One longtime Daley loyalist sought to downplay those fears by saying the transition from Chico to Scott should be smooth. "Michael Scott is a leader," said Forrest Claypool, who is among those rumored to be in the running for Vallas' post and who once worked with Scott at the Park District. "I have no doubt that it will become clear to everyone." Scott "has been involved with governmental bureaucracies for a long time, but the Board of Education has always been an overwhelming bureaucracy, if you will," said Ald. Patrick O'Connor (40th), chairman of the City Council's Education Committee. "So he is going to need to go in there and gather enough opinions to know where he is going and then not get distracted." One of the few controversies Scott has had to deal with involved whether to name a public park after Henry McNeil "Mandrake" Brown, an activist who fought to remove alcohol and tobacco billboards from black neighborhoods and defaced some of the ads with paint. The park will be called Mandrake Park and formally dedicated in a few weeks, officials said. Park organizers and its neighbors, led by Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th), objected to the name choice, calling instead for Oakland Park in honor of the neighborhood. Scott pushed for the Mandrake name, even though Preckwinkle called the decision "deeply flawed." Tribune staff reporter Gary Washburn contributed to this report. ---------------------------------------------------- This is the CPS Mathematics Teacher Discussion List. 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