From: Cayata Dixon -------------------- Schools CEO picks outsiders for his management team -------------------- By Michael Martinez and Ray Quintanilla Tribune education reporters August 9, 2001, 3:21 PM CDT Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan today called upon a partner at a high-powered law firm and two researchers at the University of Chicago to play key roles on his new management team. At a news conference, Duncan named as his chief of staff Peggy Davis, an attorney and former chairwoman of the Chicago Board of Education's desegregation monitoring commission. She will be the CEO's right-hand woman, responsible for day-to-day administration. Davis is a partner in the labor and employment group of Winston & Strawn, Chicago. She has been general counsel of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority and assistant corporation counsel for the City of Chicago. Melissa Roderick, associate professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the U. of C., will be responsible for strategic planning and development. A co-director of the university's Consortium on Chicago School Research, Roderick has studied the Chicago school system for the past several years. John Easton, a U. of C. researcher who has studied the system's drop-out rate of more than 40 percent, will become head of research and program evaluation. Easton had worked in a similar post previously for the school system before leaving in 1997 to be deputy director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research. Other noteworthy appointments today included a Roman Catholic sister and a charter school founder. Mary Ellen Caron, a teacher, member of the Sisters of Mercy, board member of St. Xavier University and Old St. Patrick's Church and executive director of Francis Xavier Warde Schools, was named to head the special projects office. Jeanne Nowaczewski, director of the public education project at Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, and founder and board member of the Young Women's Leadership Charter School of Chicago, will be in charge of small schools. Last week, Duncan announced his new chief education officer, Barbara Eason-Watkins, the principal of McCosh Elementary School on the South Side. The former chief education officer, Cozette Buckney -- whose ouster had been rumored since April, as Mayor Richard Daley decried the lack of ideas and the increase of stifling bureaucracy in the public schools -- today was named "chief liaison to the CEO and (school) board," according to a schools news release. Exactly what Buckney will now do was not explained. Duncan also replaced the current chief of procurements and contracts, Natalye Paquin, an appointee of former school board President Gery Chico. The schools CEO promoted Anita Rocha, deputy chief of the department, to succeed Paquin, who will become managing deputy commissioner of the Chicago Department of Transportation in September. Rocha will be responsible for an office that oversees contracts totaling $1 billion a year. Many of the other two dozen new members of Duncan's management team are holdovers from the previous administrator and are either holding the same post or being moved to another high management post. In June, Mayor Daley selected Michael W. Scott, an AT&T executive and former chairman of the Chicago Park District, to be the new board president, replacing Chico; and Duncan, deputy chief of staff to former schools CEO Paul Vallas, to succeed Vallas in the job. Copyright (c) 2001, Chicago Tribune -------------------- Subscribe to the Chicago Tribune Today! Good Eating, Your Place, and TV Week -- just a few reasons to get the Chicago Tribune at home every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Subscribe by calling 1-800-TRIBUNE (1-800-874-2863) or online at chicagotribune.com/subscribe -- This is the CPS Science Teacher List. To unsubscribe, send a message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For more information: <http://home.sprintmail.com/~mikelach/subscribe.html>. To search the archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/science%40lists.csi.cps.k12.il.us/>
