Former Bridgeport schools chief in runoff election for Chicago mayor
Former Bridgeport Schools Superintendent Paul Vallas is headed for a runoff election for mayor of Chicago.
Vallas, who won the backing of the police union and ran a mayoral campaign focused on public safety, led the Bridgeport schools between 2011 and 2013. He was ousted after a Connecticut judge ruled he was not qualified for the position amid a lawsuit filed by an activist who claimed Vallas did not take a school leadership course required by the state.
Prior to serving as a Bridgeport’s superintendent, Vallas was the superintendent of the Recovery School District of Louisiana and chief executive officer of Philadelphia’s public schools.
Vallas will face Brandon Johnson in the Chicago runoff election after voters on Tuesday denied Mayor Lori Lightfoot a second term.
Vallas’ short time leading the Bridgeport public schools began in July 2011, after the state took over the district and appointed members of a new Board of Education. The members of the new board hired Vallas as interim superintendent in December of that year.
Prior to coming to Bridgeport, Vallas worked with the Inter-American
Development Bank to rebuild Haiti’s school system and served as superintendent of the Recovery School District of Louisiana. In the mid-2000s, Vallas served as chief executive officer of Philadelphia schools, overseeing a district that became a large-scale experiment in privatization. Prior to that, he served as chief executive officer of the Chicago public school system, winning praise from President Bill Clinton for raising test scores.
Vallas’ tenure in Bridgeport was rocky. In 2012, the state Supreme Court overruled Connecticut’s control of the district. Critics also claimed he was trying to privatize the district by promoting schools.
In April 2013, former state judge and Bridgeport activist Carmen Lopez filed a lawsuit, alleging Vallas was unqualified to serve as superintendent. At the time, school superintendents were required to complete a 13-month leadership course only available through the University of Connecticut. To get around that requirement, the legislature passed a law that allowed Vallas to take a leadership course from any public or private college in Connecticut.
Vallas ended up taking what amounted to an independent study. The actual course included three charter meetings, several phone calls and six papers over the course of 10 weeks, according to court records from the lawsuit. Vallas later testified “that the work, although done over the course of 10 weeks while fulfilling his employment as acting superintendent, could have been completed in a week.”
In June 2013, state judge Barbara Bellis ruled that Vallas was not qualified to be the superintendent.
“The evidence was overwhelming that from the start, efforts were made to accommodate the appointment of Vallas as superintendent of the Bridgeport Public School system at every level,” the judge ruled. “The court orders that Paul Vallas be removed from his office.”
Vallas has since moved to Chicago where he lost his bid for mayor in 2019.
Vallas and Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, advanced to the April 4 runoff after none of the nine candidates was able to secure over 50 percent of the vote to win outright.
At his victory party, Vallas noted that Lightfoot had called to congratulate him and asked the crowd to give her a round of applause. In a nod to his campaign promise to combat crime, he said that, if elected, he would work to address public safety issues.