NEW OWNER OF SUPES WANTS MORE CPS BUSINESS
There’s a newowner of the firm at the center of federal probe, and he wants to do more business with CPS
The north suburban firm that was dumped by Chicago Public Schools after federal authorities subpoenaed records concerning a $20.5 million, no-bid deal it received has a new owner — and he’s hoping to drum up more business from CPS.
Joseph Wise, whose companies have gotten at least $5 million in recent business from CPS, has acquired parts of the SUPES Academy, he announced in an email to graduates of SUPES’ training program for school principals.
Wise also wants to get more business from CPS by opening alternative schools under contract with the city school system. But, for now, CPS has decided not to open any new alternative schools this school year.
Another company he owns is getting about $18 million a year in taxpayers’ money to run four CPS-approved charter schools.
Wise said “the best aspects of the SUPES Academy” now will be called the National Superintendent Academy and said that company is “wholly owned” by Atlantic Research Partners, which he and David Sundstrom founded in Florida in 2007.
Wise formerly worked for SUPES.
But in announcing the deal, he tried to distance himself from Gary Solomon and Thomas Vranas, the former SUPES owners who were named by authorities in subpoenas demanding CPS records including files concerning the lucrative CPS deal given to the company by Barbara Byrd-Bennett, another former SUPES employee, as well as two other companies owned by Solomon and Vranas — Synesi Associates and PROACT Search.
Byrd-Bennett resigned her $250,000-a-year post as chief executive officer of Chicago’s schools after the federal investigation was made public last spring.
No one has been charged. Federal investigators have refused to comment on the investigation.
“The primary leaders of the former SUPES Academy have begun new endeavors and will not be joining us in this work ahead,” according to Wise’s email announcing the sale. “They have, however, expressed deep sup- port of our acquisition and have provided for a thoughtful transition, to ensure an incredible and meaningful learning experience for the national cohort.”
In an interview, Wise would not say how much his company paid in the deal with Solomon and Vranas. He said the deal included a confidentiality clause.
Dennis Culloton, a spokesman for Solomon and Vranas, declined to comment on the sale.
Wise said he first encountered Solomon in the late 2000s while working for what was then known as Edison Schools, a national operator of private schools that hired PROACT Search to help with hiring. Wise said they spoke by phone and met when he moved to Chicago.
“We ran into each other as competitors,” Wise said. “In this field, it’s so relationship-based, such word-ofmouth business. That’s why you have to be really careful
to make sure you’re transparent enough about what you’re doing. And we worked really hard to have that transparency and not misuse that relationship.”
Solomon mentioned Wise in an August 2009 email to Byrd-Bennett when she was running Detroit’s public school system, where he was then trying to get business.
“Joey Wise suggested to try again to connect with you,” Solomon wrote, according to emails released earlier this year by Detroit’s schools.
Asked about that, Wise said, “I don’t remember that at all.
“I don’t know if I knew Gary then,” he said.
Wise said he recently ap- proached Solomon and Vranas with his interest in acquiring parts of SUPES, as well as PROACT Search and Synesi Associates. He said he bought their content and their marketing materials for their training program for aspiring school superintendents.
Certain aspects of the businesses and their liabilities were excluded, he said.
Wise said Solomon and Vranas can’t have anything to do with the operation, under the deal.
“We did everything necessary to make sure we had the right firewalling,” Wise said. “I knew some very good work was going on in spite of the issues that have become of interest.”
Wise said one SUPES employee has joined the new company, which will be run by a former superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, school system who’s been hired as managing director.
Since the 2011-12 school year, Wise’s Atlantic Research Partners has gotten $4.9 million in business from CPS, $69,254 of that since July 1, according to CPS ven- dor records.
According to Wise, Atlantic Research has helped CPS win and make use of federal school-improvement grants, at times taking over when other contractors working with grant-winning Chicago schools were struggling.
The company has been approved as a “lead partner” for schools that win the grants — a designation that the Illinois State Board of Education denied to Synesi Associates.
Wise is also seeking more business from CPS through a company he started called Acceleration Academies, which runs programs for high school dropouts. Acceleration Academies told CPS it wanted to open eight campuses in Chicago, four of them starting next fall in Belmont Cragin, Washington Heights, West Englewood and Bronzeville.
CPS had planned to decide this month which new private school operators would be accepted but announced last week it was putting all proposals for dropout programs, including Wise’s, on hold, citing budget problems.
Wise said the CPS department that oversees charter schools approached him to submit proposals.
“We were asked, and we put a proposal in,” he said.
Acceleration Academies had projected total expenses for the 2016-17 school year at about $2,795,142 for a program of “blended learning” — including a good deal of work on computers and with other technology — for about 250 high school dropouts at each campus.
“Students will generally spend 2-8 hours per day in the Academy with additional instructional time available after hours or outside the Academy with their tablet-learning device,” its proposal said. “The largest space at Acceleration Academies is the open classroom. The atmosphere gives the impression of a Starbucks mixed with a community college lounge. Students can use this space however best fits their learning style.”
Acceleration Academies describes itself as being run by Wise and Sundstrom with two investors, Bryan Daniels and Steve King, who “have a deep interest in providing quality educational communities for underserved popu- lations in Chicago.”
Wise also is looking at the possibility of Acceleration Academies working with Distinctive Schools, a Chicago not-for-profit charter school management company that he started with Sundstrom in 2011. Distinctive oversees the operation of four CPS-approved Chicago International Charter Schools campuses.
Wise says he is chairman of the board of Distinctive. He was the chief education officer for the company as of June 2014, tax records the company filed show.
Distinctive Schools gets about $18 million a year in taxpayers’ money to run the four charter schools, according to CICS. The charter network was headed until recently by Beth Purvis, who left after eight years to take a $250,000-a-year job as Gov. Bruce Rauner’s education secretary.
In 2011, Wise formed another company in Chicago, called TransitPro Logistics, with former CPS CEO Ron Huberman — who had signed off on hiring Atlantic Research Partners to work as a consultant for the Chicago school system. Huberman’s TeacherMatch LLC also has done work for Distinctive Schools at the CICS campuses.
“THE PRIMARY LEADERS OF THE FORMER SUPES ACADEMY HAVE BEGUN NEW ENDEAVORS AND WILL NOT BE JOINING US IN THIS WORK AHEAD.”
Email from new SUPES owner Joseph Wise