He Doesn't Freelance

Speaking for myself here, but this short interview with Henry Bienen gives me no confidence in the CPS Board or in Henry Bienen personally.

CF: Will you be visiting Manierre?

HB: I don’t freelance. Any visit would have to be organized through the CPS board. I’m scheduled to go to a couple of schools but not that one. I suppose I could if I insisted…. I think the schools I’m visiting are on the South Side, not the North Side. I don’t yet have the names of those schools.

He doesn't freelance.

I'd say he doesn't lead. But that's just me.

Here's how I put it in the comments:

This man should have to face voters like school board members do across the state. He's entitled to his ideas and opinions, but he's not entitled to be on what should be an elected board just because he's politically connected. Until the appointed board is removed and replaced with a democratically elected board, there will be no legitimacy in anything they do. This man took the school board position because "it fell into his lap," -- a phenomenon that apparently occurs in appointed school boards but not in embassies.

If there were elections, the majority of voters might just elect someone with a little more oomph. A little more sense of stewardship over a public institution. A willingness to fight the defunding-through-TIF that any other school board would battle against.

Not this guy.