Paul Vallas

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[gentle music] So then you joined the Chicago Public Schools as the Deputy Chief of Staff to Paul Vallas, who ran the Chicago Public Schools.

So let me tell you a story that I'm pretty sure I've never told you before.

So it's April or May of 2001, and you've been working at CPS for a couple years by now, and I got a call from the mayor of Chicago, Mayor Daley, and his people said he'd like to speak with me.

He just chats with me about education for at least an hour, and I'm just answering questions, completely confused.

The only guess I even have is that he's interviewing me to put me on the Chicago School Board because I just couldn't make any sense of what was going on otherwise.

And then finally, it's coming to the end of the conversation, and he says to me, "What do you think of Paul Vallas, who is your boss at Chicago Public Schools?" And I said, "I don't know him personally, but he seems pretty good." And he shakes his head, and he says, "No." And he points to the fish tank, and he says, "He's in the tank." And I had no idea what he was talking about, like, didn't know what he meant.

I said, "He's in the tank?" And he said, "Yeah.

I...

So I started my career, you know, middle school teacher, Bridgeport, Connecticut, and found myself in 2012 working for Paul Vallas in Bridgeport.

And we tried to do a bunch of things to make schools better and got a lot of the politics wrong, [laughs] got a lot of the engagement wrong, the community side wrong, and found essentially that our school board flipped on us.

Paul went to go run for lieutenant governor, and I was sort of like, "What do I do next?" The state then took over Camden City School District.