2/3 of candidates for Milwaukee Sup job have MCPS connection

The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel reports on a current MCPS associate superintendent and a former MCPS deputy superintendent vying for the job of Milwaukee Public School superintendent.

The Milwaukee School Board has narrowed its list of candidates for Milwaukee Public Schools' next superintendent to three, the school district announced in a news release Thursday night.

The three finalists are:

• Robert Alfaro, area superintendent of the Clark County School District, Las Vegas, Nev.

• Stacy Scott, associate superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools, Rockville, Md.

• Gregory Thornton, superintendent, Chester Upland Public Schools, Chester, Pa.

And here is a Seattle Times article from 2007 when Gregory Thornton was also applying to be the Superintendent of the Seattle school system.   

The Philadelphia Inquirer revealed that Thornton was one of two district officials who signed off on a $926,000 no-bid contract with Plato Learning five months after the education-software company subsidized their trip to South Africa. According to the paper, the district acknowledged the ethics violation last year and promised disciplinary action against Thornton and the other official.


In an interview today, Philidelphia School District Chief Executive Paul Vallas said the district formally investigated the matter and found Thornton had already planned the Africa trip before taking the job with the Philidelphia district.

Read this article closely. It says that a trip to Africa that was partially paid for by an education vendor was planned before Mr. Thornton started at the Philadephia position.

In June of 2004, the month of the Africa trip that was partially paid for by an education vendor according to The Philadephia Inquirer, Mr. Thornton was still employed by MCPS (see bottom of page 23).