Sudden Bridgeport School Switch Months in the Making

From the Wall Street Journal:

By Shelly Banjo

Behind what seemed to be an emergency takeover of Bridgeport, Conn.’s public school system in July turns out to have involved six months of back-channel negotiations among state education officials and a hedge fund manager’s charitable foundation, new documents show.

Last month, Bridgeport’s board of education voted to dissolve itself amid an $18 million budget shortfall and infighting among members. The state board approved the measure in an emergency vote. Within days, the acting city schools commissioner began holding meetings in the area, looking for five new members to join a reconstituted board in Connecticut’s second largest school district.

The rapid actions taken by the boards of education–made just ahead of a new school year and an approaching school-board election–surprised many in Bridgeport. Parents held protests, sent angry letters to acting Commissioner George Coleman and filed suit to slow the process.

Now, email correspondence compiled by the State Department of Education and first reported in the Connecticut Post show that the process may have been influenced by private interests looking to bankroll education reform efforts in Bridgeport, secure mayoral control of the school district and oust the current board.

Dating back as far as January, emails referencing a state takeover of the Bridgeport public school system were exchanged between the Bridgeport Schools Superintendent John Ramos, the state board of education head Allan Taylor, Coleman, and Meghan Lowney, who according to tax forms was an independent contractor for the $134 million family foundation of Sue and Steve Mandel, the founder of Lone Pine Capital in Greenwich. The emails also mention Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch’s involvement in the matter, though he was not included on any of the emails reviewed.

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