Who IS Cozette Buckney?
Cozette Buckney was [is?] Executive Assistant to the Superintendent of the RSD. She’s a Roosevelt University adjunct and holds degrees from Northern Illinois University, Chicago State University, and Vanderbilt. Even her pre-Executive Assistant resume is impressive. Recovery District spokeswoman Siona LaFrance in a March 25, 2008 Times-Picayune article described Buckney as “one of the top labor people in the country.”
from http://wwwprd.doa.louisiana.gov/LaTrac/contracts/contractDetails.cfm
And, as E rightly asks, why does RSD need a “top labor expert”?
I don’t dispute that she’s one of the top labor people in the country but I would dispute that we need to spend between $1,200 and $2,000 per day for an ace on labor relations.
Because, as [Darren] Simon and [Sarah] Carr lay out at the top of the article, Vallas’ administration of the RSD is something of a test case for top-down management style with no local checks or balances:
As such, Vallas’ superintendency could become a test case for a top-down, executive management style for urban school districts, a style unhindered by a local, on-the-ground school board or, for that matter, a strong teachers union.
If we don’t have a strong teachers union, why are taxpayers shelling out so much loot to employ labor expert Cozette Buckney?
She has worked for Vallas before. She’s also focused on education policy and special programs. As Chief Education Officer under Chief Executive Officer Paul Vallas in Chicago [what a confluence of chiefs and executives], Buckney provided some quotes for a Chicago Defender story on crime, expulsions and the zero-tolerance policy in Chicago Public Schools. She appears in an April 25, 2001 Education World article on 3-, 4-, and 5-year high school diploma options in CPS. She testified before the National Reading Panel at its Chicago meeting on May 29, 1998:
[Buckney] detailed the progress the Chicago Public School District has made over the last three years as it has tried to improve its test scores and programs, including putting together an education plan that included academic standards, professional development for teachers as well as principals, and resources for students to be able to catch up when they are behind.
She is also featured in High School Reform Efforts in Chicago: An American Youth Policy Forum Field Trip — December 6-7, 1999:
Cozette Buckney briefly described the district’s zero tolerance policy on crime and delinquent behavior, and emphasized the district’s strong desire not to expel students, but to create programs, alternative schools for drop-outs and adjusted school plans to accommodate all students. … The district has a new focus on early childhood education, and they hope to train parent volunteers to reach out to parents in the neighborhood that have children who are not in childcare or Pre-K. A Cradle to Classroom program has been cultivated to work with young pregnant students. The Homeless Education program is a major initiative that began in 1999 because of a lawsuit brought against the city. This program provides education for homeless children and youth so that they may “have equal access to the same free and appropriate educational opportunities as students who are not homeless.”
Buckney described two innovative district initiatives that concern transportation to school, and language and culture. The Walking School Bus program gives a stipend to parents to walk students to the bus and wait for them to board. This is particularly important in neighborhoods that are troubled by gang violence or excessive bullying by older youth. The Language and Cultural Initiatives have laid the foundation for bilingual programs. These initiatives have established parameters that provide bilingual education with qualitative standards and criteria: aligning bilingual programs with the School Code of Illinois; establishing English as a Second Language (ESL) goals and standards; standardizing Bilingual Education programs by instituting measures of accountability, and creating a multi-lingual and multi-ethnic parent advisory council that reflects the CPS bilingual student population. [emphasis in original, brief ellipsis]
You can hear her 2000 lecture “Raising the Bar: The Future of American Schools” at the Great Lecture Library. She also wrote the forward to Evaluating Programs to Increase Student Achievement by Martin H. Jason [Corwin Press, 2008] where she is listed as an adjunct professor at Roosevelt, Executive Assistant to the Superintendent of the New Orleans Recovery School District, and Executive Director of the Institute for Education Services and Academic Achievement. This Institute has no website or online listing I can find, but we know how weak “I can find”‘ can be and those damn interns of mine continue to blow off their work blocks. It may be part of a university or think tank and just not caught by Google or present online.
It could happen.
E adds some Philly news and more:
In Philadelphia, one aide close to Vallas was found to have billed the School District of Philadelphia for over $70,000 in expenses over four years for flights to and from Chicago, Ford Mustang rentals, hotel room service, hotel gym memberships, and an apartment in Philadelphia’s upscale Center City neighborhood.
It was later revealed that while she was working 20 hours per week at $75,000 per year in Philadelphia, she simultaneously was employed by the school district in St. Louis for 29 hours per week at $69,000 annually.
Cozette Buckney was ordered to repay the Philly district $19,000 for inappropriately billed expenses.
Unfortunately, I cannot find free full-text articles that mention this. They have been hidden behind the Philadelphia Inquirer’s archive wall for some reason. This link verifies the existence of one of those articles. I have hard copies of those articles and there are a couple of key excerpts that I’d like to share:
[The dual-employment story] came as news to the president of the St. Louis school board, who said Friday that the board would investigate it…
Buckney was hired by St. Louis Superintendent Creg [sic] E. Williams, who worked for Vallas as chief academic officer in Philadelphia before taking the job in St. Louis. Like Buckney, Williams worked for Vallas when he ran the Chicago public schools. Williams was not available for comment…
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Buckney said she was leaving her St. Louis job in July. She said the controversy over her expenses and her dual employment “is just tearing me apart. It hurts me to my heart,” she said.“I’m going to take a vacation – I need one after this.”
A quick google search reveals that Cozette Buckney did go on vacation after she left her St. Louis job in July.
It was a paid vacation.
To Louisiana.
If you scroll to page 36 or 37 of this document, the minutes from Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education meeting on August 17th, you’ll see that the state retroactively approved a $38,400 contract for Cozette Buckney to provide consulting services to the RSD from July through October of 2007. If you scroll down to page 33 or 34 of this document, the minutes from the October 18th meeting of the Board, you’ll see that Buckney’s contract was extended through the end of January at additional cost of $14,400 so that she could continue to provide consulting services to the district. That’s a total salary of $52,800 for six months of consulting work. [dead-end links but possible to find]
Buckney is also listed as a memeber of Solomon Consulting Services’ “team” according to “Cashing in on ‘The Vallas Model’,” May 2005, during Paul Vallas’ tenure in Philadelphia:
Although Solomon Consulting Service’s website prominently featured Philadelphia school successes and references to Vallas, SCS founder Gary Solomon denies his firm is connected to the schools chief.
“What I do is try to take successful, reform-minded educators, best practices and school districts and bridge the three,” Solomon explained in a recent phone interview. “So we work with schools and school districts across the country.”
Solomon is known locally because he has worked closely with the School District as the representative of Princeton Review, a major recipient of District contracts.
Solomon explained the choice of his firm’s so-called client “success stories” highlighted on SCS’s website — the rising test scores in Chicago Public Schools under the leadership of Paul Vallas and the rising test scores in Philadelphia under the leadership of Vallas – as reflective of the work of his team members, some of whom he stressed did work with Vallas.
SCS’s team list names Phil Hansen, a former Chicago chief accountability officer who served on Vallas’ Philadelphia transition team and who now works for Princeton Review; Cozette Buckney, Chicago’s chief education officer under Vallas and a member of Vallas’ Philadelphia transition team; Sue Gamm, chief specialized services officer in Chicago during Vallas’ tenure, who also served as a consultant to Vallas during his transition; and Gery Chico, who served as chair of the Chicago Board of Education during Vallas’ tenure. Nancy McGinley, currently chief academic officer for the Charleston (S.C.) School District, who headed the Philadelphia Education Fund, is also listed as on the SCS team.
After Vallas left CPS and Arne Duncan—current Secretary of Education, also Vallas’ deputy chief of staff—became CEO of CPS, Buckney served as liaison between the School Board and Duncan’s office. According to this Sun-Times article, in a listserve post:
Last week, McCosh Elementary Principal Barbara Eason-Watkins, who is black, was named chief education officer. She replaces Cozette Buckney, who was demoted to School Board liaison.
Every person’s story has folds, wrinkles, smudges. Duncan made a point of reshuffling his core administration for multiple reasons. Looks like she was shuffled rather than punished.
With all her experience, and the unfriendly labor union climate in RSD, I wonder…I mean, I’m not alleging wrongdoing, I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy and I’m not interested in invective or vengeance or public shame. I’ve compiled what I’ve found, what I’ve been pointed to and what’s popped up when I looked into what was sent or hinted to me. Of all the things she could do for RSD, why labor?
