Brizard's CPS Severance Package Includes Salary, Health Benefits, Glowing Record Of Recommendation

By Chuck Sudo in News on Oct 31, 2012 1:40PM

If you were hired to a high-profile job, spent 17 months endlessly (and needlessly) antagonizing your employees to the point where they don’t come to work, and retreated from the public eye as others negotiated a deal to bring those employees back to work, then left your job at the recommendation of your boss, would you expect a severance package that included a year of salary, health benefits for you and your family and a glowing record of recommendation for future employers?

Neither would we. Yet that’s exactly what former Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard is getting. The Tribune reports Brizard will receive one year of his #250,000 salary, while CPS will provide health insurance for him and his family for a year.

Most important for Brizard’s future employment opportunities is the letter of recommendation crediting him for improved test scores and graduation rates, implementing reforms that will benefit the school system in the future and—in what led to a spit take— "worked to improve the communications challenges with the Mayor's Office and the Board of Education in what is sometimes an awkward triumvirate."

If that meant “go into hiding while during a teachers strike,” then Brizard succeeded.

Brizard signed the severance agreement Oct. 10, the same day he tendered his resignation by mutual agreement with Mayor Rahm Emanuel. He still is employed as a paid member of the School Board and helping to find a new Chief Financial Officer to replace new CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett. Brizard said he’s also helping Byrd-Bennett settle into her new role as CEO.