CEO Brizard is out after 17 months!

Former CPS CEO Brizard

I wonder what happened. Was he pressured out? I'm sure talking heads and others are speculating right now.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard is leaving the job "by mutual agreement" with City Hall, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

Mr. Brizard has already been replaced: Barbara Byrd-Bennett, former chief of the Cleveland school system, who has been serving as the Chicago Public Schools interim chief education officer for past six months, will take the $250,000-a-year job. "It was a mutual decision by the mayor and Jean-Claude," said Sarah Hamilton, a spokeswoman for Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Mr. Brizard is just coming off a bruising battle with the Chicago Teachers Union, whose members walked out in the first strike in Chicago in a quarter-century. The seven-day strike ended Sept. 19.

Mr. Emanuel told the Sun-Times Thursday that questions about Mr. Brizard had become a "distraction . . . We had a mutual agreement (that the distraction was) not helpful."

A City Hall source tells the Sun-Times, "It just didn't work out. Both felt it was not the right fit. It needed to end.”