MOVING IN/ON The Chicago Annenberg Challenge has hired three new staffers. Pat Ford, west area director for the Chicago Youth Center, is the new program director; Lisa Moultrie, education specialist at the Chicago Urban League, is program officer; and Gopika Gajjar, a recent graduate of Harvard University’s Master’s degree program in education and former staffer at Teach for America, is now chief financial officer. … Todd Rosenkranz has left the Chicago Panel on School Policy to take the position of education specialist at the Chicago Urban League. … Chris Warden has left the Chicago Education Network to join the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, where she will train parents in several cities to analyze school system budgets. … Leadership for Quality Education has hired Esther Mosak, a former Chicago public school teacher, as outreach director, and Margaret Lin, a recent graduate of Stanford University School of Law, as coordinator of LQE’s Charter School Project. Lin has taught in Japan and has worked for the Washington, D.C.-based Institute of Policy Studies.
NEW LOBBYISTS The Reform Board is spending $105,000 to hire three consultants to “provide ongoing intergovernmental services … with members of the executive and legislative bodies in Washington, D.C. and Springfield” through June 1997. In Springfield: Rick Larison, currently a liaison between the board and state government and a former staff member for House Speaker Lee Daniels (R-Elmhurst); and former Rep. Paul L. Williams. In Washington, D.C.: Charles “Chuck” Pizer, a liaison between the office of Mayor Richard M. Daley and the federal government and a member of former U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski’s staff. Richard Guidice, also a former state legislator, and Greg Richmond, a former Illinois Senate staffer, continue to work full-time for the board on government relations.
NEW NAME Scanlan Elementary School has adopted a new name, the Songhai Learning Institute, after the Songhai Empire, a 16th Century kingdom in the Sudan region of West Africa.
PRINCIPALS Carol R. Gearing, a teacher at Carver High, has been named principal of Hendricks Community Academy. … Thomas Quinn, interim principal of West Pullman Elementary, has been named principal.
HARASSMENT SETTLEMENT Evangeline Levison, former director of affirmative action, has received a $141,918 settlement from the board in her sexual harassment case against Michael Rankin, former director of procurement. Levison was fired in May 1995 after filing a harassment complaint against Rankin with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; she also contended that she had been fired for helping state and federal authorities investigate Sharon Grant, the former board president who pled guilty to tax evasion last year. The EEOC ruled in Levison’s favor a year ago.
EARLY CHILDHOOD AWARD Dec. 1 is the deadline to nominate teachers for the 2nd Annual Kohl/McCormick Early Childhood Teaching Award. Five winners will each receive $5,000 in cash and a year’s worth of free interactive classroom programming designed by the Kohl Children’s Museum. Nominees must be full-time teachers in the six-county Chicago metro area, with at least three years of experience teaching in public or private preschools, child care centers, Head Start programs, licensed day care homes or kindergarten through 3rd-grade classes. Nomination forms are available at early childhood sites around the city. For more information or to nominate a teacher, call (312) 335-KIDS.