Obama’s Stimulus Funded Bill Ayers Pet Project
Nov 30, 2011 2 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
. . . In one revelation, the book details how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or ARRA, provided $650 million to the Investing in Innovation Fund, or i3, as it is called. That year, Duncan announced his agency was accepting applications for i3 grants from educational nonprofits, individual school districts or groups of districts.
The winning i3 grantees included the Erikson Institute in Chicago, which requested just shy of $5 million for its project, “Achieving High Standards for Pre-K-Grade 3 Mathematics: A Whole Teacher Approach to Professional Development.”
One of the three faculty founders, and president of the institute from 1994 to 2001, is Barbara Taylor Bowman, the Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Development. Bowman is the mother of Valerie Jarrett.
In December 2009, Duncan honored Bowman at a luncheon. Bowman served as Duncan’s consultant on early learning for the first six months after he was named secretary of education.
Others in Obama’s orbit associated with the Erikson Institute include one of its former trustees and members of the executive committee — the late Thomas Ayers, father of Bill Ayers. Dohrn, Bill Ayers’ wife, also served on the Erikson board.
