How Malloy's Aides Edited, Shaped Their Messages On Charter Schools Debacle

Gov. Dannel Malloy (Johnathon Henninger / Special to The Courant / May 16, 2014) Jon Lender Government Watch

4:04 p.m. EDT, July 5, 2014

Pull back the curtain as top aides in the Malloy administration shape the messages that get fed to the taxpaying public, and you see how much calculation, editing and rewriting happens before a statement is finally issued — and how high up the ladder they go for approval.

There's no better time to do this than during a political crisis, such as the recent one that hit the Hartford-based charter school management group FUSE and the Jumoke Academy it runs. Malloy administration lieutenants scrambled to keep pace with news disclosures about problems that led to the resignation of FUSE's CEO, Michael Sharpe.

When Sharpe quit on Saturday, June 21, after five days of damaging Courant stories, one of the state Department of Education's press aides, James Polites, already had drafted in advance two statements to give to reporters:

Click link below for whole story.

http://tinyurl.com/CharterSchoolsBreakingDown