While On Campus was on vacation, the City Colleges of Chicago shuffled presidents at half its campuses and moved around at least a dozen high-level administrators as well.

The changes were formalized at the Aug. 6 district board meeting, just days after Deidra Lewis took over as interim chancellor.

I’ll be spending today trying to figure out what prompted these changes, and why two female college presidents handed in their resignations. If you have any insights, leave a comment below, e-mail me or give me a call at 773-362-5002, x18.

Here are the biggest changes, as found scattered throughout the monthly personnel report:

• Sylvia Ramos resigned as president of Daley College. Jose Aybar will take her place. He was an associate vice chancellor in the district office. He’ll make $130,000 in the new job, a 4-percent raise for him.
• Valerie Roberson resigned as president of Olive-Harvey College. Taking her place will be Clyde El-Amin, who was the president of Kennedy-King College. He’s getting a 4-percent raise to $150,000 per year for transferring.

Those two resignations leave Lynn Walker at Truman as the only female college president.

• Of course, Kennedy-King can’t be left president-less. John Dozier, who was the district’s technology director, will take over as KKC’s interim president.
• Who’s going to run the information technology division? The new director is Kathy Linenberger, who previously worked as “hourly support staff” making a whopping $140 per hour, district documents say. She’ll be making $161,000 as technology director, 15 percent more than Dozier made in that post.

There are two other noteworthy changes.

• Ghingo Brooks, who has been the interim president at Malcolm X for about a year and a half, was named permanent president, with no change in his $140,000-a-year salary.
• Danielle Kerry is the district’s new ethics officer. That’s the person who handles things like whistleblower complaints and discrimination allegations. Kerry worked in the district’s human resources department previously, and she’s getting a 10-percent raise for the move. There’s no indication of what happened to Bernetta Bush, the previous ethics officer.

All told, especially among the top campus posts, that’s some pretty significant shuffling just three weeks before classes start across the district for the busy fall term. 

The district issued a news release about the changes, but that didn't provide much explanation for the changes beyond this quote attributed to Lewis:

"These positive changes in administrative positions will ensure our continued success in fulfilling CCC’s mission to be a high quality and affordable resource to Chicago’s diverse communities for their educational and job training needs."

Huh?