Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley has raised a few eyebrows in his 16 years as chief executive of the Windy City.

Just a couple years ago, Daley sent a bulldozer in the middle of the night to dig up the runway of the city’s Meigs Field lakefront airport. He said it was for homeland security reasons, but really it was to make room for a park. Try pulling that one in Cleveland.

Daley surprised a few Northeast Ohioans when he revealed that there are more than 5,000 students in the Chicago Public Schools learning to speak Chinese.

“Education, that’s how we’re competing against India and China,” Daley told an audience of 500 developers, bankers, attorneys and other business executives at the Sixth Annual Commercial Real Estate Deal Maker Forum in September. “China has 10 million students right now learning English.”

Daley says he wants to expand the number of students learning Chinese to 25,000 in the coming years.

Since 1995, when Daley took over his city’s school system, his management team closed a $1.8 billion deficit; made homework mandatory; ended social promotion of underperforming students; improved school safety; expanded summer school, after-school and early childhood education programs; and invested $4 billion in capital improvements.

No wonder Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell, who says Chicago “gives us a sense of hope” at the Forum, is so chummy with her Windy City colleague.

- NEONow

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