Sharon Gist Gilliam, a longtime Chicago city government official and among those Mayor Richard Daley is expected to name to his new public school administration, has been hospitalized with an undisclosed illness.
Gilliam, a partner with Unison Consulting Group Inc., checked into Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Saturday and is in fair condition in the intensive care unit, hospital spokeswoman Lauri Sanders said Monday.
Sanders said she had not been given any other details about Gilliam’s condition. But, she said, Gilliam did ask that a message be sent to the public: ” `My health is stable,’ were the words she used.”
Insiders at City Hall and in the school system said Gilliam is still being considered to serve on the new five-member school oversight board tentatively scheduled to be announced by Daley on Thursday.
The panel was created during the last legislative session by a bill that abolished the current 15-member board and placed overall control of the schools directly in the mayor’s hands.
Initially, Gilliam, who was city budget director under the late Mayor Harold Washington and chief of staff under interim Mayor Eugene Sawyer, was said to be under consideration to serve in the paid position of the schools’ chief financial officer, under the revamped system.
In recent weeks, however, her name shifted to the list being considered for appointment to the five-member board of education. Sources said the change in roles could allow Gilliam to continue contracting as a consultant for city schools.
As recently as February, Gilliam authored a report slamming the district’s personnel department. She described the department as “a nonsystem that is dysfunctional at every point,” and she recommended a major overhaul.
Gilliam, 51, is a Chicago native and former city school teacher who got her start in government as deputy budget director under Daley’s father, Mayor Richard J. Daley.
During her tenure in city government, she acquired a reputation as someone with the expert ability to analyze numbers and withstand the constant and often intense pressures of Chicago politics.
