If you ask those close to Paul Vallas to describe the man behind the headlines of his four-decade career, you’ll get a portrait of a complex figure: one who is an “accessible,” “incredibly honest” visionary, but who can be “impulsive,” and at times a “fish out of water” with a propensity for “temper tantrums.”
That range of opinion is only fitting for the sometimes controversial figure who has taken a winding path from a shy boy with a severe stutter in the Roseland neighborhood, to the head of Chicago Public Schools — and now the cusp of the fifth floor of City Hall.
