Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration is laying the groundwork to push out Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, two sources told the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ.
Martinez’s departure from the $360,706-a-year post, which has not yet been finalized, would come after he clashed with the mayor’s office and Chicago Teachers Union leaders over how to address a massive budget deficit and historic underfunding of the school system.
That’s led to increasingly tense contract negotiations with the teachers union, which has directed its ire at Martinez in recent weeks.
In a pair of stunning rejections of Johnson’s ideas last month, Martinez refused to take on a pension payment that Johnson had insisted be paid by the school system and opposed a City Hall request that CPS take out a short-term, high-interest loan to cover the payment and a new CTU contract.
On Tuesday, Martinez’s administration publicly painted the union’s contract proposals as unaffordable and warned that would push CPS into a $2.9 billion deficit next year.
There are obstacles to what would be an extraordinary move to dismiss Martinez. Johnson couldn’t fire the schools CEO, who reports to the Chicago Board of Education, unless his appointed school board agrees. That might seem to be a formality, but Johnson and his board have been at odds over the same issues that have caused friction between the mayor and Martinez — and the board has voted with Martinez in those budget disagreements.
It’s unclear whether those board members would now vote to fire Martinez. They are appointed by the mayor, but their terms don’t end until January.
It’s unclear how soon Martinez would be pushed out — the mayor’s office would likely prefer to find an interim replacement before making the move. The school year starts Aug. 26.
The dismissal of a CPS CEO in the middle of CTU negotiations would be unprecedented since the Chicago mayor’s office was given control of the school system in 1995.
Johnson’s office said it “does not comment publicly on personnel matters.” CPS officials didn’t comment. Martinez couldn’t be reached. Nor could Jianan Shi, the president of the Board of Ed.
A source close to the mayor’s administration, who spoke on the condition of not being named, told of having had discussions with CTU and city officials who have been agitating for Martinez’s ouster.
The Board of Education amended Martinez’s contract in December 2022 to require six months notice of termination without cause. During that time, Martinez would continue working and transition his duties to a new CEO. In that scenario, his contract calls for 20 weeks’ severance, which would come out to $138,733. Martinez’s five-year contract runs through June 30, 2026.
If the school board moved to fire Martinez for cause, it would have to cite misconduct or criminal activity, failure to perform his duties, fraud or other wrongdoing. His contract’s 2022 amendment says “any other conduct inconsistent with the CEO’s duties and obligations to CPS or the Board, or that may be reasonably perceived to have a material adverse impact on the good name and integrity of CPS or the Board.”
That decision should be made “in the sole judgment of the Board,” according to Martinez’s contract.
If Martinez were to be dismissed for cause, his contract does not prevent him from filing suit for wrongful termination.
CTU President Stacy Davis Gates called Martinez “insubordinate” on Tuesday when asked about CPS officials appearing to publicly disagree with the mayor at a contract bargaining session open to the public.
“Every other mayor in this city has told them what to do and they’ve done it,” she said of past CPS leaders appointed by Chicago mayors. “They told them to put up Willis Wagons. They did it, right? They told them to close 50 schools on Black kids, and they did it, right?
“You’ve got to ask Pedro why he doesn’t comply with the [mayoral] transition report that the mayor’s team said yes to. That’s the question for” Martinez and Johnson, she said. “You can ask [Gov.] JB [Pritzker], too. You can ask [Board of Education President] Jianan Shi. You can ask all those boys how they are going to lead this district into the transformation that these children deserve.”
CPS officials defended their actions Tuesday during a CTU public bargaining session. They said taking out a high interest loan would not be in the best interest of a school district already weighed down by $9 billion in debt. Payments on that debt diminish the money available for the education of current and future students, they said.
Mike Sitkowski, the school system’s chief budget officer, said CPS officials were simply trying to be “fully honest” about the “very serious financial challenges facing our district.” CPS is predicting a $500 million deficit next year before a new CTU contract.
“We also highlighted how the investments we’ve made these past few years have led to CPS students leading the nation when it comes to academic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic,” Sitkowski said. “We stress the need to protect these investments, which can only happen if we are fiscally responsible with our decisions.”
Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova, Martinez’s second-in-command, said the CPS administration has taken direction from the mayor by changing the way money is distributed to schools and working with the CTU to bring more community resources into schools, one of Johnson’s top education priorities.
The different approaches to CPS’s finances came to a head first during budget discussions this year. And now they are taking center stage with the CTU demanding raises and more art teachers, librarians and other staff, along with housing for homeless students and support for migrant children.
“I always want more in the classroom and more for students in Chicago” Chkoumbova said. “We’re not saying what we have is enough.
“We have very comprehensive, big proposals from CTU that add up to very significant amounts,” she said. “And we need to think about and prioritize [together] what and how investments can be made. And we need to also live within our current fiscal situation.”
Martinez, a CPS alumnus who was the school system’s chief financial officer in the mid-2000s, was hired as CEO by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2021 on the heels of a tumultuous few years for CPS. They included the longest teachers’ strike in 25 years in 2019, unprecedented online learning in 2020 and hostile pandemic-era reopening negotiations in 2021.
Coming from a much smaller school district in San Antonio, Texas, Martinez was given the job of stabilizing the system and getting kids back into classrooms.
Education was a top issue for Johnson’s mayoral campaign last year after spending a decade as a CTU organizer. During the runoff campaign, Johnson fended off questions about how he could responsibly represent the interests of Chicago taxpayers in negotiations with the CTU given his past ties to the union that provided the bedrock of Johnson’s political support.
“There might be a point, which within negotiations, that the Chicago Teachers Union’s quest and fight for more resources — we may not be able to do it,” Johnson said as a candidate at a mayoral forum in March 2023. “So who better to deliver bad news to a friend than a friend?”
Once he took office, Johnson opted to keep Martinez in place. Johnson has proven mostly patient with holdovers from the previous administration.
Most departmental heads got a six-month trial period, or longer, to prove themselves as leaders, with some exceptions. Johnson unceremoniously fired former Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady three months into his term. He was criticized heavily for not first finding a replacement for the high profile position, which then sat vacant for three months after Arwady’s departure.
But Johnson has perplexed critics and allies alike over how long he has kept certain holderovers — namely embattled CTA President Dorval Carter Jr.
Contributing: Lauren FitzPatrick