Chicago, and especially the families whose children attend public schools, deserve far better than the destructive soap opera now playing out among adults in charge of this city’s school system.
We predicted last month that Mayor Brandon Johnson’s push to oust Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez could get messier, and it has. It’s a terrible look, at a crucial time for CPS, which is just months away from a sweeping transition to an elected school board.
But if there’s one thing that can be counted on with Johnson, it’s this: If there’s a rake for him and his administration to step on, they’ll find it, whether it’s regarding schools, police and ShotSpotter, public transit leadership, City Hall staff shakeups or something else. The self-inflicted missteps keep coming, and that’s a bad sign for a city that sorely needs sensible leadership.
Now the drama over Martinez threatens to throw CPS further into unnecessary turmoil, unless the School Board stands firm against Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union’s desire to oust him. Public upheaval won’t help the Johnson administration one iota with its risky, ill-conceived plan to pressure Gov. JB Pritzker and state lawmakers to hand CPS a bailout to offset its massive deficit ($505 million this year, $700 million next year).
Is there any taxpayer out there who wants his or her representative in Springfield to green-light a hefty bailout to a school district in disarray? At the behest of a mayor whose constituents see him working to meet the expensive contract demands of his one-time employer, the CTU, instead of putting their interests — and their kids — first?
Besides, how do Johnson and his allies expect to force the hand of a more powerful, more popular governor? “I don’t see JB Pritzker rolling over,” as Gery Chico, one-time Board of Education president under former Mayor Richard M. Daley, told the Sun-Times’ Fran Spielman.
The board did the right thing before, backing Martinez when he stood up to Johnson’s plan to borrow money (!) to help pay for a new teachers contract. They can do it again now.
‘Disrupt the progress we’ve made’
Ousting Martinez, as he rightly points out in a Chicago Tribune op-ed explaining why he refused the mayor’s request to step down, “would risk creating a leadership vacuum and instability that could disrupt the strategic progress we’ve made to date.” Any change at the top would have “a domino effect of change among key positions.” Top deputies often leave when their boss departs, which means more jobs to fill besides CEO.
Martinez also denied the rumors that he has plans to close schools, calling on the board to adopt a resolution against closures until July 1, 2026, when his contract expires.
Martinez has a host of civic leaders backing him. On Tuesday, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce issued a joint statement supporting Martinez and urging the board not to fire him. A similar letter was signed by other elected and civic leaders, as Politico Illinois Playbook reports, including aldermen; business leaders; two former CPS CEOs, Janice Jackson and Arne Duncan; and several Latino leaders, including Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza and Chicago City Clerk Anna Valencia.
The letter praised Martinez as a product of CPS who “has driven gains in both student achievement and staff morale,” and pulled no punches, urging the board to “stand its ground against the unprecedented demands of the Chicago Teachers Union to fire him.”
CPS and other school districts have yet to receive the full amount of funding called for in the evidence-based funding formula lawmakers approved in 2017. It’s slow going, given the state’s own fiscal issues. But forcing a fiscal crisis in CPS could easily “backfire spectacularly,” as Spielman writes in her analysis.
Ultimately, who will pay the price if the worst happens? Families and students, in a district that could go bankrupt.
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