1 week Ago By The Editorial Board
Five newly elected members of the Chicago Board of Education delivered a blunt message Tuesday to Mayor Brandon Johnson. Yes, their letter was addressed to current members of the school board and Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, not the mayor. But it might as well have been hand-delivered to Johnson himself.
The current school board members, appointed last month by Johnson after he accepted the previous board’s resignation en masse, are there to take orders from the mayor. The message to the mayor and his board (and we’re paraphrasing): Leave the question of whether Martinez will continue as schools CEO until we take our positions. And don’t make any major financial changes for CPS, either, during this brief period before the new board takes charge in January.
Four of the six winners who weren’t endorsed by CTU — Carlos Rivas (3rd), Ellen Rosenfeld (4th), Jessica Biggs (6th), and Angel Gutierrez (8th) — were signatories. Even one of the CTU-endorsed candidates, Jennifer Custer (1st), also signed the letter. The three other CTU-endorsed candidates who won didn’t sign.
“At this time, we hereby request that the current appointed board members do not take actions now that would alter the finances, staff, curriculum, short or long term strategic plan, external contracts or any other pertinent operation of CPS,” the letter read. Voters chose 10 new school board members Nov. 5.
Johnson will get to appoint 11 next month, including the board president. Under state law, this hybrid arrangement will be in place until 2026, when voters will select all 21 board members. While Johnson has the ability to maintain control over the direction of CPS for the next two years through his appointments, he would do well to listen to these newly elected folks.
In the aggregate, Chicagoans just voted decidedly against the CTU/Johnson agenda for public schools. Nearly six in 10 of Chicagoans who voted in the school board elections chose a candidate not endorsed by CTU. In one of the 10 districts, the CTU-endorsed candidate was uncontested, so if you discount those votes the tally was even more lopsided — 62% for non-CTU to 38% for CTU (and by proxy, Mayor Johnson).
With an approval rating that at last tally was 14%, Johnson already is one of the most unpopular mayors this city ever has seen. Now, with the school board votes, we have yet more evidence that many voters have an acute case of buyer’s remorse with this mayor. This was an explicit referendum on Johnson and CTU’s agenda for our public schools.
The verdict: Voters don’t like it. They don’t like that Johnson and the CTU, his former employer, are attached at the hip and that Johnson is doing everything in his power to grease the union’s contract demands. They don’t like that their property taxes keep rising to finance a bloated school system in which one of every three schools is half-empty or worse.
They don’t like that a union purportedly representing teachers has morphed into a municipal political machine. And, if Johnson’s current six-member board moves to fire Martinez and finance a new union contract with high-cost debt before the newly elected board members can have a say, we’re quite confident voters really won’t like that. The current school board called a special meeting for Thursday, and while Martinez’s fate isn’t likely to be decided at that particular session, you never know.
There is one other scheduled board meeting before the year ends, on Dec. 12. Martinez’s fate is more likely to be determined then.
Either way, what is clear right now is that the mayor is barreling ahead on his desire to fire Martinez before the end of the year. Johnson and fellow progressives talk a lot about how they think Donald Trump is a threat to the future of democratic rule. But it’s hard to take Johnson seriously when he ignores the will of the voters in his own city.
What could be more anti-democratic than making massive, irreversible decisions regarding the future of Chicago Public Schools before the first-ever Chicago Board of Education elected (at least in part) directly by voters takes their seats? Asked Tuesday about holding off on the CTU contract and Martinez’s fate until the new board is seated, Johnson had this to say: “If you have the power to do something today (and don’t), I would find that reckless and irresponsible and reprehensible.” No, Mayor Johnson. What you seem bent on doing is reckless and irresponsible.
If your current board held off on anything but routine business, we’d be talking about a mere few months’ delay before the school board Chicagoans just voted for takes up your agenda items — and, even then, there will still be a majority of members favorably disposed to your way of thinking. What the public would get in that case is an honest, transparent debate about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of your fealty to CTU and what that portends for taxpayers and CPS families. What it’s getting now makes a mockery of democracy in the city of Chicago.
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