Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Chicago Board of Education voted Friday to fireside Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, clearing the way in which for the mayor to put in a brand new chief for the nation’s fourth-largest faculty district after a struggle over energy lasting months.
After a closed session, the college board voted 6-0 to terminate Martinez’s contract and provides him 20 weeks of severance pay. His duties and duties might be modified, in line with the decision – a prospect Martinez disputed after the vote.
Since the board eliminated Martinez with out trigger, he might be allowed to stay in workplace for an additional six months – in what is certain to be a tense atmosphere, on condition that the hybrid faculty board will nonetheless be Johnson’s majority ally and there may be nonetheless loads uncertainty. That leaves the following section of Johnson’s training program in query, beneath hearth from critics and allies over his controversial push to take out high-interest loans.
A visibly offended Martinez, talking alternately in English and Spanish, huddled with members of his Cabinet after the vote.
“I by no means query any recommendation that their chief needs. …as a result of it is not about me. It is vital to have a clean transition to a brand new CEO as a substitute of throwing every part into chaos in the course of the college 12 months,” he stated, vowing to stay concerned within the Chicago Teachers Union contract bargaining and lead the transition going ahead.
“Enable my staff to be the fantastic enterprise leaders they’re. Let’s cease enjoying,” he stated. Martinez stated he respects the choice, however, as a CPS graduate, denounced the criticism that has been leveled at him in current months.
“Who are they actually speaking to,” he stated. “This is a CPS child, a 1987 Pilsen graduate – who goes to not considered one of our selective enrollment faculties (however) to a neighborhood faculty, in an underfunded faculty, in an underfunded group,” Martinez stated.
Martinez’s firing Friday got here hours after CEO William Quinlan’s lawyer of regulation agency Quinlan LLC filed an injunction in opposition to the board for appearing outdoors of its fiduciary duties.
Quinlan despatched a letter to the board earlier within the day warning them of the potential authorized motion. He included plenty of considerations, together with whether or not the brand new board members have the authority to fireside Martinez or appoint a co-CEO who will work alongside him.
Martinez fought very laborious to maintain his job. Financial analysts say the struggle to retain his position demonstrates the monetary stakes of Friday’s late vote.
“(Firing Martinez is) district suicide,” stated faculty finance professional Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. “If there was one metropolis this man was significantly dedicated to, it’s this one.”
Martinez, a Chicago native, is a holdover from former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration. He has led the college district since 2021, when he clashed with the Chicago Teachers Union over returning to the classroom through the COVID-19 pandemic. His tenure was marked by enhancements in scholar achievement.
Johnson, a former CTU organizer, determined to maintain Martinez on when he took the job final 12 months because the district moved towards a five-year plan to prioritize neighborhood faculties over selective enrollment and magnet faculties.
But that alliance fractured this summer time when the primary iteration of Martinez and Johnson’s faculty board refused to tackle a $175 million pension obligation for CPS non-teaching employees, in addition to a $300 million mortgage of {dollars} that may have lined that cost plus the preliminary CTU will increase. subsequent contract.
Martinez stated in September that Johnson requested him to resign, however he refused. All seven board members later resigned and had been changed by a second group of Johnson appointees.
Those new members — with out the Johnson-picked board chair who resigned amid controversy and with the addition of lately appointed member Sean Harden — fired Martinez on Friday.
The assembly the place Martinez was fired was referred to as on the final minute earlier within the week, and the agenda was modified to incorporate two choices for ousting the CEO: firing or settlement.
Before the closed session, elected officers, mother and father and supporters spoke each for and in opposition to Martinez.
“Pedro Martinez was entrusted with the management of CPS and the soundness of our faculties, but faculties on the west facet – the place I dwell – stay in fixed state of disaster,” stated Cook County First District Commissioner Tara Stamps.
Ald. Silvana Tabares, 23, referred to as the mayor a “strolling battle of curiosity in the case of CPS and CTU.” He stated they arrive on board that they might “abdicate (their) autonomy and self-respect by pursuing this plan.”
A bigger-than-usual crowd waited within the auditorium of the CPS administration constructing on the South Side Friday through the board’s closed-door session for the seven-member physique to emerge and vote.
At 9pm, the board introduced the long-awaited transfer to take away the CEO. They reconvened a number of minutes later for a brand new vote as a result of they’d not settled on the phrases of his dismissal. It’s unclear whether or not Martinez knew what would occur earlier than the vote.
Alice Yin of the Chicago Tribune contributed.
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