The long-simmering standoff between City Hall and Chicago Public Schools management that simply blew up within the public eye leaves Mayor Brandon Johnson caught between the union that bankrolled his marketing campaign and the varsity system he’s charged with main.
The newest strife at CPS, stemming from the mayor’s unprecedented push to oust CEO Pedro Martinez within the midst of stalled contract negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union, raises questions on longer-term political fallout for Johnson, who’s already preventing on a number of fronts.
His effort to bounce Martinez may have come to a head as quickly as Thursday night’s Chicago Board of Education assembly, however board members opted to not take up the problem. That means the facility battle between the Chicago Teachers Union-backed mayor and Martinez continues, whereas the varsity board and the households who ship their children to CPS colleges wait to see how the struggle performs out.
Sources from each side say the faculties chief’s days on the job seem numbered. The solely query is a matter of how quickly he will get canned by the seven-member college board, which was handpicked by Johnson and can stay managed by mayoral appointees following the January transition to a hybrid elected college board.
At stake are CPS’ $9.9 billion funds — and its structural deficit that continues to be a legal responsibility; the lecturers union’s formidable hopes for its subsequent contract; and a nascent five-year instructional plan with sweeping implications for the district’s 320,000 college students.
With November elections to Chicago’s first elected college board looming, the mayor’s dealing with of the state of affairs has emboldened political opponents who see an ideal alternative to tag him as beholden to the highly effective lecturers union, the place he as soon as labored.
The college tempest additionally threatens to imperil Johnson’s different targets as he tries to get a 2025 funds via a deeply divided City Council the place many members are backing the beleaguered colleges CEO, and offers with harsh criticism about his determination to close down the ShotSpotter gunshot detection system.
Johnson, for his half, has stored mum on specifics regardless of a flurry of motion from allies behind the scenes to ratchet up the stress in opposition to Martinez.
“This is basically not about discussing personnel points,” Johnson stated Thursday when requested what the CPS chief did to lose his assist. Martinez has stated the mayor requested for his resignation the earlier week after he refused to tackle a high-interest mortgage to cowl a pension fee for CPS retirees in addition to the upcoming CTU contract.
Pressed to elaborate, the mayor stated: “The people who’ve been chargeable for the upheaval on this metropolis, they now not have a spot, and so after all they’re going to attempt to create stress. But the folks of Chicago voted for me to rework this college district, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Uncharted territory
The relationship between Martinez, a holdover appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2021, and Johnson, who got here up in politics as a CTU organizer, started on a promising sufficient be aware.
Martinez had CTU President Stacy Davis Gates’ endorsement to remain on when the transition happened in May 2023 and developed an sudden rapport with Johnson at first.
But issues soured throughout the spring session when it turned obvious Gov. JB Pritzker wouldn’t budge on the union’s demand for $1.1 billion in further funds as contract negotiations heated up. The CTU blames Martinez for not doing sufficient to foyer Springfield.
The Johnson administration as an alternative pivoted to a plan to concern a high-interest mortgage that will cowl a few of the upcoming lecturers’ raises in addition to a metropolis pension fee that goes towards nonteacher CPS staff. The district flatly refused, and the CBOE sided with Martinez throughout its July vote to move the 2025 funds — a surprising rebuke of the mayor.
After a number of weeks of City Hall turning up the warmth on CPS to reverse course in a funds modification, Johnson final week requested for an “amicable separation” from Martinez, sources advised the Tribune.
The ensuing furor has been something however amicable, shining a highlight anew on the shut relationship between Johnson and the CTU.
“There’s just one cause why Pedro is being requested to resign proper now, and that’s as a result of he’s unwilling to do the bidding,” former CPS CEO Janice Jackson stated. “Doing this now in the course of negotiations, past being unprecedented, I believe it’s simply reckless and irresponsible. … What is the accountability to the taxpayers in case you have everyone on the desk negotiating they usually all have one factor in thoughts, or one objective, which is to get the perfect contract regardless of not with the ability to afford it?”
Martinez’s refusal was adopted by a flurry of political maneuvering that included the CTU accusing him of exploring closing colleges, which Martinez denied. The college board on Thursday adopted a moratorium on college closings till 2027 with the intention to blunt that assault.
Martinez’s state of affairs turned messier nonetheless when his workplace launched an announcement attributed to CPS and the varsity board that board President Jianan Shi stated he knew nothing about.
Now all eyes are on the Johnson-appointed board to see if they may cave earlier than their phrases are up in January. Shi nonetheless has not stated publicly how he leans on firing Martinez, although he echoed the mayor’s refusal to debate “confidential or personnel issues publicly” throughout Thursday evening’s assembly.
Meanwhile, Johnson opponents are lining as much as publicly again Martinez, additional complicating the political calculus for the mayor.
The marketing campaign to avoid wasting Martinez has included a letter of assist with 24 aldermen in addition to Jackson and Arne Duncan, one other former CPS chief and ex-U.S. Education Secretary.
“It’s a little bit onerous to grasp. The objective of any college district is to enhance pupil achievement, speed up pupil studying, and Chicago’s achieved that collectively terribly nicely,” Duncan advised the Tribune. “It jogs my memory a little bit little bit of when the ’90s Bulls broke up. They have been successful, they usually imploded from the within, and by no means received like that once more.”
CTU’s Davis Gates, nevertheless, described Martinez’s backers because the “final gasp of neoliberal schooling.”
“You see folks preventing to proceed to hurt the youngsters of the Chicago public colleges, and specifically, Black kids,” Davis Gates stated in an interview, alluding to the mass college closures underneath Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Duncan. “It’s like going backwards. It’s like going again to 2013.”
State Comptroller Susana Mendoza, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2019, launched her personal lengthy assertion Tuesday lauding Martinez’s management and saying she and different elected officers “stand in agency opposition to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s request for CEO Pedro Martinez’s resignation.”
Davis Gates has denied taking part in a hand in Martinez’s tried ouster at the same time as she referred to as him a “clown present CEO” as not too long ago as Tuesday, and the CTU management workforce has given aldermen the full-court press on why Martinez is a poor colleges chief.
In late August, amid rumors the mayor wished Martinez gone, members of the City Council’s Latino Caucus tried to mobilize a majority to concern an announcement of confidence in Martinez. The effort was quashed after CTU officers caught wind and commenced calling caucus members who expressed sympathy for Martinez within the group chat that day, sources advised the Tribune.
Among progressive aldermen against firing Martinez have been Alds. Daniel La Spata, 1st, and Andre Vasquez, fortieth, the latter of whom argued: “It would even be a priority that the CEO can be used as a scapegoat for such a mortgage, simply to be minimize anyway.”
But Johnson ally Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, thirty fifth, advised the Tribune the actual fiscal malfeasance is his colleagues ignoring the necessity to account for the pension fee towards the Municipal Employees’ Annuity and Benefit Fund.
The $175 million MEABF obligation was once the town’s till Lightfoot shifted the burden onto CPS, a transfer initially opposed by Johnson however now one he’s preventing to protect as he faces a virtually $1 billion funds hole in 2025 and a $223 million one on the finish of this 12 months. The college district didn’t embrace the MEABF fee in its funds handed in July, punting the accountability again to Johnson and aldermen.
“It’s as much as Pedro to make sure there’s not turmoil within the college district. He’s failing to do this,” Ramirez-Rosa stated. “The CEO of CPS has to give you a plan to pay the CPS pension funds. If a mortgage is the easiest way to do this, then sadly that’s the easiest way to do this.”
Ticking monetary and political bomb
The college board in July handed the district’s $9.9 billion funds that balances a $505 million deficit however doesn’t reply the right way to pay for future collective bargaining prices from the CTU’s 30,000 members and the Chicago Principal Administrators Association’s over 1,200 members. A funds modification can be wanted.
CPS most not too long ago provided CTU wage will increase of 4% to five% over the subsequent 4 years in its counteroffer to the union’s April demand for 9% annual raises. District Chief Budget Officer Mike Sitkowski stated at an August public bargaining session with the union that the CTU has submitted greater than 700 contract proposals, and simply 52 of them would produce a deficit of $2.9 billion subsequent college 12 months, rising to just about $4 billion by the 2028-29 college 12 months.
The mayor’s workforce urged CPS to concern $300 million in long-term bond debt to cowl the beginning of the 4% raises in addition to the MEABF fee within the 2025 funds however was shot down by the district, which charged in an inside memo: “This technique can be counter to our District’s dedication to fiscal accountability. … This could possibly be regarded as placing your bank card funds that you may now not afford in your mortgage funds.”
In the July doc obtained by the Tribune, district officers warn that issuing long-term debt with no income supply may result in extra borrowing down the road, triggering a brand new cascade of downgrades from credit standing businesses at a time at which CPS stays the biggest junk bond issuer within the U.S. and faces greater borrowing charges consequently.
Davis Gates didn’t reply straight when requested whether or not she helps the $300 million bond debt plan. “No one is asking for a mortgage,” she stated. “Chicago Teachers Union is asking for a imaginative and prescient of the way you fund our public college system.”
She added that Martinez isn’t “severe” about securing extra income or filling 1,200 trainer vacancies.
“This obsession solely with our contract and solely with this mortgage means we’re lacking the larger image, which is why I refuse to speak in regards to the mortgage,” Davis Gates stated. “Talking in regards to the mortgage is Pedro’s method of distracting us from the truth that he doesn’t have a plan. … In reality, speaking about financing our contract is a distraction from the funds of the district as nicely. We bought greater challenges than a mortgage.”
CTU messaging in opposition to Martinez has pointed to loans taken out throughout his time as CFO of the district from 2003 to 2009. But the memo argues the primary driver of the district’s present structural deficit comes from 2014 to 2017, when CPS stuffed deficits with a number of years of “disaster” borrowing in lieu of chopping bills.
If CPS takes 5 years to pay the proposed $300 million again, it may price over $434 million and develop the 2026 funds deficit to $951 million, the memo estimates, although that hypothesis hinges on unknown elements resembling extra funding coming from the state.
“That’s a particularly costly technique to shut a funds hole, and it pushes a whole lot of the prices on to taxpayers 10 to twenty years from now,” stated Justin Marlowe, director of the Center for Municipal Finance on the University of Chicago. “I believe CPS was smart to not use that technique, and I hope they don’t use it.”
The highway from right here
All of that is taking part in out underneath the backdrop of Chicago’s first elected college board races this November, which can be seen as a referendum on Johnson and the CTU’s schooling agenda as candidates are positive to face questions on Martinez and the mortgage on the marketing campaign path.
There are two extra college board conferences in 2024 earlier than January’s hybrid board is put in, with 10 elected members and 11 appointed by the mayor. The physique can be absolutely elected come 2027.
To lose his place, Martinez must be voted out by the total college board. If the physique fires him with out trigger, he can be entitled to remain on for six months and obtain 20 weeks of severance pay, however the dynamic with the board would certainly be contentious. If the board have been to fireplace Martinez “for trigger,” his contract can be terminated instantly with out severance pay.
But uncertainty stays over whether or not the latter path may blow again within the board’s faces by way of a messy authorized battle with Martinez.
Both college board and district management are involved that the high-profile bid to take away Martinez is distracting from the district’s five-year strategic plan to shift sources into neighborhood colleges and “underinvested” communities, a longtime promise of Johnson’s. In addition, departing CEOs typically take their cupboards with them, resulting in difficult turnover within the midst of the varsity 12 months.
Ensuring the governor and state legislators don’t get spooked by the dysfunction in Chicago can be vital, as Johnson and the CTU have seen their political capital in Springfield dwindle this 12 months. Still, they proceed to clamor for elevated state funding for CPS.
Pritzker distanced himself from the turbulence this week whereas additionally showing resigned to its final result.
“It appears difficult to vary out the gamers in the course of a negotiation,” the governor advised reporters Wednesday. “But having stated that, it’s the prerogative of the Board of Education and the mayor to make a advice.”
