Pushing out Martinez carries huge risks for Mayor Johnson

Mayor Brandon Johnson is making a high-stakes gamble — and taking enormous political risk — by pressuring the Chicago Board of Education to fire Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez in the middle of contract negotiations and before a partially elected school board is seated.

Johnson wants Martinez out in part because he has resisted the mayor’s call for CPS to take out a high-interest loan to bankroll a new teachers contract and a $175 million pension payment.

City Hall hopes its ongoing fiscal challenges will help turn up the heat on Gov. JB Pritzker and the Illinois General Assembly to deliver the $1.1 billion CPS needs to be fully funded, according to state estimates, and deliver the quality education required by state law.

But even if the mayor succeeds in removing Martinez, there is no guarantee the pressure tactic will work.

In fact, it could backfire spectacularly.

Pritzker and Johnson already have a strained relationship. The governor could resist the mayor’s demand and possibly even force CPS into bankruptcy. That could spiral into a repeat of what happened during the early days of Mayor Jane Byrne’s administration.

It was in 1979, and the school system was all but bankrupt. The Chicago School Finance Authority was created to oversee CPS finances and cut expenses. And the mayor of Chicago lost control of the system for years without any additional dollars to show for it.

“If the end game of Johnson and the CTU is to crash the system financially and force Pritzker to bail 'em out, people better be careful what they wish for. It’s a huge risk,” said Gery Chico, Chicago Board of Education president under Mayor Richard M. Daley — the last time the system faced a fiscal crisis this dire.

“CPS and its advocates already went to Springfield a few times and asked for help, and they got rebuffed. I don’t see JB Pritzker rolling over," Chico said.

Johnson's move also would be seen as undermining the incoming partially elected school board while doing the bidding of the union he used to work for, Chico said.

Cook County Board Commissioner Michael Scott Jr. spent 18 months on the school board and 3½ years as chairman of the City Council’s Education Committee.

He agreed with Chico about the perils of trying to push Pritzker into a political corner.

“You further alienate yourself from the governor by putting the governor in a pickle to have to come up with this money. And you ultimately run the risk of the governor playing chicken with you and losing that battle of chicken, and the district ultimately goes bankrupt,” Scott said.

Tougher task ahead in Springfield

State Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago, said “political infighting” over school leadership will only make it more difficult to make what he believes is a legitimate case for additional CPS funding.

“The city has to come to Springfield as early as five weeks from now when we start our veto session under a united front and say, 'This is what we are asking for. How can we convince you guys to help get us there?' That means without some of the dissension and the personality politics that seems to be playing out right now in the public sphere,” said Buckner, a former mayoral challenger who now counts himself as one of Johnson’s allies in Springfield.

“We want to see folks on the city level work things out before they come to us,” he said.

Further alienating Pritzker and lawmakers isn’t the only risk. Johnson also could alienate some members of the Council’s Hispanic Caucus, as well as a school community increasingly frustrated with leadership turmoil and turnover at CPS.

Sure, Martinez is a holdover appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, but he's performing well and deserves to stay, said former CPS CEO Arne Duncan, who also served as U.S. education secretary under President Barack Obama.

“I look at the academic achievement of the school system getting better,” Duncan said. “When you have a strong management team, when you have principals and teachers who are really working together to change kids’ lives, I would love to find ways to keep that team together. Right now, that team is winning.”

Will ‘cooler heads’ prevail?

Duncan said he hopes “cooler heads will prevail” — even after the Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates last week unanimously approved a vote of no confidence in Martinez.

“You’re always looking for stability in a school district. And to have that change at the start of the school year — that’s not good for kids,” Duncan said.

CTU delegates detailed their problems with Martinez before that no-confidence vote, including slow contract negotiations, lack of support for migrant students, too large class sizes and the lack of a plan for financial security.

They were especially upset to learn that CPS had looked at closing schools, though Martinez said such a move was never seriously considered.

Beyond all of the politics is the financial risk.

CPS already had a $505 million deficit this fiscal year, faces a $700 million deficit next fiscal year and pays $800 million a year to retire its existing mountain of debt. Is it fiscally prudent to make that mountain even higher?

“When you talk about a $300 million loan at a 7.5% interest rate, it puts you at about $500 million in interest over the full term of the loan. That brings it just shy of $1 billion that folks would have to pay for. That conversation deserves sunlight, and it deserves scrutiny — no matter who is the person pushing it,” Buckner said. “On its face, these numbers don’t make it sound like a great idea.”

Rocky road in Council, too

The mayor’s high-stakes maneuver comes during increased tension between the mayor and an emboldened City Council.

Alderpersons twice tried to stop Johnson from getting rid of ShotSpotter gunshot detection technology and refused to confirm Johnson’s first choice for Zoning Committee chair.

The mayor is struggling to close a $223 million budget gap this year and a nearly $1 billion shortfall in next year’s budget, heading into a 2025 budget season where he will need every vote.

Meanwhile, the mayor’s lobbying team is in turmoil. Sydney Holman, the mayor's chief liaison to the Council and a lobbyist in Springfield, resigned this month to protest Johnson’s decision to put Kennedy Bartley in charge of the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Two top deputies followed Holman out the door.

A few days later, three Council leaders demanded Johnson fire Bartley after remarks resurfaced from a 2021 podcast in which she called police “f---ing pigs.”

“The city is gonna have a lot of asks from Springfield in the next few weeks. … Many of us are trying to figure out where the city is gonna be on their intergovernmental affairs strategy in Springfield now that Sydney Holman is gone. Sydney was very well-liked and respected in Springfield,” Buckner said, wondering aloud how the office turmoil will impact the mayor’s already anemic record in Springfield.

A politically involved business leader who asked to remain anonymous said a business community that craves stability is asking itself where Johnson is going by trying to force a leadership change.

“The message to the business community is somewhat inexplicable right now. ... The message is, 'I am literally and inexplicably going to war with the governor,'” the business source said.

“If you take that risk, you have to somehow be assuming that you get what you want. … But it’s hard for me to see how this governor simply says, 'I’m taking it over, and we’re simply gonna pump money into it.’ I don’t know why the governor would do that," the business leader said.

"The CTU and the mayor and, ultimately, this board in asking for more resources is gonna have to say: 'Here’s our plan for the future. Here’s how we’re going to make this work.’ As opposed to simply, 'We need more.'"

Contributing: Nader Issa, Sarah Karp