Video: The WTTW News Spotlight Politics team on the day’s top stories. (Produced by Paul Caine)
Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said Tuesday he would ask the Chicago Board of Education to approve a resolution vowing not to close any public schools before 2027 and confirmed he had rejected Mayor Brandon Johnson’s request to resign amid escalating tensions.
Johnson asked Martinez to resign on Sept. 18, but Martinez said in a column published Tuesday afternoon by the Chicago Tribune that he refused to do so, a startling show of public defiance by the head of a city agency toward the mayor.
“Mayor Brandon Johnson asked for my resignation,” Martinez wrote. “I declined. It was not a rebuke of the mayor but rather a decision to pursue our vision for the future of CPS.”
Martinez wrote that he refused to resign because doing so “would risk creating a leadership vacuum and instability that could disrupt the strategic progress we’ve made to date.”
“A leadership change is extraordinarily disruptive to any school system, generating a domino effect of change among key positions that can stall progress and diminish opportunities for students,” Martinez said. “Our long-term vision and initiatives are at a critical juncture, and leaving now would jeopardize continuity and our momentum. And it’s especially disruptive and unprecedented for a district to lose its CEO in the middle of labor negotiations with the its teachers union.”
A spokesperson for Johnson declined to comment on Martinez’s column, citing a policy of not discussing personnel issues.
During the past week, Martinez has written three times to parents, staff and students, and in each letter, he has promised that he will not close any schools while at the helm of CPS, even as he acknowledged compiling a list of schools that could be closed as part of an effort to compile a five-year strategic plan for the district.
Sources in the mayor’s office said Martinez’s decision to craft that list without informing the mayor indelibly broke the relationship between the two men. Martinez and Johnson have been at odds over the district’s finances and efforts to craft a new contract with CTU for months.
“I’m reaching out to hopefully ease your concerns about continued rumors of school closings in CPS,” Martinez wrote. “Unfortunately, the misinformation campaign around this issue is still underway. So let me be 100% clear — there are absolutely no plans to close, consolidate or phase out any district-managed schools. This simply is not a direction that CPS is considering as we plan for the future of our district.”
Martinez’s contract could be terminated by the Chicago Board of Education. Martinez could only be dismissed immediately if there is cause for dismissal. Otherwise, he would be paid for six months to oversee the transition to a new CEO.
The school board, which is set to meet Thursday, will not consider firing Martinez at its Thursday meeting, nor will it consider amending its spending plan that did not make a required $175 million payment to one of its employee pension funds.
That decision exploded the city’s 2024 budget gap, complicating Johnson’s efforts to craft a budget for the 2025 fiscal year and to keep the city’s finances out of the red.
State law prohibits any CPS schools from being closed before Jan. 15. The resolution set to be considered by the school board on Thursday would extend that moratorium for an additional two years, through the 2026-27 school year. Martinez’s contract is set to expire on July 1, 2026.
The board’s current members were appointed by Johnson. By 2027, the school board will have 21 members, with all but one elected by Chicago voters.
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates in a Monday appearance on “Chicago Tonight” called on Martinez to explain how that list of schools that could be closed was crafted.
“We were not supposed to have the list, in fact, there was a document that we received that had other tabs attached to it which were encrypted of sorts,” Davis Gates said. “And so we had to break that. So this is not something that anyone wanted us to have. And so then thereby receiving it, the question is now, ‘Why was this list commissioned?’ And if this list is no longer an active list, then, ‘Who made those decisions and why?’ I think the CEO owes us some explanations.”
A CPS spokesperson said in a statement the school closure list was developed during efforts to craft a new strategic plan for the district.
“Part of the analysis reviewed was a draft list of potential schools that could be co-located, but that exploration never developed into a plan for serious consideration or further study. End of story,” according to the statement, which was sent to WTTW News as “a joint statement” from the Chicago Board of Education and the Chicago Public Schools.
However, the statement listed no board members by name, and Mary Ann Fergus, a spokesperson for CPS, did not immediately respond to questions from WTTW News about which board members signed off on the statement.
Hours after the statement was issued, Board President Jianan Shi posted on X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter, that he had not authorized the statement.
“This is not a joint statement,” Shi wrote. “As board president, I am just seeing this now.”
After Shi's post, Fergus acknowledged that the statement was improperly labeled as a joint statement with the board.
“We would clarify that it is not a joint statement,” Fergus wrote. “This was simply an internal misunderstanding as we rushed to send out to several of you on deadline.”
If Martinez directed CPS to issue a statement in the name of the board without getting board members’ approval, that could give the board cause to dismiss him immediately.
Johnson, a former middle school social studies teacher, helped lead CTU’s 2012 strike and campaigned against former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to close 50 schools in 2013, the largest school closure in the nation.
More than a decade later, the closures did nothing to steady the district’s financial position and left deep wounds in communities where schools were closed.
“As an organizer, Mayor Johnson fought against school closures and participated in a hunger strike to save neighborhood schools,” said Ronnie Reese, Johnson’s communications director. “His vision for public education in Chicago calls for investments in our students – not layoffs and harmful school actions that have traumatized families and communities across the city.”
CTU delegates unanimously issued a vote of no confidence in Martinez “in light of his failures to urgently address the needs confronting the district and embark on the transformation of our schools.”
CPS officials and CTU leaders are scheduled to hold a public bargaining session Tuesday evening. That session is scheduled to focus on efforts to expand an initiative designed to transform schools into community hubs that provide enrichment programs, social services and health care.
Johnson has backed the union’s demand that a new contract include pay raises for teachers, more art teachers and services for children experiencing homelessness. That would likely require the cash-strapped school district to borrow a significant amount of money at a relatively high interest rate.
Martinez said a decision to borrow more money would be catastrophic for the district, but did not address his decision not to meet the district’s pension obligations.
“We need to find solutions, but, to be clear, I remain against exorbitant, short-term borrowing, a past practice that generated negative bond ratings for CPS and that would likely lead to additional bond rating cuts and higher borrowing interest rates,” Martinez wrote. “Additionally, bonds are primarily repaid by operating revenues, and all the additional costs of debt service take away dollars from the classroom — all of which means that future generations of Chicago’s children and taxpayers will ultimately pay the price.”
In a letter released late Tuesday, 22 members of the Chicago City Council condemned Johnson’s decision to ask Martinez to resign, along with City Clerk Anna Valencia and Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza. Joining them were three former leaders of CPS: Janice Jackson, Jesse Ruiz and Arne Duncan.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]