Education
Chicago Board of Education to Vote on Possible Termination of CPS CEO Pedro Martinez
Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez appears on “Chicago Tonight” on Oct. 9, 2024. (WTTW News)
After months of discussion about the future of Pedro Martinez’s job, the Board of Education on Friday is set to vote on the Chicago Public Schools CEO’s possible termination from the district.
The board announced a special meeting for Friday evening where it will take up only a small handful of items, including the schools chief’s possible termination and a settlement with CPS.
The move comes amid ongoing strife between Martinez and Mayor Brandon Johnson following squabbles over finances, possible future school closures and the district’s ongoing contract negotiations with Johnson’s former employer, the Chicago Teachers Union.
It also comes more than two months after Martinez said he refused Johnson’s request to resign from the district and the abrupt resignation of all seven of Johnson’s previous handpicked board members.
Martinez, an appointee of Johnson’s predecessor Lori Lightfoot, has served as CPS CEO since 2021.
Johnson is not able to fire Martinez himself — that duty is left to the board — and if the board were to terminate him without cause, his contract requires that he continue serving with pay during a six-month transition period and then be paid five months’ severance.
The current board had its last regularly scheduled meeting of the year last week, where there was no discussion of Martinez’s future.
This week’s special meeting was announced Wednesday with an agenda that initially omitted the Martinez termination item. That was later updated and the settlement and termination votes were included.
Just this week, Johnson announced ten of his selections for the new 21-member hybrid board that will take over in January.
That new board takes over a district that has been engulfed in turmoil since the previous board approved a budget for 2025 that did not make a required $175 million payment to one of its employee pension funds or set aside money to pay for a new CTU contract that includes pay raises for teachers, more art teachers and services for children experiencing homelessness.
The union has ramped up pressure on the district to get a deal finished as soon as possible ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration next month.
Martinez’s predecessor, Janice Jackson, called the board's special meeting “dirty Chicago politics at its worst.”
“Chicagoans were promised a new way, but this is anything but,” Jackson, now the CEO of Hope Chicago, said in a statement. “By attempting to fire a hard-working education leader, the interim Board and Mayor Johnson are trying to ram through an irresponsible teachers’ contract they know Chicago cannot afford and which will further destabilize the school district.”
Jackson was in charge of CPS in 2019 when the CTU went on an 11-day strike during contract negotiations. She said the current contract proposal before CPS “threatens the most basic elements of Chicago’s school improvement effort.”
“Today, we join the growing chorus of principals, newly elected board members, City Council members, and parent groups fighting to stop this power grab, because it is our children and families who will pay the price,” Jackson said. “Our entire city will pay the price.”
Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th Ward) called on the board to reschedule, saying the current meeting falls during Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, which she said creates “an unnecessary barrier to participation for Chicago’s Jewish community.”
“Every Chicagoan, regardless of faith, deserves the right to engage with our government,” she said in a social media post. “We should not be scheduling important meetings at a time when Jewish residents, teachers, and parents cannot participate.”
CPS needs an additional $300 million to pay those bills, Martinez said. Johnson has proposed borrowing money to cover those costs, but Martinez has called the proposal backed by the mayor “exorbitant” and fiscally irresponsible.
WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times previously reported that the school district has offered Martinez a buyout, but he had not yet accepted that.
Neither agenda items included any additional details about what exactly the board will be voting on.
But the agenda does note the settlement and termination items “may be moved forward for final action or deferred for final action at a future Board meeting.”
The board meeting will be held at the school district’s Colman Administrative Office, 4655 S. Dearborn St., beginning at 5:45 p.m. Friday.
Heather Cherone contributed to this report.
