The 21-member board voted to approve the deal during its monthly meeting at Chicago Public Schools’ Loop office Thursday — the last step necessary to finalize the new labor agreement.

The decision to delay the vote is an acknowledgment that budget amendment does not have the support of at least 14 of the 21 CPS board members.

“None of these issues that they need to settle will be worth the consequence of six, seven days or how many ever days out of school,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said.

The new 21-member, partially elected CPS board is set to vote Thursday on whether to make that pension payment and figure out how to pay for new contracts with the unions representing teachers and principals.

The 21-member board at its monthly meeting Thursday voted to amend language in a revised resolution that would now aim to save five Acero schools: Cisneros, Casas, Fuentes, Tamayo and Santiago.

The Acero charter network announced last year plans to shutter Cruz K-12 as well as Casas, Cisneros, Fuentes, Paz, Santiago and Tamayo elementary schools due to declining enrollment, increasing personnel and facilities maintenance costs.

Cydney Wallace, who serves on the board of directors for the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, has been named as the 21st member of the new school board.

“This moment is no doubt historic," elected member Ellen Rosenfeld said, "not just for me but for all of us, because this body reflects the voices and values of the majority of the people of our district.”

The immediate challenges facing the new school board members are enormous: They must ink a new deal with the teachers union, pick a new leader and confront the threat posed by President-elect Donald Trump’s promises to deport thousands of undocumented Chicagoans.

Just days before Christmas, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez was terminated in a unanimous vote by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s handpicked Board of Education.

In his first interview since the CPS board voted unanimously to terminate Martinez, Johnson said the current board members were carrying out his vision for the nation’s fourth-largest school district.

To fully understand what led the district to this point, let’s go back in time to the spring of this year. Below is a timeline of the major events leading toward CPS CEO Pedro Martinez’s termination and upcoming departure from CPS:

The unusual Friday night meeting saw more than an hour and a half of public comment before board members went into closed session to debate Martinez’s fate. In a 6-0 vote, the board dismissed Martinez without cause, which triggers a clause in his contract allowing him to stay on for a six-month transitional period and receive 20 weeks of severance.

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.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s picks, which include a mix of well-known community activists and candidates who lost their bids to win a seat on the board, will join the 10 people who won in November.

“What we’ve heard from the families is that we should not close these schools,” CPS Chief Portfolio Officer Alfonso Carmona told the Chicago Board of Education during its Thursday meeting.