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.

Reliance on school buses has been waning for years as districts struggle to find drivers and more students attend schools far outside their neighborhoods.

“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.

CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said the district enacted a “comprehensive response” to protect its students, families and staff when President-elect Donald Trump’s first term began in 2017, and CPS officials are planning to take similar steps before Trump’s inauguration next month.

Sean Harden — who previously worked as Chicago Public Schools’ deputy CEO of community affairs and as an executive assistant to former Mayor Richard M. Daley — took his oath of office and was sworn in as the board’s seventh member Thursday.

CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s second highest ranking leader, told reporters Thursday that the two sides remain “significantly” far apart at a time when CPS is facing a financial crisis.

The Chicago Board of Education is in the midst of massive change. Residents just voted in 10 members of the city’s first elected school board.

Illinois lawmakers previously approved $50 million for after-school and summer programs, but that funding hasn’t reached schools yet. This delay leaves Chicago Public Schools and local organizations facing difficult budget cuts.

The six-member board on Thursday unanimously approved a measure demanding Acero return any unspent public funding if it moves ahead with the closures at the end of the current school year.

The board is set to meet outside of its typical monthly schedule Thursday in a special meeting where it will take up only a small handful of matters, including a resolution to maintain the seven charter schools Acero plans to close.

Therese Boyle and Che “Rhymefest” Smith won their races for the Chicago Board of Education, according to the Associated Press.

The results of the hard-fought and expensive races will usher in a new era for the 325,000 students who attend Chicago Public Schools — and serve as a referendum on the leadership of Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher, and the Chicago Teachers Union.

The Chicago Board of Elections has hired 8,100 election judges to help things go smoothly, spokesman Max Bever said. Many of those judges are students. 

Amid ongoing turmoil, Chicago’s Board of Education on Friday pushed ahead with its first meeting in more than five weeks — one day after president Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson became the eighth person to resign from the seven-member board in the last calendar month.

Chicago Board of Education President Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson resigned under pressure Thursday after a series of antisemitic, misogynistic and conspiratorial social media posts generated a wave of outrage that stretched from the Chicago City Council to Gov. J.B. Pritzker.