A Chicago Public Schools board member appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson asked the teachers union vice president about contract negotiations while in a meeting that was closed to the public.
Records released to the Tribune via a public records request show that board member Rafael Yanez — a longtime Chicago Teachers Union ally appointed to the board by Johnson in October — texted CTU vice president Jackson Potter during the Nov. 1 board meeting, “What are the biggest push back from CPS re contract negotiations?”
Potter first asked “Who is this?” before responding to Yanez: “Academic freedom, money overall, staffing, evaluation, class size.” Yanez reacted with a thumbs-up emoji.
The text exchange happened during the private executive session of the Nov. 14 school board meeting. This was the first meeting after Johnson’s first handpicked board resigned en masse Oct. 4 and were replaced a few days later by an entirely new batch of appointees. An executive session is when a government body, which is mandated by state law to conduct meetings in public if a quorum is present, can discuss matters such as employment, litigation and collective bargaining out of public view.
While CTU officials have often shown up to school board meetings to testify during public comment, a top union official’s direct, behind-the-scenes access to a board member amidst contract negotiations illustrates how close the influential labor organization has gotten to the other side of the bargaining table.
Yanez, who no longer sits on the school board after the district’s new, partially-elected and appointed board was seated earlier this month, did not return a message seeking comment.
On Friday, CTU responded on behalf of Potter: “As public officials, it makes sense that the Board would regularly want to hear from everyone involved in negotiations to have a well-rounded understanding and inform their duties. We have been asking for the opportunity to present our experience with negotiations to the Board and are grateful to Board member Yañez and anyone else who actively seeks the union’s perspective.”
The November meeting had unfolded under a cloud of controversy for Johnson, a former CTU organizer, that began when his power struggle against CPS CEO Pedro Martinez blew up in public. To the mayor’s displeasure, Martinez’s 2025 $9.9 billion budget that passed last July neither agreed to CPS absorbing a $175 million pension payment from the city’s budget nor to a $300 million high-interest loan that would cover those costs as well as part of the upcoming CTU contract.
That ultimately led to Johnson asking for Martinez to step down, but he refused, temporarily tying the mayor’s hands given that the school board retains the authority to fire the CEO and his first set of board appointees balked. Though they soon resigned en masse and were replaced, the move was lambasted by critics as a power grab that called into question whether Johnson’s allegiance was to CTU or the best interest of the students.
Then, on Dec. 20, Johnson’s new, seven-member, handpicked school board voted to fire Martinez without cause — meaning the CEO will have a six-month ramp-down period before his employment ends. That the mayor and his appointees moved to do so before the hybrid elected school board was seated earlier this month further bristled CTU critics who said the union was moving to occupy all sides of the bargaining table.
Johnson and CTU leadership have rebutted these attacks as unfair, noting that the mayor still wields control over the school district until a fully elected board is seated in 2027. They have pointed out that the school district remains woefully underfunded and that the mayor was elected on a progressive agenda to invest in the poorest of communities, including through education.
At the same time, the drip of news over the mayor and CTU’s relationship continues.
On Dec. 26, the Tribune reported that Johnson declined to resign his position with Chicago Public Schools after a high-ranking CPS official raised ethics concerns about a potential conflict of interest, according to an internal memo.
In the document, dated June 2023, CPS Chief Talent Officer Ben Felton wrote that he told then-Deputy Mayor of Education, Jen Johnson, who is not related to Mayor Johnson, that “it was potentially a conflict of interest for Mayor Johnson and Deputy Mayor Johnson to remain on a CTU leave from CPS.”
But the deputy mayor said the mayor “did not want to leave his position so as to signal his support for education and teachers,” according to the memo.
While the mayor’s office claimed to Felton that it had consulted the city’s ethics advisor, the Chicago Board of Ethics later said it was not consulted. The mayor’s office told the Tribune last week it did not have any records of any opinions signing off on Johnson’s arrangement.
In another example, last summer, the Tribune reported that a letter Johnson wrote to Illinois Senate President Don Harmon to stop a CPS bill was directly edited by a CTU lobbyist with changes that concerned selective enrollment schools.
During the waning days of the spring 2024 session in the Illinois General Assembly, the mayor made a last-minute plea to Harmon in a letter asking him not to call for a vote on the bill to extend a moratorium on all Chicago Public Schools closings. State legislators wanted to ink in a two-year extension to ensure selective enrollment schools would not be shuttered and faced opposition from the teachers union.
Public records provided to the Tribune revealed a CTU official helped craft Johnson’s eleventh-hour letter that likely saved the teachers union and mayor from an embarrassing defeat in the statehouse, as well as an earlier, watered-down version.
After Johnson’s board fired Martinez, some of the mayor’s top school board members attended a bargaining session but were later barred from further involvement by a Cook County judge after Martinez filed for an injunction arguing that the move violated his contractual rights as CEO.
The mayor’s allegiance to the labor group that bankrolled his winning 2023 campaign leaves an opening for opponents who say governing from the 5th floor of the mayor’s office requires more independence.
In a March 2023 runoff debate, Johnson himself answered a question about his campaign’s heavy dependence on CTU funds by vowing to leave his role in the union and “be the mayor of the city of Chicago for everyone.”
“I have a fiduciary responsibility to the people of the city of Chicago, and once I’m mayor of the city of Chicago, I will no longer be a member of the Chicago Teachers Union,” Johnson said.
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