Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez was fired late Friday night, clearing the way for Mayor Brandon Johnson to install a new leader of the nation’s fourth-largest school district after a protracted power struggle.
His termination was the fallout of a long fight between leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union aligned with the mayor and leaders of a school district facing serious budget headwinds.
In a court filing earlier Friday, Martinez asked for a temporary restraining order against each of the seven members of the sitting board to “prevent the unlawful termination of his employment.”
The filing says the board members “were appointed to do the bidding of the Mayor as well as the Chicago Teachers Union (‘CTU’), which have both scapegoated Plaintiff over the past several months as the CTU has made unprecedented demands as part of negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement with CPS despite a massive budget shortfall.”
How Martinez’s duties and responsibilities will be modified moving forward remains to be seen.
Martinez gathered with district officials in a side room after the meeting. He spoke emotionally about the board’s decision and said all he’s ever asked for — and done so repeatedly — has been for the board to honor his contract. He asked for a smooth transition to the next CEO, before bringing up his background and tenure with CPS.
“Who are they really talking to? This is a CPS kid,” Martinez said. “Graduated (in) 1987 in Pilsen, not going to one of our selective-enrollment schools (but) a neighborhood school, in an underfunded school, in an underfunded community.”
In a statement after the vote, the CTU said the “decision turns the page on dysfunction and moves us towards a culture of collaborative, proactive, and equity-minded leadership.”
As of late Saturday, Johnson’s office had not returned a request for comment.
The move to fire Martinez
After a lengthy closed session during Friday night’s meeting, six school board members gathered around 9 p.m. Friday on the stage of an auditorium in a district building on the South Side. The room was pin-drop quiet.
Then, with “six ayes, zero nayes” a resolution was passed approving the CEO’s dismissal. About five minutes later, the board gathered on stage again to clarify it was firing Martinez without cause — a topic of much speculation before the meeting.
That means Martinez can stay in his role for 180 days and will receive 20 weeks of his base salary of $340,000. It also means the board members, facing a suit in court, couldn’t conjure up a cause to fire the district’s leader. The district did not respond to a request for comment about why there were just six members of the full seven-member body at Friday’s board meeting and why two 6-0 votes were held.
The conflict
Johnson, a former teacher and CTU organizer, appointed the board that fired Martinez on Friday after his previous hand-picked board resigned amid controversy.
The teachers union is negotiating a new contract, and the mayor was putting pressure on Martinez over the summer to approve a $300 million high-interest loan that would in part cover the proposed demands in CTU’s bargaining agreement.
The CEO said taking out a loan at the mayor’s request would saddle the cash-strapped district with debt.
But the mayor appears to be steadfast on his goal of getting more money for the CPS schools he says need it most. According to an internal memo obtained by the Tribune, the mayor gave directives for the ousting of Martinez in September.
Three months later, after a round of board resignations in October and a series of other controversies that included the announced closures of several charter schools, a newly appointed board called for Friday’s special meeting. It was held on the last day before the district’s holiday break.
A product of the district
After his contract was terminated Friday, Martinez repeated his message to Spanish-speaking families.
“I came from a community that had no funding. Soy un niño de … una comunidad que no tenía fondos para mi,” he said.
Then: “No nos pueden dejar. You can’t leave us behind.”
Martinez was the first permanent Latino leader to head the district. An immigrant from Mexico and the eldest of 12 children, he credits Pilsen’s churches for welcoming his family to the city.
Martinez has a background in finance, not teaching, which he was questioned about when he first took the role. He majored in accounting at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and got an MBA at DePaul University. He worked in the private sector as an audit supervisor before joining Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Martinez then went on to work under CEO Arne Duncan at CPS and at a Nevada public school system as superintendent. Martinez’s stint there ended after he was fired illegally by the school board and then offered a buyout.
He continued as a superintendent in San Antonio before returning to his home city in 2021 to lead one of the largest school districts in the nation as it was emerging from COVID.
September 2021: An uphill battle
Martinez’s appointment by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot was announced Sept. 15, 2021, at his alma mater Benito Juarez High School in the Pilsen neighborhood.
Though Martinez took over for ex-CEO Janice Jackson during the COVID-19 pandemic, he had bright hopes. He pledged to keep schools open for in-person learning. He wanted to earn the trust of Black and Latino families enrolled in district schools.
CPS is about six times the size of San Antonio’s school district, and Martinez did not fall into his role at an easy time. He was staring down longstanding structural debt problems of hundreds of millions of dollars brought on by financial disentanglement with the city under Lightfoot.
As he learned the ropes of his new position, the CTU cited a “lagging” COVID-19 testing program, bus driver shortages and flaws in special education services, issuing a statement after his appointment saying Martinez “must exceed expectations in a struggling school district.”
“We cannot be fighting within ourselves,” Martinez said at the time. “The enemy is the systemic racism we’ve had in our country. The enemy is poverty.”
The pandemic dominated Martinez’s first year as he faced declining enrollment rates. There were constant disagreements over whether to hold in-person classes or remote learning options, to mask or unmask.
CPS and CTU negotiated a safety agreement for months. Classes were canceled when teachers refused to give their lessons in person. But the district, like the rest of Chicago, emerged slowly — and bumpily — from intermittent quarantine.
Spring 2023: The makings of a partnership
A seismic shift came when Johnson, buoyed by more than $2 million in support from the CTU, was sworn into office in spring 2023. He promised to bring momentum to CPS. He proposed finding alternatives to standardized tests, filling the funding gap with state support and reversing declining enrollment.
The new mayor chose to keep Martinez as his CEO, and the district, which had faced years of conflict between the powerful union and CPS leadership, saw a brief detente among its leaders.
Martinez said he had big hopes to work with the mayor. The two saw eye-to-eye on shifting priorities back to neighborhood schools and getting rid of security officers in schools.
The district saw some real signs of improvement. There was the first enrollment increase in 12 years and post-pandemic academic gains. Martinez and CTU President Stacy Davis Gates went out together to celebrate the first day of school that fall.
But the good feelings did not last.
December 2023: A financial cliff, an expired contract, a clash of interests
After decades of lacking investment, pandemic relief money gave CPS “a fighting chance” to show what’s possible when resources are made available to meet student needs, Martinez said at one CPS event celebrating graduation rate increases.
Those funds were set to expire in 2025, a phenomenon facing school systems across the country. To fill the gap, CPS officials said they were advocating for increased aid from the city and state.
Then, in late May, the Illinois Senate approved a state spending plan without additional money for the district. The teachers contract expired in June and the district approved a nearly $10 billion budget the next month without accounting for either a pension payment to the city or the cost of a new teachers contract.
That is what ultimately caused tensions to boil over, culminating in the mayor requesting Martinez resign for refusing to take out a loan to fill the budget gap.
Though the fate of Chicago’s Pilsen-grown leader lay in the school board’s hands Friday evening, the power struggle is far from over.
The school board will have to navigate new dynamics as the newly elected members settle into their roles. The district could appoint someone to be a “co-CEO” as Martinez transitions out of his position. And there is still a teachers contract to be settled.
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