Mayor Brandon Johnson’s top labor adviser told board leaders at Chicago Public Schools that the mayor expected CEO Pedro Martinez to be out by Sept. 26, according to an internal memo obtained by the Tribune.
In a Sept. 12 email sent to Jianan Shi and Elizabeth Todd-Breland, the board’s president and vice president at the time, Deputy Mayor for Labor Relations Bridget Early wrote, “Here’s what lies ahead for the Board for the remainder of this term: CEO out by 9/26 … Land contract, current leadership is not on track to getting this done before a strike.”
Early’s email laid out a series of “talking points” she said included “board expectations from the mayor.”
As her last bullet point under the section for board member talking points, Early wrote: “Exit option — ‘I have told the Mayor that I am committed to landing these items before the end of the term. It is okay if this is a lot to take on. If this feels like too much, we can work on an exit plan.’”
It’s unclear if Shi and Todd-Breland — who ultimately did not move on Martinez’s employment and resigned with the rest of Johnson’s seven-member school board in October — replied. Shi declined to comment. Todd-Breland did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday about the memo.
The mayor’s office has refused to provide the full email via public records requests, but the Tribune obtained an unredacted copy this week. Johnson’s chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, was also included in the message thread. She has been floated as a potential successor to Martinez, but flatly denied she was leaving her current post in an October interview with WTTW-Ch. 11.
The Tribune and other outlets reported on Johnson’s September meeting with Martinez, where the mayor allegedly asked him to step down, based on various sources, including with the Johnson administration. Martinez later wrote an article for the Tribune’s opinion section explaining why he refused the mayor’s request.
At first, the mayor sidestepped reporters’ questions on why he wanted Martinez gone by saying he doesn’t discuss “personnel issues,” a common line from his administration when faced with staffing controversies.
But he soon began suggesting that he never called for Martinez to resign. In the beginning of October, Johnson responded to a question on whether he asked his first handpicked school board to fire the CEO with: “No. When we talk to members of the board of education, what we’ve asked them to do is not cut our schools.”
During one testy City Hall news conference on Dec. 2, Johnson refused to answer when asked multiple times whether he still wanted Martinez to resign, instead repeating, “Have I ever wished that?” and “You heard me ask him to resign?”
“What do you mean ‘still my wish?’” Johnson said to a reporter. “You’re making an assumption here, respectfully, OK. So if you ask it right, I’ll answer it.”
The mayor added: “I don’t want to accept this frame or assertion that I’ve done something that I’ve never expressed out loud, because I don’t discuss personnel issues.”
Martinez’s employment status has been the topic of controversy for months since late September. Johnson, a former teacher and ex-Chicago Teachers Union organizer, originally requested the CEO’s resignation as the district was facing a financial gap due to the costs of a proposed new teachers contract and a pension payment for nonteacher school staff.
Martinez refused to take out a loan, as requested by the mayor, because he said it would be fiscally irresponsible to do so.
CPS settled its budget in July without accounting for the proposed contract’s cost or the pension payment. A budget amendment is required to account for the unsettled financial gap once a contract agreement has been reached.
In October, the issue of Martinez’s employment reached a boiling point when Shi and Todd-Breland, along with the other members of the mayor’s first appointed school board, resigned en masse. But their replacements came with their own set of controversies, and led to the resignation of the next board president, the Rev. Mitchell L. Ikenna Johnson, in the wake of offensive social media posts and questions about his background.
But after last month’s first school board elections and the announcement this week of a third slate of Johnson appointees, Martinez may be in his final days of leading the nation’s fourth-largest school district. CTU did not see the majority of its endorsed slate prevail in the November races, but the mayor still retains control of the school board with a one-seat majority for the next two years.
Martinez’s contract allows him to stay on as CEO for half a year after the board fires him, if his termination is without cause. Observers say the task at hand for Johnson’s latest iteration of the Chicago Board of Education is to find a reason to fire him that would withstand the muster of a lawsuit.
Meanwhile, contract negotiations are ongoing. Though both sides of the bargaining table meet daily, the district and the teachers union have yet to reach an agreement. Months after Early sent an email to former board members Shi and Todd-Breland, the financial gap is still a pressing issue for CPS.
“The City does have the legal authority to borrow on behalf of CPS,” Early wrote in her September email.
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