School Board should listen to principals, then decide fate of CPS CEO Pedro Martinez

When hundreds of school leaders stand up publicly to try and keep their top boss on the job, school board members ought to take their advice.

Good principals, as any education expert will tell you, are absolutely critical to good schools. Their views on what children, schools and the district as a whole need to be successful ought to carry weight with leaders who make crucial decisions about the district — in this case, the Chicago Board of Education, which is the ultimate decision-maker on whether Mayor Brandon Johnson will succeed in ousting Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez.

More than 670 CPS principals and assistant principals — two-thirds of the 1,100 in the district — have signed a letter urging the current appointed board to retain Martinez in spite of the ongoing maneuvering by Johnson and his Chicago Teachers Union allies to remove the CEO and smooth the path to a new teachers contract that would cost an estimated $1.8 billion in the first year and more than $9.2 billion over the full agreement.

The appointed board typically does City Hall's bidding. And yes, the current board is even more likely to do so since they were appointed by the mayor after his previous board resigned en masse over this ongoing and ugly saga.

But it's still worth saying: The board should listen to principals. Keep Martinez on and let the new hybrid board, which will take its seats next month, decide the district's path moving forward.

The board could vote to fire Martinez at a meeting this week or next, as WBEZ's Sarah Karp and the Sun-Times' Nader Issa reported Tuesday. But what's the rush, with the new year and a new hybrid board, half of whose members were elected by Chicagoans and will be accountable for representing the public's views on this and other matters, around the corner?

The school year is not quite half over. Yes, contract talks with the CTU are stalled, but it takes two to reach an agreement; stalled talks can't be blamed solely on Martinez. The previous appointed board reportedly had problems with how well Martinez was doing his job, but if that's the case, why didn't they take the opportunity to fire him? As for the current board's reported displeasure with Martinez's handling of CTU negotiations and plans to close seven Acero charter schools — well, it takes two to strike a contract agreement, and charter school decisions are made by charter school boards, not CPS.

"Our opinions and voices should matter with the future of our district," the group said in the letter. "A change of leadership would be a decision rooted in political interests, not the interest of students."

‘Less guidance and support’

A messy ouster, most likely accompanied by a payout to Martinez (unless the board can come up with some reason to fire him "for cause" since his contract is not up until July 1, 2026) is not in the best interests of the district. Martinez, at least, is attempting to keep taxpayers in mind by trying to hold the line on teacher contract demands that CPS has deemed “unaffordable.”

Here's what one principal who signed the letter, originally released back in August and re-released Monday with more signatories, wrote to us in a letter to the editor: "Pedro Martinez is our 9th CEO since 2009. ... Removing the CEO at this time means less guidance and support for principals and teachers until soon the lack of support hits the very people the system is built to serve — the more than 325,000 CPS students."

"It is my hope the appointed school board will hold off any efforts for change in CPS leadership," the principal continued, "until they take the time to speak directly to school leaders and hear how any decision to remove CEO Martinez will impact our ability to lead our schools."

Johnson, for his part, won't score any points with principals with this testy response when a reporter's asked for his thoughts on the letter: “I actually don’t think much of it. ...Nope. I don’t think much of it at all."

Maybe he doesn't. But his board ought to think about it, for the sake of a system whose 325,000 students they're supposed to be looking out for.

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