Chicago's public schools deserve better than this ugly drama

With all the tawdry drama surrounding Chicago Public Schools in recent months, it's all too easy for too many people to forget what's most important: the education of 325,305 students.

Forget about the adults for a moment. Consider Chicago's schoolchildren: They've made academic progress in recent years, but too many of them are still not receiving the high-quality education they need in the 21st century. According to the Illinois Report Card, only 30% of students met or exceeded state proficiency levels in English language arts; 18.3% met or exceeded proficiency levels in mathematics; 29% of eighth-graders passed Algebra 1, a gateway course for high school and college-level math; 41% of students were chronically absent.

That's only a snapshot, not a detailed picture that would tell the nuances of which students need the most help and where students are doing well. But even a snapshot tells a story, and the story is that many Chicago students just aren't getting what they need academically.

We're making that point because learning is what schools are supposed to be about, and that's what the Board of Education and Mayor Brandon Johnson should be focused on. Not the ugly drama being played out as Johnson and the board work overtime to oust CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, even as the chorus of support for Martinez — including civic leaders, school principals, parents and others — has grown.

It's all "dirty Chicago politics at its worst," as former CEO Janice Jackson, who now heads the nonprofit Hope Chicago, put it in a statement after the board and mayor scheduled a special Friday evening meeting to fire Martinez.

The drama also undermines — probably destroys — any plan to get additional state aid from Springfield. “It makes the ask very difficult when it looks, from the outside at least, extremely chaotic,” state Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago, told WBBM Newsradio.

Late Friday, Martinez's lawyer filed a lawsuit against the board and each of its seven members, alleging that they breached his contract by taking action against him; he also sought a temporary restraining order to stop the meeting from taking place. That didn't happen; the meeting went ahead as planned.

Who can blame parents, and the rest of Chicago, if they're shaking their heads right now, wondering where the district will end up? Or worse yet, tuning out and throwing up their hands in frustration and anger at another fine mess created by Johnson and his Chicago Teachers Union allies, all with the goal of paving the way for a new CTU labor contract that the district, under Martinez, has said could cost up to $10 billion in the coming years. The CTU has pared back its initial demands and says the CPS estimate is misleading, as the Sun-Times’ Nader Issa and WBEZ’s Sarah Karp reported earlier this month. That $10 billion does seem high, but so do those 6% raises the CTU is asking for in the first two years of its contract, with 5% raises in years 3 and 4.

As we write this, the board was considering firing Martinez without cause, which requires six months' notice, then installing Sean Harden — Johnson’s pick to be the new School Board president — as interim co-CEO for those six months to freeze out Martinez from key decisions, Karp and Issa reported.

So much for letting all-important questions about the district's future, such as its leader and what a new teachers' contract ought to include, be decided by the new hybrid school board that includes 10 members elected by, and accountable to, the public.

With Martinez sidelined, Johnson and the teachers union can move ahead with things that Martinez wisely blocked: settling a new union contract, pushing a pension payment for non-teacher CPS staff onto the school system’s books, and taking out a costly short-term loan (!) to fill a midyear budget deficit and avoid budget cuts.

Johnson, of course, is entitled to his pick as CEO. If he had selected someone else and given Martinez his contractually obligated six months' notice soon after becoming mayor, so be it. But an ugly, monthslong campaign to oust the CEO to please the CTU makes the mayor look like a puppet — does anyone in Chicago think otherwise at this point? — not a chief executive.

It's worth nothing that the proposed contract also includes provisions that both parents and principals have rightly found fault with.

"Our children’s futures depend on us getting this right," as Jesse Ruiz, a former interim CPS CEO, wrote in a Sun-Times op-ed.

Getting it right means putting the tawdry drama aside — and putting kids, not adults, first.

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