And the winner is nobody
when the smoke clears CPS students and all Chicagoans will suffer
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It looks like the Johnson Administration has reached unprecedented milestones in city government. In less than 18 months since taking office, Mayor Brandon Johnson has managed to unify the overwhelming majority of the Chicago City In an open letter to the mayor, more than 41 council members publicly denounced him when the entire school board he appointed said they all will walk off their board appointments. The mayor has drawn the ire of several community and education leaders over reports he has tried to remove CPS Superintendent Pedro Martinez from that post.
This kerfuffle brought on in part by CPS’s looming $450 million projected budget deficit, along with the teachers’ union demanding a heftier pay raise than the 4.5 percent the district has proposed, and the city’s projected $1 billion revenue shortfall has garnered much of the attention and media coverage
The idea of educating students seems to have fallen off the board. In all of the semantics surrounding Martinez and a new school board; talk of improving students’ test scores, right sizing classrooms and improving attendance has been lost. Taking center stage has been talk about the district taking out a short-term loan to finance the new contract for teachers and to close the budget gap. The success or improvement of students appear to be an afterthought. Johnson maintains he is pushing what Chicagoans voted for him to do-yet has not provided any research or studies to support that position.
It is a vision of the mayor-a person who has never managed a school district or held any managerial roles
Johnson again is showing what has become a staple of his mayoralty-profound political naivety. Why would the issue of removing the superintendent even surface when the district recently reported a record four-year graduation rate of more than 84 percent? Tagging along with that number is the $2 billion CPS students earned in scholarships.
The 325,300 students enrolled in CPS schools this year represent the second successive year of increased enrollment. Again, it is difficult to understand the logic behind the “Pedro must go” movement-if there is any. These are the types of improvements the community has been clamoring for for years.
Will Johnson accept Conway’s offer?
In an October 14 letter to the editor of Crain’s Chicago Business, 34th Ward alderperson Bill Conway unabashedly declared "there is a crisis of governing and leadership in our city.” Conway, 46, who also is a U.S, Navy veteran is serving his first term on the Chicago City Council. He has not been bashful about criticizing Mayor Brandon Johnson on issues from the Johnson-appointed school board en masse resignations to the mayor’s handling of development issues to lack of cooperation with the city council.
In the October 14 letter, Conway essentially challenged the mayor to can the rhetoric about how he is a collaborative mayor, and to begin to work with the city council. Conway, serving his first aldermanic term wrote “the mayor pushed out his Intergovernmental Affairs team and replaced them with two staff members who have said unprintable things about the police and the Holocaust; asked an ostensibly effective Chicago Public Schools CEO to resign for refusing to take out an irresponsible high-interest, short-term loan; and then ousted the entire Board of Education (that he appointed) in the middle of contract negotiations for refusing to do the same.
Conway also wrote “Johnson says the people of Chicago elected him to use his power unabashedly. He neglects to acknowledge that the people of Chicago also elected their representative on the City Council, a majority of whom support replacing leadership at the Chicago Transit Authority, restoring lifesaving ShotSpotter technology, and taking a more democratic and transparent approach to the fourth-largest school district in the country.
When the mayor dismisses legitimate questions about the Board of Education with, "Council can hold as many hearings as they want," he’s telling the vast majority of this city that their voices don't matter.”
Although Conway has made no mention of it, in political circles his name has repeatedly surfaced as a contender to unseat Johnson in the 2027 elections,