On Monday, Mayor Brandon Johnson named six of seven new School Board members following last week’s unprecedented mass resignation of the entire existing board.
But his swift action didn’t change our minds on this point: We can’t imagine how Johnson and his allies could have been more irresponsible in recent weeks regarding Chicago Public Schools, creating a terrible look for City Hall and destabilizing the district when it sorely needs managerial competence, not chaos.
Acting quickly to name new board members may have been intended as a show of stability after last Friday’s resignations. It didn’t work. Monday’s events didn’t create even a glimmer of the kind of smooth, orderly transition that CPS needs in the last few months before a third board — a 21-member, partially elected board — is seated in January.
Wholesale turnover, and the prospect of a new district leader if the new board ousts current CEO Pedro Martinez, looks like nothing more than self-inflicted turmoil. It’s put Chicago in the national spotlight, and not in a good way. And it’s surely not the way to persuade a popular governor, as well as state lawmakers with their own constituent needs, to approve the level of financial bailout Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union want for CPS.
“Springfield doesn’t like to get … in the middle of messes that aren’t theirs to clean up,” as one political observer told the Sun-Times’ Tina Sfondeles and Fran Spielman.
“Turmoil” also seems an apt description for Monday’s press conference, held at a church in South Chicago, to announce the six new board appointees. The event was interrupted by protesters, some carrying “Fire Brandon” signs, who shouted, “This board is not legit.” When reporters tried to question the appointees about supporting a loan to help pay district expenses, the mayor quickly interrupted and called the question “disrespectful.”
Johnson also said Monday that his “fiscally responsible” critics are “making the same argument of the Confederacy when it comes to public education in this system.”
All the drama sparked 41 of 50 City Council members to sign an open letter over the weekend calling for the new appointees to appear at hearings before taking their seats. (The council has no legal authority over board appointments.)
The mayor and his CTU allies sought to fire Martinez in part for what they claim is his failure to come up with a plan to get more education funding from Springfield. Johnson says he’s trying to avoid CPS budget cuts, as he told WBEZ’s Sarah Karp in an exclusive interview. Sure, cuts hurt schools. But so does trying to fire a CEO, and engineering the resignations of an entire board, for having the fiscal sense to say no to a bad loan that would make the district’s long-term financial picture even worse.
CPS has had more than its share of bad fiscal decisions over the years. The time to stop making them is now.
Johnson spoke Monday about “bold leadership … that doesn’t nibble around the edges and look for incremental gain.” But incremental gain is often how change happens. Soaring rhetoric is one thing. Getting results is another.
Johnson needs a ‘team of rivals’
The six new appointees Johnson named Monday are: Olga Bautista, co-executive director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force; Michilla Blaise, chief of staff for Cook County commissioner Frank Aguilar; West Side activist Mary Gardner; the Rev. Mitchell Johnson, who works on economic and community development; Debby Pope, a retired teacher and former CTU staffer; and Frank Niles Thomas, a labor and political organizer.
In one sense, the background of the appointees matters little; Johnson of course picked people whom he knows will support his agenda. We expect some of the seven will be among the 11 members Johnson appoints to the new hybrid school board.
With that in mind, the stakes for November’s school board elections, when voters will elect 10 of 21 members, take on a new importance. Johnson’s picks will likely lean toward activists and organizers. Voters should look for candidates with solid expertise in education and school finance to fill the 10 elected seats.
Which brings us to this point: If there were ever a leader who stands to benefit from a team of rivals, it’s Johnson.
For those who are wondering, the term is from the title of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 book “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” on Lincoln and the one-time political foes who served in his cabinet during the Civil War.
Johnson doesn’t necessarily need to put his former foes around him, as Lincoln did. But he ought to start listening to people with strong policy backgrounds —Band more important, the ability to get things done — who might not agree with him on every issue. Progressives aren’t the only ones who want the city to move forward. Not everyone who disagrees is, as the mayor suggested to Karp, “mad” that he’s trying to fix the problems of the past.
In this case, listening might actually help make things better for Chicago students.
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