Mayor Brandon Johnson on Tuesday likened himself to a parent trying to evict an adult child from the basement — only this time, the overgrown kid is the Chicago Public Schools.
Two days before a pivotal school board vote, Johnson and his team made the case for a short-term borrowing or debt refinancing that would allow the board to reimburse the city for a $175 million pension payment for non-teaching school employees and cover the cost of a yet-to-be-negotiated teachers contract.
The parent-child comparison stems from the fact that the partially-elected school board will become a fully-elected board in less than two years.
In order to become fully-independent, CPS must “wean” itself away from financial support provided by Chicago taxpayers — to the tune of $1.24 billion that includes capital funding for school projects.
To ease the transition, CPS was given five years to “ramp up” to the full pension payment to the Municipal Employees Pension Fund, more than half of whose members now include present or former CPS employees. Johnson also declared a record tax-increment-financing surplus that provided $311 million to the public schools.
On Tuesday, Johnson used his weekly City Hall news conference to make what amounted to a public plea to the hybrid board. He wants them to either borrow more money or refinance existing debt to build a financial bridge to a fully-independent future.
“This board is going to be an independent body. … I don’t want to sound like my dad. But at some point, they’re gonna have to move out. That’s what this is. It’s a relationship that we have to disentangle,” Johnson said.
“We’re not just kicking ’em out. … By the time I was 18, my father gave me a couple more years. We’re just saying we have a couple years before you’re gonna be fully on your own. And that’s really what this process is about moving forward: how to make sure this independent body can stand on its own.”
Chief Financial Officer Jill Jaworski took City Hall reporters through the same painstaking presentation of financial options available to the school board that she made during last week’s public hearing on a proposed amendment to the CPS budget.
It ended with a promise to work with the fully-independent, fully-elected school board to put CPS on equal footing with other school districts across the state.
“That includes CPS being able to hold [property tax increase] referendums, for instance. CPS being able to have the full-tool suite of borrowing options that other schools have. CPS having their teacher pensions paid for by the state,” Jaworski said.
“There’s a whole range of areas in which CPS has been held to a different standard and has different legislation related to them in the school code. And we look forward to working with them to resolve all of those to give them the tools they need to manage their full financial independence as they move forward.”
Currently, CPS is allowed to raise property taxes each year by 5% or the rate of inflation, whatever is less. If the school system had referendum power, it could seek voter approval for an increase that exceeds that amount after describing the specific purpose.
Johnson once again refused to say what he or the city would do if CPS refuses to reimburse the city for the $175 million pension payment.
Some City Council members want to cut off capital and other funding to CPS if the board does not reimburse the city for the payment — a reimbursement that’s already baked into the 2025 city budget.
The mayor refused to make a similar threat, secure in the notion that, as he put it, “no one is going to question my commitment to public education.”
“From TIF surplus to being on a hunger strike to keep a school open that has produced champions — I believe that my bonafide is secure. So I don’t necessarily have to walk in that sort of hyperbolic state making threats,” he said.
“We expect people to do what they said they would do. Their commitment that they made to City Council to make sure that they are paying into the retirement for their workers.”
Johnson is a former middle-school teacher-turned-paid organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, and owes his election to the CTU’s money and foot soldiers.
The mayor said he shares the union’s “frustrations” about the contract dispute — but, he added: “Their frustration is not directed at the fifth-floor” of City Hall.