Feeling the crunch ahead of a pivotal Board of Education vote Thursday on the Chicago Public Schools budget dispute, Mayor Brandon Johnson is summoning key players to his office Wednesday to try to work out a solution.
The mayor’s office confirmed Johnson is set to meet with school board President Sean Harden, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates and Ald. Jason Ervin (28th), chair of the City Council’s Budget Committee.
Johnson is looking to shepherd a compromise between the school district, school board and teachers union that could avoid a failed board vote while also averting a teachers strike.
“The purpose of the meeting is to bring together the city, the union, the board and CPS leadership to resolve the remaining issues in collective bargaining and other related financial issues,” a mayor’s office spokesman said in a statement. “Mayor Johnson believes that averting a work stoppage is in the best interest of all Chicagoans and his hope is that he can help find a compromise that is suitable to all parties involved.”
The showdown is coming to a head over whether CPS should reimburse City Hall for a pension payment that covers non-teacher district staff to the tune of $175 million. The city’s 2024 budget counted on that money from the district. The mayor’s office needs the school board to agree to that payment this week in order to close last year’s books in the black.
Martinez, however, has said CPS can’t afford to make that payment while also settling contracts with the CTU and a new principals union. An additional $240 million would be needed for CPS to pay for all three. So Martinez has pushed the school board to reject a late-year budget amendment that proposes using new borrowing or debt refinancing to cover all those costs. Instead, he is urging them to use the available funds to pay for the labor contracts — spurning Johnson once again after refusing to put the pension payment into the original CPS budget last summer.
The CTU, meanwhile, in the final stages of contract negotiations with CPS, accuses Martinez’s administration of blocking a deal.
Jill Jaworski, Chicago’s chief financial officer, made the case to the school board last week and in a news conference this week that several options are available for CPS to find the necessary money.
But with all ideas so far shot down by one party or another, the mayor is expected to present a new solution at Wednesday’s meeting, a mayoral aide said. Details of that plan remained unclear.
If he can’t find a solution, Johnson is at risk of Thursday’s Board of Education meeting ending in failure.
The board will vote on an intergovernmental agreement that would see it agree to make the $175 million pension payment. That needs a simple majority to pass.
Another vote will ask the board whether to amend CPS’ budget for this school year to take on more debt, refinance existing debt or come up with a different solution to pay all the costs. That amendment, however, needs two-thirds approval, and its prospects for passing are uncertain, with a few members remaining on the fence. Harden, the board president appointed by Johnson, votes only when needed to break ties, so the amendment needs 14 of 20 votes in favor.
Wednesday’s meeting to broker a compromise conspicuously left out Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th), Johnson’s hand-picked chair of the Council’s Education Committee. She said she “absolutely” should have been invited to the City Hall meeting. But she wasn’t and thinks she knows why.
“They know who I am. I have honesty and I work on ethics. Everybody else doesn’t,” said Taylor, an ally who has not hesitated to criticize the mayor.
“Whatever is going on with this [teachers’] contract that they feel like they shouldn’t include me, that’s just the way it is,” she said. “That’s not on Alderwoman Taylor. That’s on the mayor’s office and the administration. … I don’t go where I ain’t invited.”