Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, called a measure to elect 10 CPS school board members this November a “compromise,” but also noted he would rather support a previous plan for a fully elected school board.
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Amid a very lukewarm stamp of approval, the Illinois Senate on Tuesday cleared a measure that would allow for the election of only 10 of 21 school board seats in Chicago this November.
The 37-20 passage of the plan, backed by Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union, came after the mayor sent Illinois Senate President Don Harmon a letter last month to urge support for the election of the 10 seats this year.
That leaves the mayor to appoint the other 11, with Johnson in control of Chicago Public Schools nearly through the end of his term. The first elected board members would serve four-year terms, and voters would be able to choose who should fill the appointed seats in 2026 to create a fully elected board in January 2027.
On the Senate floor, Sen. Robert Martwick, D-Chicago, urged passage, despite divisions that were highlighted on the floor and during an earlier committee, including concerns that the Chicago Teachers Union would have too much power in selecting the 10 candidates. But Martwick said the passage allows for “implementation” and would only mark the beginning of elections for the school board.
“If you don’t like the mayor, and you don’t like CTU and you want to know who is in control, you think there should be more elections, well, let’s get this thing implemented,” Martwick said. “Let’s start putting the power in the hands of the people so they can vote and create a government that they like. And if there’s problems, we’ll come back and fix it. I’ll join you.”
Just before the vote, Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, told senators “doing nothing is not an option.” Earlier, during an Illinois Senate Executive Committee hearing, Harmon called the bill a “compromise,” and said, “I imagine I might agree with many of the opponents who are here to testify.”
“This is not a perfect bill. There is no such thing. I still think the superior bill is the bill that the Senate passed in the fall that sits in the House Rules Committee,” Harmon said. “If the House had a change of heart, they could send the governor today. I don’t expect that they will.”
That measure would have allowed the board to be fully elected as soon as this year by splitting up memberships to two and four-year terms.
The new measure also includes ethics provisions the Senate president requested last year, including who can serve as a board member. Harmon had publicly said he looked forward to getting “clear direction” from Johnson after an unresolved dispute over how many seats would be elected this fall.
Several opponents spoke out during committee, with Ald. Gilbert “Gil” Villegas (36th) calling it a “CTU PAC bill,” insinuating that the union will be in charge of this year’s elections — in choosing who to run and helping to fund their races.
“This process started out as transparent. Believe me, we had hope. Now the final stages have been led by the CTU PAC behind closed doors and with little to no transparency,” Villegas said. “CTU PAC wants 1,000 signatures for a school board seat. This doesn’t benefit the community that has been asking for a fully elected school board. The number of signatures required favors a group like the CTU, that has the infrastructure to mass collect signatures, a well-funded group of personnel, as opposed to everyday parents and real community activists.”
And Valerie Leonard, of Illinois African Americans for Equitable Restricting, criticized the complicated elected process, saying the measure was “not good public policy.”
“This reminds me of TIFs, and you know how convoluted and complicated that process was,” Leonard said. “When you have a convoluted process like this, it tends to keep people from participating.”
The Illinois House must still approve the legislation.
Contributing: Nader Issa