For the first time since Richard M. Daley took control of the city’s public schools in the 1990s, Chicagoans will see Board of Education candidates on their ballots this coming November.
But a major question remains. Will voters get to select just 10 of the 21 board members, or will they be able to vote for all of them?
We now know the official position of Mayor Brandon Johnson. In a letter last week to Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, Johnson wrote in favor of putting just 10 on the ballot, as a state law passed in 2021 provides. That would enable him to keep effective control of the board until 2026 when the remaining 11, including the board president, are elected.
Johnson’s position wasn’t always thus. When he was working explicitly for the Chicago Teachers Union, he and the CTU pushed for a fully elected school board. Then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who resisted the push for an elected board, worked out the two-step compromise that now is the law.
Times and circumstances change, though. Johnson, who, of course, owes his position first and foremost to the backing of CTU, now likes the idea of mayoral control for another two years. Not coincidentally, that covers most of his mayoral term. CTU doesn’t mind it anymore either. Not now that Johnson, who counts CTU President Stacy Davis Gates as one of his main political allies and advisers, sits on the Fifth Floor.
This page argued against an elected school board for Chicago in the lead-up to the 2021 vote. We thought then — and think now — that the city’s troubled public schools belong in the portfolio of the mayor. After all, education in Chicago is one of the most pressing issues the city faces, so shouldn’t the top elected official here have some say in addressing it? Whatever one may think of the present mayor’s palpable lack of resistance to outside agendas, and we think there is good reason to worry there, that principle should abide.
Our views went unheeded in Springfield in 2021, however, so here we are. And we’re in a far different situation politically than we were even three years ago when CTU prevailed in the state capital. The union has its own man running the city. The present board members, all but one of whom are Johnson appointees, already is taking positions right in line with the union’s.
So, given that an elected school board is a foregone conclusion, we believe the General Assembly should go ahead and put all 21 seats on the ballot in the fall. It’s the only chance over the next few years for voters concerned about the direction Johnson already is taking Chicago Public Schools to act as a check on CTU domination of public education in Chicago.
We’re only nine months into Johnson’s term, but already he and his board have signaled their intention to undermine, and most likely scrap, Chicago’s long-standing selective-enrollment options. That has alarmed parents and advocates of school choice and has the potential to send even more families with school-age children fleeing to the suburbs than are doing so already.
And, to those arguing that Chicagoans elected Johnson mayor last April knowing full well his alignment with CTU, we say that Johnson in the closing weeks of the election said explicitly that he would not end selective enrollment. It took him less than a year to implicitly break that promise — falling into line with CTU’s favored position.
So school-choice advocates and parents simply desiring to keep selective-enrollment options as they are should have the opportunity to express their opinions at the ballot box and elect a school board that can put the brakes on this upheaval before there’s too much damage. Only a fully elected school board can do that, since the election of just 10 will preserve the mayor’s effective control. And let’s remember that any new mayoral appointees potentially develop the electoral advantages of extended incumbency down the line.
Last fall, Senate President Harmon floated changing the law to elect all 21 board members rather than just 10, in keeping with CTU’s long-held position on the issue. The union then did a 180 and threw cold water on Harmon’s plan. The obvious reason, though the union later denied it: It’s easier (and cheaper) for the union to field and finance 10 candidates than double that number. And there’s no need anyway when the union has the mayor as such an enthusiastic supporter; based on what we’ve seen so far, they’ll be very involved, to say the least, in the selection, or reselection of the appointees.
The actions Johnson and his appointed board already have taken — or say they will take — could well generate organized opposition from people and organizations with the resources and political experience to give Chicagoans a real choice on school issues in the fall. What are Johnson and CTU afraid of? We think they’re worried a majority of Chicagoans don’t like the direction they’re headed.
We still believe an elected school board isn’t right for Chicago. But so long as the position of CTU — wresting control of CPS away from the mayor — is the state’s policy, let’s just do it already.