Pedro Martinez attended his final school board meeting Thursday as CEO of Chicago Public Schools.
The occasion elicited tears from this son of Chicago — a CPS student himself, growing up in Pilsen after arriving at age 5 from Mexico — who called his turbulent time heading Chicago’s schools “the honor of a lifetime.”
He thanked the teachers who taught him back in the day, as well as those educating today’s youth.
Chicago has had some memorable CPS leaders since Mayor Richard M. Daley assumed full control of the schools in the 1990s. Paul Vallas, who lost to Mayor Brandon Johnson in the 2023 election, was Daley’s first schools boss after the state-approved takeover. Arne Duncan followed Vallas, ascending from there to become President Barack Obama’s secretary of education for the entirety of Obama’s presidency.
But to our minds Martinez will remain particularly noteworthy, long after he decamps later this month for Massachusetts and a senior state education post.
Named CPS CEO by Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2021, Martinez oversaw the schools as they emerged from the disastrously prolonged period of remote education. Showered with federal pandemic aid, Martinez invested heavily in individual tutoring for students who’d fallen behind, an effort that produced positive results.
His record isn’t perfect. Once the federal cash stopped flowing, CPS found itself fiscally adrift again, having spent the money as fast as it arrived.
But, in a job littered with more political minefields than most government-appointed positions, Martinez pivoted. His true shining moment came in the final year of his tenure when Martinez courageously resisted highly irresponsible demands by Johnson and the mayor’s allies at the Chicago Teachers Union to take on hundreds of millions in new junk-rated debt to cover costs the financially teetering district clearly couldn’t afford. The clash came to a head during the holidays when Martinez won a court order barring Johnson and his appointed school board members from meddling in a contentious contract negotiation with CTU.
That school board, in place for just a handful of months before a hybrid board of elected members and mayoral appointees took office in January, fired Martinez — but only per the terms of his employment contract, which required he be given six months’ notice.
Was there ever a more honorable firing? We are hard-pressed to think of many.
Elected school board members on Thursday were effusive. Che “Rhymefest” Smith, the South Side rapper who won election to the board and has been an indispensable voice of conscience on the hybrid board, spoke at the meeting, recalling that Martinez was the first to contact him after his win. “The advice you gave me was to lean into the complexity … peel the layers of the onion until you get to the evidence-based solutions and use the evidence to center children and help children.” Smith said that was the best advice he’s gotten in the job.
As Martinez prepares to move his family east, we salute him and thank him on behalf of Chicago taxpayers. His legacy is that he did all he could to give Chicago Public Schools a fighting chance at solvency.
Now it will be up to his successors to make the necessary tough choices that seem to be beyond the understanding of a compromised mayor.
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