Despite City Hall’s claims, the City of Chicago Board of Ethics said it did not provide Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration with an opinion about whether he should resign from Chicago Public Schools to avoid a conflict of interest.
The ethics board told the Tribune this week it has “no documents showing any written opinions” about Mayor Brandon Johnson taking a leave of absence from CPS, nor has it ever issued any written or oral opinions or guidance about CPS leaves by city officials or employees.”
The Tribune reported last month that Ben Felton, a high-ranking CPS staffer, called on the mayor to resign from CPS after his election in 2023, but City Hall shrugged off the concerns.
In a June 28 memo, Felton, CPS’ chief talent officer, wrote he was “concerned that it could be a potential conflict of interest for the mayor to be an employee of an organization that he was overseeing (through the appointment of the Board of Education).” In the memo, Felton suggested the mayor resign from CPS instead of remaining on what is known as a “CTU leave of absence.” Union members can sometimes take leaves and return to their jobs later.
Johnson’s former education chief, Jennifer Johnson – who is unrelated to the mayor – told Felton that the city’s ethics advisor “did not have concerns” about the mayor remaining on leave from CPS (instead of resigning) and that they would ‘keep the status quo for now.”
The “status quo” included Jennifer Johnson, who was Johnson’s deputy mayor for education, youth and human services, also remaining on leave from CPS, against Felton’s advice. Jennifer Johnson stepped down from her role at City Hall in October.
It is unclear who Jennifer Johnson consulted when she said she’d conferred with the city’s “ethics advisor.” Steven Berlin, the executive director of the City of Chicago Board of Ethics, said neither the staff nor the board was consulted.
That raised questions about the timeline of events offered by CPS before.
When the mayor was inaugurated in May 2023, he was still on a CTU leave of absence from CPS.
That’s what led Felton to advise then-Deputy Mayor Johnson to speak with the city’s “ethics advisor” in early June of 2023, he wrote in the memo.
In the June memo, Felton wrote, “My primary concern is that the Mayor and Deputy Mayor would be able to guarantee future employment with CPS if they chose to return to the district, as our current practice is to place employees returning from a CTU leave into the reassigned teacher pool.” Felton added, “While I imagine it is unlikely that Mayor Johnson would return to the classroom, this is not an immaterial benefit.”
The memo says Jennifer Johnson, told Felton that Mayor Johnson did not want to leave CPS “so as to signal his support for education and teachers.”
A little over a week later, according to the memo, she said she had spoken with that person and saw no need to move beyond the “status quo.”
When the Tribune reached out to the mayor’s office for clarification, they asked for more time to comment but ultimately did not answer repeated requests about specifically who Jennifer Johnson spoke to on the ethics board.
In December, Johnson’s press secretary, Erin Connelly, told the Tribune the mayor “is not a CTU member.” She said he ended his employment and membership with the teachers union in April 2023. “His leave status at CPS is similar to that of other public officials who formerly served in other public service areas such as CPD, CFD and CPS as teachers. There is not a conflict,” she said.
CPS is currently negotiating a new contract with its powerful teachers union; salaries are a big sticking point.
Meanwhile, Chicago Teachers Union members have repeatedly said there is “historical alignment with the mayor,” considering his background as an educator and former CTU organizer.
The mayor started his career as a social studies teacher in 2007. If he were to go back to teaching, he would return with almost two decades accrued toward his salary and pension.
In an unrelated interview this week, Johnson told the Tribune, “There’s no job waiting for me over there in Chicago Public Schools.”
“I enjoy teaching, but I have a unique honor of serving as the mayor of the greatest freakin’ city in the world,” he said, adding he might “go back and teach at the college level, but that’s, you know, several terms from now.”
