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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s hand-picked school board voted Friday to fire Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, taking a step their predecessors had resisted and capping a months-long campaign by the mayor and teachers union to oust the schools chief.
The board voted unanimously to fire Martinez without cause, which under the terms of his contract means he will stay on the job for six more months — through the end of the current school year — and then receive severance pay of about $130,000.
“It’s not right,” an angry and emotional Martinez told reporters after the vote.
“Obviously I’m disappointed by the board’s decision tonight,” he said, adding that he would ensure a smooth transition for the next CEO. “Leading the system that shaped me has been an opportunity of a lifetime.”
The firing was a dramatic culmination to months of turmoil that pitted the mayor and the teachers union — a close ally that catapulted him into office — against Martinez. The unprecedented development comes weeks before Chicago’s new, 21-person hybrid school board with appointed and elected members begins work. It also comes as the district enters a decisive phase in its high-stakes negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union over a new contract.
Martinez made a last-minute legal bid earlier Friday to save his job before the vote. His attorneys filed motions seeking to block his potential firing, alleging board members were appointed “to do the bidding” of a mayor and teachers union that have “scapegoated” Martinez.
CTU issued a statement after the vote saying Martinez was stalling by not agreeing to a contract that “guarantees every CPS student a quality school day, protects recent academic gains, and provides classrooms with the resources our students and families deserve.”
“We look forward to the road ahead for CPS, and we urge the board and the mayor to step into the leadership gap that the CEO has created and choose a future candidate who understands the assignment,” the statement read.
Ahead of the vote, incoming elected school board members, education organizations, and former CPS CEOs Arne Duncan and Janice Jackson issued statements in support of letting the new board decide Martinez’s fate. That list grew Friday to include U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcia and Yesenia Lopez, an incoming elected school board member who was endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union — which has criticized Martinez and cast a vote of no-confidence in him in the fall.
At the meeting, a group of principals expressed support for Martinez and raised concerns about CTU proposals that they feel will take away instructional time from children. The principals union has expressed similar concerns over the past several weeks. Meanwhile, Jackson Potter, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, said the union has made more progress in negotiations this week and wants a swift deal.
More than a dozen of elected officials also spoke — both in support of and against Martinez.
Tara Stamps, a Cook County commissioner, former teacher, and CTU staffer, blamed Martinez for schools on her home turf of the West Side that still have “chronic underfunding” and “crumbling infrastructure.”
“Pedro Martinez’s leadership have left these schools in a drought and our teachers and our students are paying the price for that,” Stamps said.
Others called for the board to wait. Jennifer Custer, an incoming elected school board member who was backed by the Chicago Teachers Union, asked the board to hold off on the decision — and criticized the union’s proposal package.
“Are you going to condemn the first elected board to serve in a capacity where our sole job for the next two years is not to address student outcomes and making CPS a better place, but to figure out how to steady the ship in the wake of the chaos that is created by the decision to fire a CEO mid year and inevitably agree to a contract that we can’t afford, and while the district suffers financially already?” Custer said.
After the public comment period, the board met in closed session. After 90 minutes, members emerged and voted Martinez out without comment. The board then left without taking any questions from reporters.
Tensions stem from district’s money woes
The conflict between Martinez and the mayor’s office reflects a fundamental rift over how the district should navigate a time when federal COVID relief dollars are running out and major deficits loom.
The union and Johnson have argued that the district should add more staff, reduce class size, and agree to a litany of other proposals. The mayor’s team suggested over the summer that CPS take a high-interest loan to cover the new costs — and then redouble its push to line up new revenue from the state or other sources. The Martinez administration countered that any prospects for new funding are uncertain, and the district should avoid adding to its significant debt burden.
The previous appointed board — under pressure to oust the CEO and take on the loan — resigned en masse in October. While that board had some concerns with Martinez, it wasn’t prepared to fire him, sources previously told Chalkbeat.
Johnson appointed seven new members in October. He announced Monday four of them would continue to serve, while three will step down because they are not eligible based on where they live. The mayor also announced six other appointments to the new board and has yet to name one more.
More recently, the fate of schools in one of the city’s largest charter networks has proven divisive.
The board and the mayor’s office criticized Martinez for not acting aggressively enough to find alternatives to the planned school closings at Acero charter school network. On Friday, the Board of Education approved a resolution to cover Acero’s budget deficit to keep all seven schools open next school year. The board also directed CPS leadership to create a plan to transition five of the campuses into CPS schools for the 2026-27 school year.
Martinez oversaw pandemic rebound, new strategic plan
Martinez was hired in 2021 by Johnson’s predecessor, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and steered the district during a turbulent time, as school buildings reopened for full-time in-person instruction after being shuttered during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak and began the work of addressing the academic and social-emotional damage from the pandemic.
By some accounts, his tenure has brought a measure of stability after COVID’s massive disruption. His administration has touted data showing the district’s students have recovered in reading faster than most other districts across the country.
During his roughly three years at the helm, Martinez presided over a significant expansion of its workforce, using federal pandemic relief dollars to bring on thousands of new teachers and support staff.
He also oversaw the adoption of some of the mayor’s biggest education-related priorities, including a controversial plan to ban campus police and an overhaul of the district’s approach to budgeting this spring that de-emphasized student enrollment; instead, the district now provides base staffing positions to all schools and factors in a school’s level of student needs in budgeting for additional positions and support.
Martinez was also at the helm when thousands of migrant children from Central and South American countries enrolled in the district’s schools, resulting in a greater need — and challenge to receive — bilingual services for students at many schools, particularly those in low-income, Black communities.
On the day the previous Board of Education passed a new five-year strategic plan — which focuses on the mayor’s priority of boosting resources for neighborhood schools — the mayor asked Martinez to resign.
When Lightfoot appointed Martinez, a Chicago native and former CPS chief financial officer, he was the superintendent of the San Antonio Independent School District. Johnson chose to keep Martinez in the role after defeating Lightfoot in the 2023 mayoral election — something teachers union president Stacy Davis Gates said at the start of this school year she requested of the mayor. The union had said the CEO appeared to be ushering in a new era of more collaboration and better rapport between the CTU and district officials.
But things changed this summer amid contract negotiations over an extensive, costly slate of CTU proposals. Martinez, along with the Johnson-appointed school board, balked at taking on a short-term, high-interest loan. Johnson had urged the district to take out the loan to pay for the contract’s costs and cover a $175 million payment to a city pension fund that covers non-teaching staff.
The CTU had lambasted Lightfoot for passing that pension cost on to the school district and argued the city should continue to cover it as it had in the past. The Johnson administration has in part blamed the city’s budget woes on that pension payment. On Monday, the Chicago City Council narrowly passed Johnson’s $17.1 billion budget plan after a bruising two month budget process during which even his progressive allies criticized his leadership.
Martinez said in September that Johnson asked him to resign and he refused, citing a need for stability in a district roiled by frequent leadership turnover in recent years.
In recent weeks, the teachers union intensified its criticism of Martinez, even as his administration offered educators up to a 5% pay raise in the coming years and benefit increases at no cost to teachers, among other concessions. Union leaders have said Martinez is resisting union staffing, class size, and other proposals that would transform a district historically plagued by inequities in the student experiences among campuses and neighborhoods. They also claimed Martinez didn’t lobby for more state funding aggressively enough or make a plan for the expiration of federal COVID relief money.
Mila Koumpilova contributed.
Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.
