Over the objections of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Democrats in the Illinois Senate voted Tuesday night to transition Chicago’s mayor-appointed school board to a fully elected, 21-member body by 2027.
The Senate voted 36-15 to approve the long-discussed, politically volatile issue, which still requires approval in the House and the signature of Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who has voiced his support for an elected board.
“Suffice it to say, the problems that have been created by the mayoral-controlled board in the city of Chicago are numerous and profound,” said Sen. Robert Martwick, D-Chicago, the bill’s sponsor. “This is about creating elected accountability.”
Chicago never has had an elected school board, with the seven-member panel for the last few decades entirely appointed by the mayor. Advocates for an elected school board have argued residents have been shut out of the process over how the city’s schools are administered, pointing to rounds of school closures and the district’s financial woes as reasons for change.
When Lightfoot ran for office, she supported an elected board but has since changed her position and said the mayor should remain in control of Chicago Public Schools. On Tuesday, her administration said it was committed to the concept of the elected board but called the timeline too fast and the 21 seats on the board unwieldy.
City Hall also objected that the bill did not restrict leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union from running for the board, among other provisions, and did not allow residents living in the country without legal permission to run for the board.
“The city understands and acknowledges the history that propelled this bill forward, and we know that the status quo must change,” said Sybil Madison, Lightfoot’s deputy mayor for education and human services. “We continue to believe this proposal has been rushed, and the bill is flawed in ways that could have grave consequences for our students.”
Under the legislation, CPS would transition to a hybrid board in January 2025, with 10 members elected to four-year terms in the 2024 general election and 11 members appointed by the mayor, including the board president. The mayor’s appointments would require City Council confirmation, which Lightfoot’s office did not support.
In the 2026 general election, the board’s other 10 members and a board president would be elected to four-year terms, placing a fully elected board in place in January 2027. Under the plan, 20 members would be elected from districts throughout Chicago while the board president would be elected at-large across the entire city.
“We can’t have a school board that’s more than twice as large as the largest school board in the country. That just doesn’t make sense,” said current Board of Education President Miguel del Valle, who as a candidate in the city’s 2011 mayoral race backed an elected school board. “Down the road, I could see dysfunction, I could see lots of problems, I can see stalemates, I can see all kinds of issues here.”
The bill’s sponsor, however, contended it is long overdue to put the district’s future directly in the hands of voters, particularly because of the fiscal problems the district has faced in recent years.
“In 1995, when the full authoritarian control of the Chicago Public Schools was granted to one person, the mayor of the city of Chicago, their first act was to skip pension payments for a decade,” Martwick said. “This is what’s been done by a board that was not accountable to the voters.”
What Martwick left unsaid is that it was state lawmakers who passed legislation giving then-Mayor Richard M. Daley permission to skip pension payments to teachers.
In addition to creating the new board, the bill establishes a moratorium on CPS school closings until the hybrid board takes effect in 2025.
As often is the case with compromise legislation, there was dissatisfaction on all sides.
Progressives who successfully passed a bill that would have created a fully elected board without the transition to a hybrid board were disappointed with the delay. Lightfoot and others who had espoused the benefits of mayoral control sought a longer transition period.
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Some education activists who had pushed for a requirement that a certain percentage of the board include CPS parents walked away unhappy, as did members of the Latino Caucus who wanted noncitizens to have the ability to run for the board instead of the noncitizen advisory panel included in the bill. The provision was left out in an effort to secure votes from suburban and Downstate Democrats, sources familiar with the negotiations said.
The legislation also does not address the fact that City Hall subsidizes CPS with payments of some $500 million per year, much of it going toward pensions.
“The city of Chicago, which has the worst rated credit of any major city in the country, and the Chicago Public Schools, which has one of the lowest credit ratings, they’re vulnerable to further financial downgrade,” said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a government budget watchdog group. “If the goal here is to treat CPS and the city of Chicago like all other cities in the state of Illinois and all other school districts, you’ll have to find a way to make up that approximately half a billion dollars the city gives to the district.”
Lightfoot’s administration also made a late effort to subject school board races to public funding in an attempt to reduce the influence of outside money.
Martwick said he would work on follow-up legislation to “detangle” city finances from CPS and to work on campaign finance reform for the school board races. He also committed to a more thorough debate on allowing noncitizens to run for the seats.
All of it was enough to receive support from Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Chicago, the sponsor of the House bill that created an elected board without a transition period.
“This bill does not set a timeline that I would have wanted or Chicagoans deserve,” Ramirez said. “However, with key protections during the transition period, including a moratorium on school closings and City Council confirmation of temporarily appointed members, I believe it is the time to fully legislate a path for a fully elected board.”
Both Martwick and longtime Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, noted they had been pushing for an elected school board for some 15 years. Lightford, however, said she was unhappy with the final product.
She carried a bill on Lightfoot’s behalf that eventually would have created an 11-member board with three elected seats in 2028. While Lightford said that bill was “not good enough,” she hoped it would open up talks for a true compromise.
Instead, she said, Martwick and his allies, including Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, rammed through a bill in the final hours of an overtime session with little debate. Illustrating the last-minute nature of the bill, she said, was the fact that Martwick couldn’t remember some of its provisions while presenting it on the Senate floor.
“Let’s add some items to this and not let anyone have any additional input or say. That’s the problem,” said Lightford, who long has worked on education legislation. “I worked very hard around creating an equitable, quality education for all children and especially children who are voiceless. And what this bill is doing is leaving their parents out. They can’t compete, and we had an opportunity to fix that and get it right. We had an opportunity to create a real democracy.”
Harmon said he respected Lightford’s advocacy but defended pushing through the bill, calling it a “reasonable and rational transition” to a much-needed elected school board.
“Is this the perfect compromise? I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one,” Martwick said. “But this is a good compromise that finally gives the residents of the city of Chicago what they deserve, which is a fully elected school board and a period of transition to ensure stability. It’s been a long struggle.”
baiduhai’s Dan Petrella contributed.
Twitter @BillRuthhart