Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson asked Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez to resign from his position during a meeting Thursday night, according to multiple sources.
Sources told NBC Chicago that Martinez declined.
Johnson’s decision comes just a day after the Chicago Board of Education voted unanimously in favor of a five-year plan for CPS. At the same time, the Chicago Teachers Union, which supported Johnson’s mayoral bid, also called for his removal.
“We need a CEO who can truly lead in this moment – a CEO who will focus on raising the revenue needed to fully fund our schools, who will finally turn the page on the shameful days of closures and community disruption,” the union wrote in a letter to families.
The recently unveiled five-year plan for CPS was described as a list of goals and strategies the district wants to achieve by 2029.
“The plan addresses historic decisions and past missteps that have prevented strategic investments and led to long-standing challenges and opportunity gaps, particularly for Black students, Latinx students, students with disabilities and students in temporary living situations, and English learners,” CPS said in a statement.
The district said it wants to redefine student success, moving forward with what it called an “ambitious, equity-focused” vision to close a long-standing opportunity gap.
Martinez expressed support for the plan on Wednesday.
“This strategic plan says, in effect, that we’re going to organize the work of our district around a very different idea of how we measure student success, how we think about student growth,” Martinez said.
The Chicago Teachers Union, however, said that while the plan “admits that there are disparities in the district,” Martinez’s “policy is to make cuts that worsen inequities rather than improve them.”
“The best parts of the district’s strategic plan are lifted directly from our contract proposals, the same proposals the district is currently fighting at the bargaining table,” the union said in a statement. “This is another example of CEO Martinez telling Chicagoans one thing and doing another.”
Martinez took over as district CEO nearly three years ago to date, succeeding Janice Jackson, who served in the role for more than three years. José Torres served as the district’s interim CEO from July to September 2021.
