Ángel Vélez Joins Board as Budget Showdown Looms

Late yesterday, WBEZ reported that Mayor Brandon Johnson will appoint diversity consultant Ángel Vélez to the Chicago Board of Education at its meeting tomorrow. Vélez, who lives in West Englewood and identifies as Afro-Puerto Rican, will fill the District 9A seat vacated in June, when Frank Niles Thomas resigned from the board.

Vélez told his life story in a 2023 keynote speech for THINKChicago Launchpad, a World Business Chicago event where City Colleges of Chicago students can connect with local tech firms. At the time, Vélez was a Cisco consultant focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Born in Puerto Rico, Vélez came to Chicago with his mother and attended Clemente High School, where she worked as a cook. After graduating from Clemente, he attended Wilbur Wright College at his brother's urging. "All my thanks to him for actually being the first person who believed in me," said Vélez.

Vélez went on to earn his bachelor's and master's degrees from Northeastern Illinois University and a doctorate in education policy, organization, and leadership from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2021, he was named a Chicago Surge Fellow. The Surge Institute offers cohort fellowships for emerging education leaders of color in seven cities, including Chicago.

In June, he was among 40 appointees to the Chicago Reparations Task Force, which is tasked with supporting the city's first comprehensive study on reparations and proposing strategies to address systemic harms inflicted on Black Chicagoans.

Vélez joins the board on the day of a crucial budget vote. Some observers have expressed concern that he is walking into the vote without the board training and budget-related community engagement that the rest of the board has experienced.

What Happens Thursday?

The board agenda shows that after swearing in Vélez, remarks from Interim CEO/Superintendent Maquiline King, committee updates, and public participation, Chicago Public Schools officials will give a final budget presentation before the board discusses and votes on the budget. Expect an amendment from the floor during the budget vote.

Mayor-aligned board members have argued that the budget should be amended to make additional borrowing possible in case of any emergency, not just to make the contested payment to a city pension fund that includes non-teaching CPS staff. Yesterday, Board Rule obtained a confidential memo to the board from Chicago Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Miroslava Meija Krug. Much of the memo focuses on the likelihood that rating agencies will downgrade the school district's credit if additional borrowing authority is included in the budget, even if it is not used.

But the memo also spells out CPS lawyers' thinking about how state law applies to CPS budget amendments. Two sections of the article of the Illinois Schools Code that pertain to Chicago appear to be in conflict. The last sentence in Article 34, Section 47 of the school code reads:

"The board of education may amend the budget from time to time by the same procedure as is herein provided for the original adoption of the budget."

According to the memo, school district lawyers interpret this section as applying "to any changes to the budget to authorize emergency borrowing in order to backfill lost revenue." In other words, "In the event that our revenue sources are negatively impacted by city or federal action, the Board still has the ability – if necessary – to authorize emergency borrowing to prevent cuts to schools using a simple majority vote."

So a budget amendment for emergency borrowing could be passed with a simple majority at any time in the future, the lawyers say. But adding the city pension payment to the budget would require a 2/3 majority, according to their interpretation of Article 34, Section 48:

“The board may not, either directly or indirectly, make any contract or do any act which shall add to its expenditures or liabilities, in any fiscal year, any thing or sum above the amount provided for in the budget for that fiscal year except that the board may, at any time after the adoption of the annual school budget, by a 2/3 vote of the full membership of the board, pass an additional or supplemental budget, thereby adding appropriations to those made in the annual school budget...”. According to the memo, CPS lawyers say this section applies to changes to the budget that add expenses, like adding the city pension payment.

It has been reported that nine sitting members favor the budget as proposed, and 10 oppose it. Board President Sean Harden also opposes the current budget proposal, but he only votes to break ties. Because incoming board member Vélez is a mayoral appointee, it is assumed he would vote to oppose the budget. That would bring the vote count to 9 in favor, 11 opposed.

If a 2/3 majority is required to amend the budget to include the pension payment, it's very unlikely to happen. But it's not clear to me whether this applies to amendments from the floor during Thursday's meeting. In a discussion on X, Kids First Chicago policy director Hal Woods, a former CPS employee, said that a floor amendment without a 2026 budget in place could be approved by a simple majority.

To find out what actually happens, you'll just have to tune in on Thursday night to see the action for yourself, or catch up on it with Friday's special edition of Board Rule.

Supes Elsewhere Weigh In

About a month ago, Jessica Biggs, who leads the board's transition team responsible for the superintendent search, said that more than 50 candidates had applied. This is remarkable given that the superintendents from beyond Chicago I've spoken with have all expressed strong reservations about the job, especially with the unwieldy board structure and the highly-charged political climate.

Former Baltimore superintendent Andres Alonso did not mince words: "You can't work effectively with 21 people without spending all your time on them. The work will become managing the board, not managing the schools. I had nine in Baltimore, and I thought that was too much."

Joshua Starr, who has led school systems in Stamford, CT and Montgomery County, MD, and was recently a finalist for the superintendency in Milwaukee, said of the budget and the conflict surrounding it, "The best thing to do is to make it public, make it known, make it transparent." But ultimately, budget decisions lie with the board. "The board makes the decision, and the superintendent has got to live with it."