Board Power Plays

While electeds and appointeds brawl, will Black students be forgotten?

Public participation at yesterday’s board meeting covered many issues that have been on the table for a while: saving Acero charter schools from closure, the CTU contract, and the fight for longer charter renewals. Recent news headlines also demanded attention, especially the challenge of convincing frightened immigrant parents to leave their homes and bring their children to school.

But here’s what might escape notice: the board votes just keep getting more interesting. At yesterday’s board meeting, two key votes showed dissension among board members, but this time they didn’t fall quite as neatly along the elected/appointed divide. Here are the contentious issues.

Seats on Related Boards

By law, three Board of Education members sit on boards of other organizations with close ties to schools: one member sits on the board of the Public Building Commission and two sit on the board of the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund.

Before the meeting, the board pulled resolutions to appoint Norma Rios-Sierra and Karen Zaccor to the teachers’ pension fund board. But the resolution to appoint President Sean Harden to the Public Building Commission made it to a vote, after some pointed questions from Ellen Rosenfeld and an extended discussion among board members about developing a process to give all board members a chance to be considered for  external board appointments. Rosenfeld and other elected members also complained that they had no advance notice that the appointment would be on today’s agenda.  

The entire discussion is worth a listen, starting at 4:47:08 on the livestream recording. 

Historically, the president of the Board of Education has been seated on the Public Building Commission at least as far back as Gery Chico, who oversaw the largest capital spending boom in Chicago Public Schools’ recent history. Rosenfeld apparently was unaware of this, and admitted she didn’t know much about the Public Building Commission. But her essential question to Harden was: “Why do you want it?”

Her question came on the heels of a controversy over Harden’s request for a car and driver, which Fox32 reported would cost the district $154,000. Although previous board presidents had access to a car and driver, that practice appears to have ended in 2019, with the departure of Frank Clark at the end of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s tenure.

In a later comment, Michilla Blaise, who briefly held the Board of Education’s seat on the PBC, suggested that board members “should all approach each other with sincerity and maybe with  the idea that maybe we’re not evil, awful people that are up to something.”

Carlos Rivas raised another issue when he said, “We are partly elected, partly appointed. I really hope our elected members have the opportunity to serve on those boards as well.” 

General Counsel Ruchi Verma noted that traditionally, the board president has had “a say” in who joins these external boards. But electeds dug in on creating a new process for appointing members to external boards, since the board’s by-laws don’t specify how the board should decide. Jessica Biggs suggested the board work out a process “so that any and all interested could apply for these roles.”

Jennifer Custer suggested that the board could use an interest survey, like the one they used to divide themselves into committees (see below), to gauge interest in the pension fund board positions. 

The board then moved ahead with the vote on the Public Building Commission. Harden was appointed to the seat by a vote of 15-3 with one abstention, Gutierrez. 

Rivas, Rosenfeld and Smith voted no. Harden does not vote except to break ties.

Legal Fees

The other hot issue was increasing the amount authorized to spend on legal counsel to defend the board from CEO Pedro Martinez’s lawsuit, filed after the interim board fired him without cause in December. As of Wednesday, Chalkbeat Chicago’s Reema Amin reported on X that the board’s attorneys plan to file a motion to dismiss the current temporary restraining order preventing board members from “obstructing” Martinez in performing his duties or attending contract negotiations without Martinez’s approval.

This vote split more closely along appointed/elected lines, with a vote of 12-6 approving additional spending. Four elected members joined eight appointees to approve the increase: Brown, DeBerry, Lopez and Smith.

The six no votes were all elected members: Biggs, Boyle, Custer, Gutierrez, Rivas, Rosenfeld.

Appointed member Anusha Thotakura was not present for the vote.

Will the Board Focus on Black Student Success?

The legislation that created Chicago’s elected school board requires the board to create a standing committee on Black student achievement. But so far, that hasn’t happened, though the district is planning to launch its Black Student Success plan on February 21. (The Noncitizen Advisory Committee, also required by law, has yet to be established, too.)

At yesterday’s meeting, three committees were formed: Student Success, Operations, and Finance and Audit. A general student success committee is "not what we asked for,” noted Valerie Leonard, who served on the Black Student Success working group created under the board that resigned en masse in October.

Leonard is frustrated not just with the board's current move, but also with the long arc of the work to push the district and the board to get serious about supporting Black students. She says the roots of the district's Black Student Success Plan stretch back to advocacy begun during Janice Jackson’s tenure as CEO. But building and sustaining momentum has been a struggle. “That’s why we put [the board committee] in statute, because of this,” she observed.

At the same time, Leonard worries that a late-to-the-party board committee won’t coordinate well with the existing district efforts. During yesterday's meeting, it was clear from board discussion that members are unfamiliar with the history of the work on Black Student Success.

During public participation, Veronica Payne with District Outreach Initiatives, a company that specializes in parent engagement and supports Parent Mentors in a number of CPS Schools, told the board, “My ask is that this pillar does not just become words on paper.”

Here are the committee assignments announced at yesterday’s board meeting. The committees will meet for the first time on March 5.

Student Success Committee 

Jenny Custer, Therese Boyle, Jessica Biggs, Ebony DeBerry, Karen Zaccor, Emma Lozano

Alternates: Debby Pope, Frank Niles Thomas, Che "Rhymefest" Smith

Operations

Che Smith, Anusha Thotakura, Ellen Rosenfeld, Michilla Blaise, Frank Niles Thomas, Debby Pope, Yesenia Lopez

Alternates: Carlos A. Rivas, Jr. Angel Gutierrez, Karen Zaccor

Finance & Audit

Sean Harden, Olga Bautista, Carlos A. Rivas, Jr., Angel Gutierrez, Norma Rios-Sierra, Ed Bannon, Jitu Brown

Alternates: Jenny Custer, Therese Boyle, Anusha Thotakura

Stay tuned as we see how the board and CPS work out their legal compliance issue and how to stay focused on transforming the school experience for Black students in the midst of a contract fight, a budget crisis, a shift in local governance and a blizzard of executive orders from the White House.