Friday Night Fights; DIY Training

While the current board and CEO tangle over who’s boss, incoming board members pursue a different vision of governance.

On Friday night, December 20, six members of the Chicago Board of Education: President Sean Harden, Vice President Mary Gardner, and members Debby Pope, Michilla Blaise, Olga Bautista, and Frank Niles Gardner, voted to fire Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez without cause. Board member Rafael Yañez did not attend the meeting.

But that 6-0 vote doesn’t mean Martinez is gone immediately. According to his contract, he will continue to serve as CEO for six months while he and the board develop a transition plan. Also, it remains to be seen whether the board’s vote to fire him will withstand legal scrutiny.

Hours before the meeting, Martinez filed a lawsuit against the board and all seven of its members alleging breach of contract. Among the arguments presented, the lawsuit alleges that the board is illegally constituted because the current members are less qualified than the previous board members and have not yet completed mandatory training.

“A Big Mess” for the Incoming Board

Crain’s reported on Friday that Mayor Brandon Johnson is considering placing board president Sean Harden alongside Martinez as co-CEO in order to ice Martinez out of contract negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union. In a letter to board members sent just hours before the lawsuit was filed, Martinez’s lawyer, William J. Quinlan, argued that changing or limiting Martinez’s duties would also constitute a breach of contract. 

While it will likely take weeks to sort out the impact of Friday’s events, one certain effect is that the incoming board’s job just got a lot harder. Some elected board members spoke publicly, urging the sitting board to hold off on a decision about Martinez, to no avail. “We’re probably going to inherit a big mess,” 8th District member-elect Angel Gutierrez predicted on Friday afternoon. “Which up-and-coming superintendent is going to be like, ‘Oooh, that sounds like a job I want?’”

Nonetheless, he’s optimistic that he and his colleagues can make some headway. “I think we’re up for that challenge,” he said. “Even the folks that got appointed, they also are about the kids. If we keep that centered, I think we’ll be able to get some stuff done.”

DIY Board Training, Detailed

Nine incoming board members–eight elected, one appointed–managed to pop in and out of last week’s ad hoc training sessions. “It was a really powerful week both in terms of content–a lot of really great content–and a lot of great relationship-building at a moment when the sky was falling,” said Jessica Biggs, member-elect for District 3.

Here’s what I have been able to gather about the topics and presenters:

• The role of school boards in education, presented by A.J. Crabill of the Council of the Great City Schools
• Levels of government in education and board members’ role in each: local, state, national
• Fireside chat with Arne Duncan
• Research and data on CPS through the years, led by Elaine Allensworth of the UChicago Consortium on School Research and staff from UChicago’s To and Through Project
• CPS History 101, led by Liam Bird, who directed racial equity initiatives under Maurice Sweeney’s leadership at CPS and is now a consultant
• Equity in Systems Change, led by Maurice Sweeney, a former CPS principal who launched the CPS Office of Equity, now at Chicago Beyond
• Entry Planning for Equity, led by Adam Parrott-Sheffer, educational leadership coach and adjunct professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, former CPS principal, lost his recent bid for an elected school board seat in the 10th district.
• School and district finance, led by Nelson Gerew, Chicago Public Education Fund
• Board processes: led by Katie Ellis, who staffed the Board of Education for nearly six years, now chief of staff to the Chicago Park District’s board
• Former Board Member Panel: Rudy Lozano, Jr. and a member from the Rahm Emanuel era.
• State policymaking 101 session with staff from Advance Illinois, a bipartisan, independent, nonprofit policy and advocacy organization focused on education from preschool through postsecondary.

What’s sticking in board members’ heads from these training sessions? In conversations with board members Jessica Biggs, Angel Gutierrez, and Carlos Rivas, the common theme was the importance of setting a handful of goals related to student outcomes, then dedicating substantial board time to monitoring progress toward those goals. Biggs, a former principal, drew an analogy between this kind of work at the board level and the work individual schools and Local School Councils do to draw up their Continuous Improvement Work Plans (CIWPs).

In his session, Crabill advised that 50% of the board’s time should be spent on reviewing progress toward goals for students. It’s worth noting that Crabill’s training and philosophy have sparked controversy in Seattle and Texas, where student outcome goals were narrowly focused on increasing test scores. [In Philadelphia, the shift to a more outcomes-focused form of board governance seems to have gone down more easily, though the board has had to tweak its ambitious goals for student test scores.] Chicago has a history of tracking progress on a broader set of goals, notably with its pioneering Freshman OnTrack measure, and the district’s push to re-envision accountability is creating new measures for student outcomes and school quality. 

Gutierrez already has ideas for how to streamline the other work the board does to make more room to focus on students and their progress. “If you had more committees, that’s how you divide and conquer some of these things,” he noted. Borrowing from nonprofit board practice, Gutierrez and Biggs said it might be possible for the board to use their agenda review meetings to discuss, debate and eventually bundle all the compliance items into a single item to be voted on at the board meeting. [Note: As a reporter, I am wondering whether this would make it easier or more difficult for watchdogs to track board actions.]

Carlos Rivas, board member-elect for District 3, said one of his big takeaways was a rule of thumb to consider the financial impact of any project, which came out of the school finance session with Nelson Gerew. “A teacher costs $120,000 a year” including benefits, said Rivas. “If you’re thinking about a $12 million project, that doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but if you break it down, you could be funding 100 teachers for that project. It’s a good reference point for thinking about dollars in the classroom versus dollars elsewhere.”

Six Degrees of Helen Shiller: According to Chalkbeat’s Becky Vevea, when Jitu Brown, board member-elect for District 5, was having his portrait photo taken for Block Club Chicago, photographer Colin Boyle mentioned he was reading Helen Shiller’s memoir, which prompted Brown to mention he knows her. I’m getting her memoir for Christmas, in part so I can look for more Six Degrees stories. If you have one, please send it along.

Coming in January: a look at the history of Acero Schools, and the board’s plan to rescue at least five of the seven campuses slated for closure. Until then, happy holidays!