Four hundred Chicago school leaders sign letter backing CEO Pedro Martinez

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About 400 Chicago Public Schools principals and assistant principals sent a letter to the school board Thursday urging its members to keep CEO Pedro Martinez at the helm of CPS amid reports that Mayor Brandon Johnson is gearing up to replace him .

The letter praised Martinez’s leadership and said removing him at the start of a new school year would destabilize the district and hurt students. Martinez and the school board clashed with the mayor this summer over the mayor’s suggestion that the district take out a short-term, high-interest loan to cover the cost of a contract CPS is negotiating with its teachers union and other expenses. News broke that Johnson was considering replacing the CEO after a tense open bargaining session with the Chicago Teachers Union, whose leadership has sharply criticized him.

The Thursday letter from school leaders across the city said the negotiations with the CTU and the reports of a possible change at the district’s helm are fostering “an atmosphere of uncertainty” at the school year’s start.

“Every school administrator knows that significant changes at the beginning of the school year can be detrimental to the students, staff, and families we serve,” the letter said.

But Troy LaRaviere, the head of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Associations, the district’s principals union, distanced himself from the letter in comments during the school board’s monthly meeting Thursday. He said the petition was the work of “two or more of our conservative principals” — “good people who are just a little bit out of touch” — and argued Martinez must do more to earn the support of school leaders.

The association came to represent school leaders last year after state lawmakers allowed CPS principals to unionize and is also bargaining over its first contract with the district.

“Principals have never had stability in this district because we have never had a contract,” LaRaviere said.

LaRaviere did echo a concern that the letter from principals alluded to in passing: He said some of the teachers union’s proposals would infringe on the ability of school leaders to run their campuses as they see fit. He held up proposals that would give educators more control over selecting classroom curriculums and evaluating principals.

LaRaviere urged Martinez not to “bargain away principals’ rights in a teacher contract.”

In their letter, the principals said Martinez and Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s chief education officer, have cultivated a more collaborative culture and trust with school leaders. They have made headway in improving reading achievement in the early grades, career and technical education programs and school safety, among other gains, the principals said. They cautioned against letting politics affect the running of the district.

“We need to maintain the momentum behind the initiatives already underway that have been successful due to the support CEO Martinez has gained by listening to and trusting school leaders to give guidance on what is best for schools,” the letter said.

The district employs about 1,100 principals and assistant principals.

A couple of aldermen, David Moore and Gilbert Villegas, also addressed the board Thursday to praise Martinez and urge members to ensure he continues at the helm.

LaRaviere argued most principals feel bogged down by district mandates and unsupported by district leadership. He berated Martinez for not responding to the association’s outreach — and urged him to help settle a “fair and reasonable contract” with principals. The association had previously released a statement calling reports of a possible Martinez ouster “an ill-timed distraction from the pressing issues facing our school leaders.”

Earlier this year, the district approved a budget for the current fiscal year that did not build in any dollars for teacher salary and benefit increases or other proposals the teachers union has brought to the bargaining table. It also did not include a $175 million payment to a city staff pension fund that Johnson and teacher union have insisted the district cover — even though the union harshly criticized Johnson’s predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, for passing that cost on to CPS. In a budget forecast released Thursday that projected a $982.4 million gap, the mayor’s office said that gap is partly driven by CPS’s refusal to make the pension payment.

By most accounts, negotiations with the teachers union have not yielded much progress so far, amid efforts to rein in a roughly $500 million deficit and larger ones looming in the coming years. CTU president Stacy Davis Gates told the board Thursday that the district must aggressively lobby for more funding to transform schools. Without decisive action to bring in more dollars for schools, she said, she worries about school closures and staff layoffs next year.

“How do you sustain even what you have now?” she said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org .