Last week, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson repeatedly
slammed Statehouse legislators.
“Some of the same individuals who claim to support an
elected representative school board only got the gospel once I became mayor of
Chicago,” Mayor Johnson told reporters during one of the most combative and
counter-productive press conferences I have ever seen.
No.
Lori Lightfoot campaigned for mayor supporting an elected
school board, then did everything she could to stop it. But a bill was passed
in Springfield and then signed into law in 2021 over her opposition. One
victory she did manage was stripping out a proposal to require city council
confirmation of all school board appointees.
After Johnson was elected, he and the Chicago Teachers
Union first demanded (under a lawsuit threat made by the union during a Senate
hearing), then suddenly opposed a fully elected school board. They ended up
demanding a temporary hybrid board. So, similar to the bill passed in 2021,
half the board and the board president will be appointed by the mayor for
two-year terms, and the other half will be elected by voters.
Let’s continue with the mayor’s remarks: “These are the
same individuals in Springfield that did not fight for adequate funding, that
when massive school closings were taking place, none of them stood up in that
moment to say, ‘You know what, maybe the authority of the mayor is too much?’”
Just 47 current state legislators (by my quick count)
were in office back in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed those schools.
That’s barely a quarter of the legislature’s 177 members. The mayor is fighting
with ghosts.
Anyway, the CTU pushed legislation at the time to reverse
then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2013 school closings. House Bill 3283 had 32 House
sponsors, and one of those sponsors is now House Speaker Chris Welch.
A similar Senate bill (SB1571) made it out of committee.
But the two Democratic legislative leaders blocked the bills. Even so, the CTU
shortly thereafter contributed to both their campaign funds.
More Johnson: “Now you actually have a mayor who
recognizes democracy, has given the people exactly what they asked for, what
they voted for. And all of a sudden, they want to rehash the policies of Bruce
Rauner, who called for state control and takeover. So, we’re not going down
that route.”
That Rauner proposal was laughed out of the General
Assembly. It would have put a state authority in charge of the school district
and allowed the district to declare bankruptcy. Nothing even remotely close to
that is being considered by normal-thinking legislators. The only item kicking
around right now might be requiring city council approval of his appointments,
but even that’s doubtful. Could there be some guardrails? Sure. Could the mayor
provoke a state takeover by deliberately tanking the district’s finances? We’ll
see.
Mayor Johnson also told reporters that he, as a CTU
staffer, helped pass the evidence-based school funding bill in 2017. But
the reality is that the CTU hotly opposed the bill which actually passed.
The Sunday before the bill was voted on, the CTU held a
conference call with several Democratic legislators and I managed to obtain the
call-in number and code and then listened in.
The compromises made to reach a veto-proof majority on
that bill included adding the Invest in Kids tax credit program. But that
“voucher” plan was “not something that we can live with,” CTU Vice
President Jesse Sharkey told legislators on the conference call. The compromise
was, “the language of our enemies,” CTU President Karen Lewis said on
the call. Rep. Chris Welch pointed out during the call that if this deal was
the only way the House could find a three-fifths super-majority to pass
something at risk of a threatened Rauner veto, “Then why shouldn’t we
support it?”
As I wrote back then, President Lewis’ retort to Welch
was blunt: “Quite frankly, you’re destroying public education” by supporting
the compromise. “We’d rather have no deal,” and no additional state
money included in the legislation than agree to the compromise, VP Sharkey
said.
“The Illinois Democratic Party has crossed a line which
no spin or talk of ‘compromise’ can ever erase,” the union thundered after the
House passed the bill.
Does that sound like they helped pass the bill?
And more Johnson: “This [school] board and the people of
Chicago, my administration, will continue to advocate in Springfield for more.”
Once again, with feeling, the mayor has yet to ask the
governor or the legislative leaders for $1 billion dollars he claims the state
owes the school district.
This article appears in Finding a way forward.
