The Chicago Board of Education is set to vote Monday on removing the interim tag from Chicago Public Schools CEO Macquline King and signing her to a three-year contract to run the country\u2019s fourth-largest public school system.<\/p>\n
The situation isn\u2019t ideal.<\/p>\n
As we\u2019ve written,<\/a> we\u2019d prefer King to be continuing this year as interim CEO and putting off the selection of a CPS leader for the long term until after November elections when voters choose Chicago\u2019s first fully elected school board.<\/p>\n Alas, given the chaotic nature of Chicago politics in this moment and the clumsy past compromise that gave us the present school board made up of elected members and a majority appointed by the mayor, we don\u2019t live in any kind of perfect world.<\/p>\n Mayor Brandon Johnson, the former Chicago Teachers Union organizer elected to run the city with that powerful union\u2019s backing, wants to put his stamp on CPS before his term is up a little over a year from now. Two elected school board members, clearly speaking for a majority of elected members, in these pages<\/a> called six weeks ago for suspending their search for a new CEO until next year.<\/p>\n But those elected members don\u2019t constitute a majority on the 21-person board (elected and appointed), and Johnson\u2019s appointees, led by board President Sean Harden, were intent on hiring a permanent CEO.<\/p>\n So the elevation of King is itself a compromise. Though she emerged from Johnson\u2019s office last summer to lead CPS after the politically charged firing of previous CEO Pedro Martinez, she hardly endeared herself to the mayor afterward. King pointedly rebuffed Johnson\u2019s demands that she sink a junk-rated school district further into debt to help cover a pension contribution CPS isn\u2019t legally obligated to make.<\/p>\n When the school board mounted a search last year for a new CEO, King didn\u2019t even make the final round. Soon thereafter, the mayor\u2019s office and CTU put the kibosh on the process when they didn\u2019t like the possible outcomes. Ergo, Johnson wants a new CEO named under his watch, and the choices are even fewer than they were last year. So King has re-emerged as a compromise.<\/p>\n We will have more to say in the near future about what needs to happen to right the CPS ship, but for now we will say that we understand the political realities facing the elected board members who\u2019ve opposed Johnson\u2019s CTU-centric schools agenda. Most of them are expected to vote to approve this three-year contact for King. We don\u2019t love the position in which they\u2019ve been placed, but we understand.<\/p>\n There were worse outcomes possible given the above-described set of circumstances.<\/p>\n We\u2019re comforted to learn there are no provisions in her contract that would make it inordinately difficult for the fully elected board to hire a different CEO if it decides that\u2019s necessary.<\/p>\n But we\u2019re rooting for King to hire a strong group of executives around her and grow into the decisive leader \u2014 one willing to make the difficult decisions needed to right-size a bloated district built to serve a far larger student population than it does \u2014 that Chicago desperately needs. Good luck to her.<\/p>\n Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here<\/a> or email letters@chicagotribune.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chicago Board of Education is set to vote Monday on removing the interim tag from Chicago Public…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":691925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[20174,14336,960,16742,5386,1818,169570,36509],"class_list":["post-691924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-brandon-johnson","tag-ceo","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-public-schools","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-macquline-king","tag-school-board"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116316910836305736","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=691924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/691925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}