All 7 members of the Chicago Board of Education step down

All seven members of the Chicago Board of Education on Wednesday announced they’ll step down, opening the door for Mayor Lori Lightfoot to overhaul the board that controls Chicago Public Schools.

“We’re very, very proud of the work we’ve done,” Board President Frank Clark said at the end of a three-hour monthly board meeting.

Clark was appointed by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel to lead the board four years ago.

He departs with six other Emanuel appointees: Jaime Guzman, Mark Furlong, Alejandra Garza, Austan Goolsbee, Mahalia Hines and Gail Ward.

Clark said a new board would be in place by the time of its next scheduled meeting June 26.

The fate of Lightfoot appointees’ after that, though, is uncertain, as a push is underway in Springfield to create an elected school board. A bill that would establish an elected board passed the Illinois House of Representatives last month, although it’s unclear that bill will become law or if another plan will emerge.

Lightfoot said Wednesday she will soon announce the names of her appointees. The emphasis will be on choosing board members who have a stake in the system, including local school council members.

“Before there’s an elected school board, we wanted to make sure we were doing what we could to really bring diversity into the process and place an emphasis on existing CPS parents. People who had been through the LSC process or otherwise were viewed in the field as education experts,” Lightfoot said.

“ ... We want people to have confidence in the school board, particularly in this interim period. There’s a lot of important issues they’re gonna have to address. My first priority is placing emphasis on people who have children in the system or have themselves been a part of the CPS system — whether as administrators, teachers or principals.”

A measure of continuity was assured on Tuesday, though, when Lightfoot confirmed she would retain CPS CEO Janice Jackson.

The Chicago Teachers Union, which supported County Board President Toni Preckwinkle over Lightfoot in the mayor’s race, held a late-afternoon demonstration to rally for a favorable contract as negotiations will now be turned over to the Lightfoot administration. But the new mayor said she believes a contract that is fair to rank-and-file union members can happen in time for the schools to open as scheduled in September.

“All is not forgotten, but the campaign’s over. And the thing that we have to do is focus on making sure we’re delivering for our kids,” Lightfoot said.

The rally took place across the street from City Hall, where Lightfoot met with fiery former CTU president Karen Lewis and the labor group’s current vice president, Stacy Davis Gates.

Lewis — whose clashes with Emanuel led to a teacher strike early in his administration and years of contention between the two before health issues derailed her own mayoral prospects — would make a provocative choice for CPS’ decision-making body. But union sources said Wednesday’s meeting was geared toward mending fences in contract talks.

Lightfoot was a staunch proponent of an elected board on the campaign trail, but has indicated she doesn’t support what she termed an “unwieldy” bill in Springfield that would triple the size of the board to 21 members, with a citywide elected president and 20 members elected from local districts beginning in 2023.

“We hope that Lori Lightfoot gets on board with it,” CTU president Jesse Sharkey said. “What we hope to see is action on the things we need in our schools, which have suffered terribly.”

On his way out, Clark lauded the district’s improved financial position and historic gains in achievement and graduation rates under Emanuel’s tenure.

Clark was appointed in 2015. Hines was the only member in place for all of Emanuel’s tenure on a board that was widely viewed as a rubber stamp for the former mayor’s agenda.

Sharkey called it “a brutal period of cuts, consolidations and layoffs.”

Hines was the longest-serving board member, the last of Rahm Emanuel’s original seven appointees from 2011. A former CPS principal, she cast one of the votes for a $23 million no-bid contract to The SUPES Academy for principal training on the recommendation of Emanuel’s second schools CEO, Barbara Byrd-Bennett. Byrd-Bennett remains in federal prison for agreeing to award those contracts in exchange for kickbacks.

Hines, the mother of Grammy-award winning artist Common, also voted to close 50 schools earlier in 2013, the most ever at one time in the country.

Clark became president of the school board in the wake of the SUPES scandal but he, too, was tapped by Emanuel to be the face of the committee that determined the rules for the closings. He served while new CEO Forrest Claypool was tasked with cleaning up CPS’ reputation after the scandal as well as its finances. Claypool was later found by the schools inspector general to have lied to cover up an ethics violation by an aide. Clark vehemently defended Claypool before Emanuel’s fourth CEO was ultimately forced to step aside.

Clark insisted on decorum and civility at the school board meetings he presided over, and at monthly public meetings was known to ask questions to which he already knew the answers so positive CPS news would be repeated. Clark stopped an earlier practice of holding some meetings at night and in neighborhoods and resisted calls to open up board briefings so the public could see any questioning of CPS officials or the deals the board almost always unanimously approved.

Clark, Hines, Furlong, Ward and Guzman also cast votes to hire high-priced consultants with ties to Claypool who quietly overhauled special education and implemented cuts that the state later deemed illegal before taking over the department.