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Months after the Chicago Board of Education hired a search firm to help look for the next CEO of Chicago Public Schools, board President Sean Harden received an email from one of the chief architects of Chicago’s elected school board legislation.
At the time, State Sen. Rob Martwick, who represents parts of Chicago’s Northwest Side and some suburbs, said newly-elected and appointed board members had been asking him who has the power to choose the next CEO.
Martwick, who is also an attorney, decided to email Harden on May 28 with the answer: It’s the mayor — and it would be “outside of the law” for the board to choose, he wrote.
In the email obtained by Chalkbeat through a Freedom of Information Act request, Martwick cited a section of Illinois’ school code that was first written when Chicago’s schools were put under mayoral control in 1995. It states: “The Mayor shall appoint a full-time, compensated chief executive officer, and his or her compensation as such chief executive officer shall be determined by the Mayor.”
But school board members point to a different section of the school code that puts the power of picking a superintendent in the hands of the Chicago Board of Education.
Some legal experts, however, disagree that there’s a straight answer — including on whether the law gives the school board hiring power once it’s fully elected in 2027.
“It is completely unclear,” said Teri McMurtry-Chubb, a professor of law at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The competing opinions raise questions about whether the law is clear enough on who hires the CEO and whether current or future Chicago mayors could try to argue that it’s their choice, not the board’s.
The mayor appoints 11 members to the 21-member school board until 2027.
Martwick’s interpretation — or his May 28 email — hasn’t had any apparent impact on the board as it looks for the next leader of CPS by as early as next month. Jessica Biggs, who is the chair of the board’s transition team, said the question arose earlier this year.
“I think that there was a wondering early on in the process about whose authority this actually was, but it’s my understanding that that question was resolved pretty quickly, and it was determined that that authority rests with the board,” Biggs said.
Martwick, an ally of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s, sent the email one month after the school board committed to hosting community feedback meetings about the CEO search and two months after it passed a resolution requiring the next leader to have a superintendent’s license. His note also came about a week after the board had narrowed its choice for an interim CEO to a handful of candidates, which at that point excluded the mayor’s chief of staff.
Martwick said he has not discussed the issue with the mayor or City Hall, and that his interpretation is also based on what he and fellow lawmakers settled on as they negotiated the legislation.
“I didn’t want this, but the concession that I made was that the mayor would appoint the school board president and the mayor would appoint the CEO during the transitionary period,” Martwick said. “After [it’s] fully elected, [the board is] a separate, standalone government, and they retain the power to do everything.”
Martwick and other lawmakers pushed for years to establish the city’s first elected board after more than a decade of advocacy for an elected school board from community groups and the Chicago Teachers Union.
In February 2024, the mayor sent a letter to state Senate President Don Harmon, asking for 10 people to be elected to the school board this year and to allow the mayor to appoint the 11 others until 2027. Harmon — who had originally supported the idea of full and immediate elections — filed legislation carrying the mayor’s preferred plan, which was ultimately passed.
Asked what he thinks of the school board moving ahead with its search process despite his interpretation of the law, Martwick said the board could open itself up to legal action from the mayor.
“There’s no legislation police, right? We don’t come around and say, ‘Oh, you’re not following the law,’ but you leave yourself open to some sort of legal challenge,” Martwick said.
“But I suppose if they say, ‘You guys decide — that’s OK with me,’ you know, then that’s the way it goes.”
Legal experts interpret Illinois law differently
In Illinois state law governing public schools — also known as the school code — the Chicago mayor’s authority for choosing the district’s CEO is outlined in a section related to CPS’s former Board of Trustees, which existed between 1995 and 1999, at which point it was replaced with a mayoral appointed board that oversaw Chicago schools until this year.
That section of the law was not removed when the elected school board bill became law and there is no explicit date for when the mayor loses the power to appoint a CEO, even as other sections of the law outlining Chicago’s transition to an elected school board set specific start and expiration dates.
However, a different section of the school code states that after June 30, 1999, “the board may, by a vote of a majority of its full membership, appoint a general superintendent of schools” and that the board can conduct a national search for a superintendent.
In practice, between July 1999 and January of this year when the hybrid school board was sworn in, Chicago’s mayor has chosen a CEO, who was later approved by a vote of the school board, whose members were all appointed by the mayor.
David Bloomfield, a former general counsel of New York City public schools before that district became a mayoral-run system, said from his reading of the Illinois school code, Chicago’s school board chooses the CEO. He said the mayor’s authority is outlined in a section that talks about an emergency declaration that was “overhauled by more recent reforms.”
“I don’t think it’s ambiguous, and if my interpretation is correct, no legislative action is needed,” Bloomfield wrote in an email to Chalkbeat. “It’s just obsolete, not really requiring repeal.”
But Nadav Shoked, a law professor at Northwestern University who has studied local government law, said the school code doesn’t set an explicit expiration date for the mayor’s powers and uses more passive language for the board — that it “may” hire a CEO — making the law unclear and potentially inviting legal challenges.
He drew out a hypothetical situation: If a board-picked CEO approves the firing of a principal, that principal could choose to sue the CEO and argue that person has no power because they weren’t hired properly. Shoked said he’d bet on the board winning such a case, since the law does allow the board to hire a CEO, and the broader intent of recent reforms have been to make the school board its own governing body. Still, the ambiguity could lead to legal challenges and legal bills for CPS, he said.
McMurtry-Chubb, the law professor from UIC, said the law as written could allow both the board and the mayor to hire co-CEOs, which “would also be another drain on resources that we just don’t have.”
If the mayor or the board hired someone the other wasn’t supportive of, the CEO could “endure a potentially contentious work environment,” McMurtry-Chubb said.
State lawmakers should clarify the law to say who has the authority to hire the CEO, McMurtry and Shoked said. And the board can make some moves in the meantime to avoid a legal move from City Hall, Shoked said.
“To the extent that they’re not currently at war with the mayor, they can solve the problem by just making sure that once they come up with their candidate, just get the mayor to also agree,” Shoked said.
Neither Harden’s office nor the mayor’s responded to requests for comment.
Biggs feels the law is “pretty clear” that after 1999, it’s the school board — whether elected or appointed — to hire the CEO. She said Harden worked with board members to decide when they should invite the mayor to “offer his recommendation.” The mayor’s office has also not raised concerns about the search with her, she said.
“As a sister agency of the city, we’re interested in working in partnership with the mayor’s office,” Biggs said, including deciding when to introduce candidates to the mayor’s office. “I do not have a concern about a legal challenge.”
The current law does not have explicit language that says who can choose the CEO after 2027, when the 21-member board will be fully elected. Martwick said the General Assembly would need to clarify the law’s language if it’s ambiguous, but it’s his understanding from the negotiations around the elected school board legislation that the power to choose the district’s leader belongs to the board after it becomes fully elected.
“I will testify to that in open court,” Martwick said. “That is the intent of the legislation.”
Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.
