Senate President Don Harmon must be comfortable taking political ownership of whatever now happens to Chicago’s selective-enrollment, magnet and charter schools after acceding to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s wishes not to call a vote on state legislation that would protect them from major changes.
We wouldn’t feel the same if we were in his position and can’t fathom why the Oak Park Democrat is going to bat for this highly unpopular mayor, who has given Chicagoans no reason more than a year after taking office to have confidence in his assurances or even his capacity for good sense. As the General Assembly’s spring session winds down, with a budget deal apparently struck, the battle over Chicago Public Schools has taken center stage.
The measure in question, sponsored by Chicago Rep. Margaret Croke, passed the House 92-8, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he’d sign it. The idea behind the bill was to pause any major changes to CPS’ school choice system until a fully elected school board takes office. That’s not until 2027.
In pushing to tie Johnson’s hands in the meantime, Croke was responding to his handpicked school board’s publicly calling for a substantial overhaul of that system. Johnson and his close ally, Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates, have derided the current system as racially discriminatory. Parents of school-age children understandably were — and are — alarmed that leftists now in charge of the city and its schools were bent on foreclosing or at least reducing options other than CPS’ neighborhood schools.
Johnson in recent days pleaded with Harmon — for whom he once worked as a staffer — to put a brick on the bill. He released a letter promising not to pursue “disproportionate” cuts to selective-enrollment schools and to preserve testing requirements for admission. The pledges are strikingly vague and make no mention of charter or magnet schools. The CTU, in particular, has made no secret of its disdain for the number of charters in the city.
Croke in a statement expressed outrage. “The CPS school budgeting process has been hidden from both the public and from Springfield legislators, and I fully expect that disproportionate cuts will be made to magnet schools and charters will eventually be closed,” she wrote.
Harmon and his staff so far have been mum. We’ll hear from the Senate president eventually. We presume.
When we do, it will be quite interesting to hear him explain why Chicagoans shouldn’t think this mayor, having no leverage of any kind and sporting approval ratings somewhere under 30%, rolled the leader of the upper chamber in Springfield on a matter of major import to the city’s future. Perhaps Harmon will say that the Senate can always return to the bill in the fall if Johnson is perceived to have broken his “promises,” such as they were. The mayor’s pledges are so loosely defined that they can encompass a wide range of actions, many of which would be severely detrimental to school choice in Chicago. Has this mayor earned the benefit of the doubt?
Fortunately for Harmon, he doesn’t have to rely on Chicagoans to keep him in office. The vast majority of House members from Chicago, all Democrats, voted for this bill. Many of those supporters are ideologically aligned with the mayor; their natural desire to support his causes clearly were trumped by the express wishes of their constituents.
For his sake and the city’s, Harmon had better hope his faith in Brandon Johnson is well placed.
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