By Nell Salzman, Alice Yin and Gregory Royal Pratt

Chicago Tribune

Despite Mayor Brandon Johnson's office saying it was not pursuing controversial changes to the Chicago Board of Education's voting procedures, his top Springfield lobbyist emailed a state official in the closing days of the spring legislative session expressing interest in a bill that would do just that.

In a May 23 message, city lobbyist John Arena wrote to a state education official that the city wanted legislation to align the Chicago board's rules with those governing other school boards around the state. That would have included a provision to lower from a two-thirds supermajority to a simple majority the threshold the Chicago Public Schools board would need to approve certain issues —and ease the path for adopting contentious borrowing plans favored by City Hall.

"We want (to) bring a clean-up bill that addresses rights and responsibilities for school boards," Arena wrote to Dana Stoerger, Illinois State Board of Education executive director of legal affairs, in the email obtained by the Tribune through a public records request. "The goal is to establish voting thresholds for Chicago BoE at the same level as other school boards."

In his message, Arena laid out a "non-exhaustive list of examples" that require two-thirds approval, including board bylaws and budget amendments.

Four days after that May email, Arena denied to the Tribune that he sent any messages lobbying to quash the school board's two-thirds requirement. A spokesperson for Johnson later said publicly that the mayor "is not pursuing any changes to the voting threshold at this time."

"There is no reform that the Mayor's Office is currently working on that would undermine the authority of the board in any way," Johnson's press secretary, Cassio Mendoza, said in a May 30 statement.

Arena did not respond to a request for comment this week. However, Mendoza said Arena's email was not an attempt to "lead an effort to overturn the two-thirds requirement," as the Tribune asked in May, but rather part of "preliminary research."

"He was asking for more information to do some research on the structure of education boards across the state to see if changes needed to be made in the future," Mendoza said in a Monday statement.

The newly disclosed email was sent by Arena during the tail end of the legislative session, when talk of the Johnson administration floating a change to CPS board procedures alarmed some lawmakers and lobbyists in Springfield, as well as ex-CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, several of whom spoke publicly against it.

Ultimately, no such legislation was introduced before lawmakers adjourned June 1. Mendoza said Monday that Johnson's team never expected a school board bill to move during the spring session - nor is it currently planning to push for any such legislation in the fall veto session later this year. But he noted the mayor's office will "continue to evaluate and work through" the issue.

"It would undermine the purpose of the elected school board, which the Mayor fought for, if the Board is not equipped with the tools it needs to be successful and independent," Mendoza said. "One thing we are looking at are voting thresholds for Boards across the state, but we are not planning to introduce any legislation without extensive input from current Board members."

The mayor and members of his staff have argued that the CPS board's two-thirds requirement handicaps its ability to govern the nation's fourth-largest school district and does not apply to other elected school boards in the state.

But because that supermajority requirement helped lead to the downfall of one of Johnson's most controversial plans - issuing a loan as part of a budget amendment to cover the costs of a disputed $175 million pension payment for nonteaching staff and the start of the raises in a newly inked teachers' contract mayoral critics are wary of attempts to dilute the rule.

The school board remains a hybrid between mayoral-appointed members and elected members until 2027. Under the current rules, the body needs a simple majority - 11 out of 21 votes - for actions such as approving contracts and setting meeting minutes. The board needs a supermajority - 14 out of 21 members - to approve key actions such as budget amendments to approve new borrowing.

As a close ally and former organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson has been in lockstep with the union, sometimes to the chagrin of other labor and progressive leaders, while he attempts to figure out how to cover the cost of the new $1.5 billion, four-year teachers contract finalized this spring.

Meanwhile, CPS is grappling with a $734 million budget shortfall this school year, largely driven by the expiration of federal pandemic relief funds, increasing facility maintenance costs and growing annual debt, among other factors. Still, Mendoza insisted that, unlike last year, a budget amendment is not on the table at this time.

A former Northwest Side alderman who lost reelection in 2019, Arena was quietly brought on to Johnson's intergovernmental affairs team in March to steer his Springfield agenda - despite the mayor's office previously denying plans to hire him. During the past session, he helped lead a team of outside lobbyists who were not registered to lobby on behalf of the city in the General Assembly.

Arena sent his May message through his personal email account and did not include any government email addresses. The Tribune received a copy of his email through a Freedom of Information Act request because Stoerger, the Illinois State Board of Education official, included a CPS lobbyist in his response. The state board - in charge of overseeing public school districts across Illinois - is not directly involved in the legislative process, but its endorsement could help shore up support for education bills.

In his May 24 reply, Stoerger pointed Arena to other examples of the two-thirds voting requirement written into the Illinois school code and recommended he reach out to the Illinois Association of School Boards, a nonprofit organization that provides training and guidance to school boards across the state.

Stoerger declined to comment this week.

During the waning days of the spring legislative session this year, the school board matter divided legislators despite confusion over the seriousness of the Johnson administration's desires.

Martinez, the former schools chief fired by Johnson, warned at the end of May, "What we've heard is that he (Johnson) is talking directly to the Senate president, asking him to change the law, so that our board wouldn't require two-thirds to make budget amendments and to take out irresponsible loans," according to an WLS-Ch. 7 report.

Harmon's spokesperson told the Tribune that week, "There is no legislation proposed," but did not say more about whether Johnson's team was floating a bill.

A sponsor of the 2021 elected school board bill, state Rep. Ann Williams of Chicago, balked at the idea at the time.

"This is an attempt to circumvent the will of the voters who overwhelmingly elected independent candidates to the Chicago school board," Williams, a Democrat, said at the end of May. "If we're going to revisit procedural rules for the Chicago school board, let's wait until we have a fully elected board in place."

But state Sen. Robert Martwick, another Chicago Democrat who sponsored the elected school board legislation, endorsed such a change.

"It makes no sense to me that the city of Chicago faces a supermajority threshold for regular organizing decisions," he said. "That's not how democracy should work."

CPS must finalize its fiscal year 2026 budget through a simple majority by Aug. 28. Any subsequent revisions to reflect changes in expenses, revenue or priorities will then be made through the budget amendment process, which requires a supermajority.

Last summer, Martinez settled the budget without accounting for the costs of the new teachers' contract or the $175 million pension payment for nonteaching staff. He was then steadfast in opposition to any borrowing plans proposed by the mayor, arguing a loan of that size would hurt the district's long-term financial standing and saddle CPS with debt. His opposition to the loan contributed to his ouster in December.

Martinez's interim successor, Macquline King, previously served as the mayor's senior director of education policy. She took over in June and, as a Johnson ally, could be more favorable to the idea of borrowing.

The Board of Education is in the midst of transitioning from mayoral control to a fully elected body by 2027, a change Johnson and the CTU campaigned for when they didn't control City Hall. However, the switch to a hybrid model this January has been bumpy for Johnson.

The mayor retains control of the 21-member body by one appointed seat, but the CTU won only four of the 10 elected seats in November. In addition, some CTU-endorsed elected members have at times voted against the mayor's education agenda.

Because the 21st member, Johnson's handpicked board president, Sean Harden, only votes to break ties, meaning the mayor's least popular measures could have a tough path forward unless the voting bylaws change.

And whatever the district decides will also reverberate back to the city side.

The city covered the contested pension payment for years before responsibility shifted to CPS under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a change Johnson and the CTU protested at the time. But after Martinez refused to account for that in CPS' 2025 budget amid a widening fiscal crisis, Johnson has struggled to lob the pension obligation back to the district's side.

Despite the city's expectations, last year CPS didn't make that $175 million pension payment for nonteacher employees, helping contribute to the city's $161 million deficit at the end of 2024. For now, it seems the city will have to eat that cost.

Chicago Tribune's Jeremy Gorner contributed.