There were three big winners Thursday night as Chicago’s school board met to hammer out a fiscal 2026 budget. And there was one big loser.
We’ll dispense with the loser first. Mayor Brandon Johnson did everything possible to torpedo the $10.2 billion budget painstakingly put together by Macquline King, his own choice for interim Chicago Public Schools CEO after he forced out the previous boss, Pedro Martinez.
Johnson’s goal wasn’t to help ensure CPS students were protected from classroom cuts. Rather, it was to force CPS to pay $175 million toward a municipal pension fund Johnson’s city government is legally and solely obligated to support in order to make his upcoming job of plugging the city’s $1 billion-plus deficit a little easier.
Johnson appointed 11 of the 21 board members — including a member hastily named to fill a vacancy seemingly just for this vote — yet three of his appointees voted in opposition to his wishes. Another abstained. The budget passed without the financially debilitating $200 million loan necessary to cover the pension payment.
What a surprise! A pleasant one. Reason prevailed, and we don’t see that outcome all too often in city government these days.
That brings us to the winners. First is King. Previously a member of Johnson’s administration, once King was named interim CPS CEO just a few months ago and faced a budget deficit in the hundreds of millions, she tackled the situation directly. Her budget required difficult decisions, including laying off unionized janitorial staff. But she quickly realized that CPS couldn’t afford to make the pension payment without extraordinary help from the city government itself. So she didn’t include that payment in her budget — in the face of extraordinary pressure from City Hall.
King put her career on the line and deserves plaudits for her courage.
The second big winner is Service Employees International Union Local 73, which broke with Johnson ally the Chicago Teachers Union earlier this year as CTU was negotiating its own contract and provoked SEIU’s ire in a dispute over representation of some CPS employees. SEIU lobbied hard against the mayor’s demand that CPS take on more debt to make the pension payment, arguing that it would mean even more job losses in the future (SEIU members are being laid off in this budget). We have little doubt that SEIU’s position made a difference in the school board vote.
And the last big winner is the most important of all: the CPS students who on Friday finished their first week back at school. King’s budget gives them the best chance possible right now to get through this school year without the specter of midyear budget cuts hanging over their heads.
Thursday’s vote is what happens when pragmatism prevails, when adults make difficult decisions and when the borrow-and-spend ethos of this mayor and his team is repudiated.
As unruly as it is with 11 mayoral appointees and 10 members elected by Chicago voters, this unpaid school board exhibited the kind of common sense that gives us hope this city on the make, as Nelson Algren famously described Chicago in 1951, can summon the can-do spirit to tackle our fiscal woes and thrive again.
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