SPRINGFIELD — Illinois Senate President Don Harmon said he passed on putting a measure to extend a moratorium on public school closings in Chicago to a vote because he accepted Mayor Brandon Johnson’s promise not to shut down any schools or deplete funding for selective enrollment schools.
“The mayor has always been emphatically clear with me that he does not intend to close schools, he does not intend to under-resource schools, he does not intend to undermine the selective enrollment schools,” said Harmon, an Oak Park Democrat. “I think his commitment to me is even more clear and more binding than the bill would have been.”
“This is a business based on trust and in my view the mayor promised more than the bill did,” Harmon said after the Senate adjourned until the fall early Sunday.
The legislation to extend by two years, to 2027, an existing moratorium on shutting down Chicago Public Schools buildings had breezed through the House in a 92-8 vote and also was passed by a Senate committee before Harmon put the kibosh on it.
The mayor, who along with the Chicago Teachers Union opposed the legislation, made a last-minute plea to Harmon in a letter last week asking him not to call the bill for a vote. In his letter Johnson offered assurances that the city’s school board, which won’t be fully elected until 2027, will not do anything that adversely affects selective enrollment schools.
“The District will not close selective enrollment schools nor will the District make disproportionate budget cuts to selective enrollment schools,” the mayor said in the May 23 letter. “The District will maintain admissions standards at selective enrollment schools. Any narrative to the contrary is patently false.”
The bill initially was aimed at protecting selective enrollment schools from closures before it was amended to all schools, including regular neighborhood schools. The measure was filed by state Rep. Margaret Croke after Johnson’s school board last year announced its intention to focus on neighborhood schools in a forthcoming five-year plan.
School choice advocates feared that approach would lead to selective enrollment schools being shut down, despite denials from the board which Johnson reiterated in his letter to Harmon.
Under Croke’s bill, the Chicago school board would be barred from approving “any school closings, consolidations, or phase-outs” until
Feb. 1, 2027, instead of Jan. 15 of next year. The measure also says that funding of selective enrollment schools should not be “disproportionate” compared to other CPS schools, and bars any changes to admissions standards at selective enrollment schools until Feb. 1, 2027.
“With regard to disproportionate budget cuts to selective enrollment schools, I can say unequivocally that there never has been any
statement by the Board or my administration that selective enrollment schools will be disproportionately harmed relative to neighborhood schools,” Johnson said in the letter to Harmon.
In a statement to the Tribune on Friday, Croke, a Chicago Democrat, said she hoped the Senate would realize that Johnson’s letter “falls horribly short from how it is being spun” and without the legislation, she worries selective enrollment schools would be vulnerable to changes to their admissions criteria and “disproportionate cuts” will be made to magnet schools and charter schools will eventually be closed.
A moratorium on closing CPS schools is set to expire in January under the 2021 state law creating an elected school board. But after extensive haggling on how to implement an elected board, Gov. J.B. Pritzker in March signed a measure that won’t put a fully elected, 21-member school board in place until January 2027. Beginning in January, the board will be composed of 10 elected members and 11 others, including the board president, appointed by Johnson.
Pritzker had expressed support for Croke’s legislation, saying any decisions about school closures should be made by a fully elected
board.
Last year, Harmon introduced legislation supporting a near-fully elected board to be installed by 2025. But in March he acquiesced to the House’s hybrid plan after receiving a letter from Johnson urging that model. The hybrid plan was also supported by the Chicago Teachers Union, where Johnson once worked as an organizer.
The Senate Executive Committee on May 8 passed Croke’s bill without opposition, the same day Johnson came to Springfield to lobby
Pritzker and lawmakers for more funding that’s critical to Chicago’s operations. Asked during a press gaggle if he felt snubbed that the bill passed through committee on the same day as his visit to the Illinois State Capitol, Johnson said, “there’s a process that the General Assembly goes through. I understand that process. And we’re going to stick to that process.”
