Well, finally, finally, we now have only a few days to wait for the first meeting of Chicago’s first-ever publicly elected Board of Education. Our brand new 21-member Board of Ed is about to begin its difficult process of trying to make our public schools better than they are. I’m dubious about it because the meeting will be a mixture of education and roughneck politics. And I know, as all Chicago knows, there’s a big Chicago pothole in the road to that mixture. In fact, it’s worse than a pothole. It’s a war going on in City Hall about the CEO of our public schools, Pedro Martinez, who is a popular and very good CEO. But for political reasons, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and President Davis Gates of the teachers union want Martinez out. And they’re working together to get him out, which in my opinion they ought not be doing because politics have no place in schools, kindergarten through 8th grade. The mayor and the teachers union are spending a lot of time beating up on Martinez, which means it won’t be long before the politicians in the Illinois General Assembly in Springfield join the war against Martinez, shaking up hundreds of thousands of public school parents, and more than a quarter of a million public school children. And, sadly, Johnson and Gates are being egged on by the headline and editorial writers in the Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times. That’s a lot of power picking on Pedro Martinez. Picking on what’s now disrupting the good going on in Chicago’s public schools.

Walter Jacobson gives his Perspective: