The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education on Tuesday voted to nominate Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Office Pedro Martinez as its next leader.
In a virtual meeting Tuesday, the board voted 9-0 to name Martinez as commissioner of the department, with two abstentions.
Martinez was one of three finalists for the position. The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education touted Martinez as “a nationally recognized superintendent with a track record of creating comprehensive, multi-year solutions that advance equity and economic mobility.”
The department also credited Martinez as head of CPS with expanding full-day early childhood classrooms, posting some of the nation’s top post-pandemic reading and math gains, and achieving record-high graduation rates, scholarships earned, and college credits obtained in public high schools.
Also in the running for the Massachusetts position were Jack Elsey, who founded the Michigan Educator Workforce Initiative to address a teacher shortage in the state of Michigan, and Dr. Lily Laux, a Massachusetts native who most recently served as the deputy commissioner of school programs at the Texas Education Agency.
The decision to pick Martinez is pending final approval.
In December, the Chicago Board of Education voted to fire Martinez. The unanimous vote was the culmination of a months-long conflict, with Martinez on one side, and the mayor, the Chicago Teachers Union, and the mayor’s hand-picked school board on the other.
But Martinez’s contract kept him in his position for another six months following the termination. He went on to sue for a guarantee that no one — not someone on the Board and not a possible co-CEO — could stand in the way of Martinez doing his job for those six months.
In September, Martinez said he refused a request from Mayor Brandon Johnson to resign his post after he declined the mayor’s request to take out a $300 million high-interest loan to pay for the costs of a new proposed teachers’ contract and pension costs previously covered by the city. The entire previous school board resigned in October of last year after being pressured by the mayor to fire Martinez. Johnson then picked a new school board within days.
All this happened before 10 new elected members
