CHICAGO — An attorney representing the Chicago Board of Education offered to buy out Pedro Martinez, the embattled chief of Chicago Public Schools, according to sources close to the conversations.

The offer, made over the phone earlier this week, came after Martinez retained attorney William J. Quinlan to represent him in an ongoing power struggle with Mayor Brandon Johnson, the Chicago Teachers Union and the district.

Martinez’s contract limits the district’s ability to fire him without cause and could lead to an expensive lawsuit.

So far, Martinez has resisted the buyout offer, sources said.

The schools’ chief has been in the mayor’s and CTU’s crosshairs for nearly six months for refusing to take out a $300 million high-interest loan that would help pay for a new four-year union contract and a pension payment previously covered by the city. Martinez said the move would be financially irresponsible for the district. The mayor threatened to fire Martinez over the dispute.

The previous school board resigned amid conflict between the mayor and Martinez over whether the CEO should keep his job. Johnson appointed a new board just days later, and aldermen and school leaders have rallied around Martinez in the weeks after the appointments.

Then, in mid-November, the newly appointed school board retained the outside law firm Cozen O’Connor, a move that hinted at the beginnings of the process to fire Martinez.

At the time, George F. Galland, an employment lawyer at Miner, Barnhill & Galland P.C. called the move a “very common ballet … in the public and the private sector” and said the board was likely looking for “cause” to fire Martinez, because it would save the district money.

“Pedro Martinez intends to honor his contract with the Chicago Public Schools and see that the 325,305 students and parents get the benefit of what they bargained for with him,” William J. Quinlan of the Quinlan Law Firm, LLC said in a statement to the Tribune.

Quinlan, who acted as general counsel to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, has been working with the CPS chief for about two weeks, Tribune sources confirmed. Quinlan’s father, also a lawyer, was chief counsel for three Chicago mayors. His uncle worked for Illinois ex-House Speaker Michael Madigan.

A spokesperson from Cozen O’Connor did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening.

With pressure on Martinez ratcheting up, the current six-member school board will meet Wednesday morning to decide key issues that will be addressed at the board’s monthly meeting Dec. 12.

Any decision on Martinez’s fate, at either meeting, would be made in a closed session. But for weeks, all current board members have refused to comment.

The board can terminate Martinez’s employment contract — which expires in June 2026 — in two ways.

By firing Martinez “for cause,” according to the contract, the board would have to cite misconduct or criminal activity, incompetence in the performance of job duties, fraud or other wrongdoing. In addition, Martinez would not be eligible for severance pay.

If the board fires Martinez “without cause,” the CEO can remain in his position for 180 days and will receive 20 weeks of his base salary of $340,000 in 2022, according to public records.

The teacher’s union, which buoyed the mayor to power in 2023, has criticized the CEO’s mishandling of the closures of several charter schools in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, union contract negotiations continue in full force. The union’s contract expired in June, and the school board has publicly called on the district to quickly settle several sticking points in negotiations, namely staffing and salary disputes.

The district claims that meeting all of CTU’s proposals would cost them $10 billion in new spending over the course of the four-year contract, and $2.2 billion for the first year alone.

In contrast, CPS says its proposal calls for $1.3 billion in salary increases over the next four years and maintaining staffing levels at over 7,800 positions, which have increased significantly over the past five years due to federal pandemic funding relief — and have been allocated based on needs.

This week, CTU created a “roadmap to settlement,” outlining the big-ticket must-haves and reach items on issues from salaries to equity concerns. The union’s roadmap proposal includes 6% raises in the first two years of the contract and 5% in years three and four, a compromise with the district from the 9% yearly increment it has demanded before.

“We look forward to reviewing and discussing these proposals. While we have not yet received specific details of the bulleted priorities or calculated an estimate on this updated information, we do not yet see a significant reduction in the cost of the demands,” CPS officials said in response to the union’s roadmap proposal.

The only time CPS has settled a contract with the union without a strike was in 2016, CTU wrote in a recent internal email.

“There is every reason this time should be different, and we should be able to settle our contract promptly. This time around we have … deep alignment with the Board of Education’s five-year strategic plan and the Mayor’s Transition Report,” the email reads.

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Chicago Tribune’s Gregory Pratt and A.D. Quig contributed.

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