Mayor Brandon Johnson declined to resign his position with Chicago Public Schools after a high-ranking CPS official raised ethics concerns about a potential conflict of interest, according to a memo obtained by the Tribune.
CPS Chief Talent Officer Ben Felton wrote a memo less than two months after the mayor’s May 2023 inauguration documenting conversations Felton had with Johnson’s deputy mayor for education, Jen Johnson, about their leaves from the Chicago Teachers Union. Union members can sometimes take leaves of absence to take other jobs and return later.
In the memo, dated June 28, 2023, Felton wrote that he told Deputy Mayor Johnson, who is not related to Mayor Johnson, that “it was potentially a conflict of interest for Mayor Johnson and Deputy Mayor Johnson to remain on a CTU leave from CPS.”
Felton said he was “concerned that it could be a potential conflict of interest for the mayor to be an employee of an organization that he was overseeing (through the appointment of the Board of Education).”