After a decades-long battle for direct control of the Chicago Public Schools, voters will decide Tuesday for the first time who will represent them on the city’s school board.
The election is an important moment for the many activists and parents who begged disinterested school board members to listen to them and collected petitions to prove that Chicago wanted the opportunity. After thirty years, Chicago’s public schools will no longer be under the mayor’s control.
Many hope that this one new era in which the school district is more responsive to the parents and children it serves. But there are concerns that the new board – which will grow from seven to 21 members – will be too big, unwieldy and too absorbed by politics to lead to better results.
The race has attracted a diverse group of candidates, from a longtime activist who fought for the elected board, to former executives and a Grammy Award-winning rapper. There are also some parents frustrated by their children’s experiences, and some private school parents who say they want to ensure CPS families can choose whether their children go to the neighborhood school, a charter or another type of school.
Jason Dónes, a Chicago School Board candidate for District 3, greets Marie Baldwin, who is about to vote, near Humboldt Park on Election Day, Tuesday, November 5.
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Pat Nabong/Sun Times
Kate Doyle, candidate for the Chicago School Board in District 2, campaigns at the DANK Haus German American Cultural Center in Lincoln Square on Election Day, Tuesday, November 5.
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Pat Nabong/Sun Times
Karin Norington-Reaves, candidate for Chicago School Board District 10, greets early voters at the South Side YMCA on Monday, November 4.
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Ashlee Rezin/Sun Times
Jessica Biggs, candidate for the Chicago School Board’s 6th District, greets voters on Election Day at Mollison Elementary School at 4415 S. King Dr. on the South Side, Tuesday, November 5.
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Ashlee Rezin/Sun Times
Anusha Thotakura, candidate for Chicago School Board District 6, speaks to voters outside the Near North Branch Chicago Public Library on Monday, November 4.
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Anthony Vazquez/Sun Times
Ellen Rosenfeld, candidate for Chicago School Board District 4, speaks to people outside the Lincoln Park Public Library waiting to vote on Monday, November 4.
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Anthony Vazquez/Sun Times
Campaign signs, including some for Chicago School Board candidates, outside the Wicker Park/Bucktown Library at 1701 N. Milwaukee Ave., Monday, Nov. 4.
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Ashlee Rezin/Sun Times
Andre Smith, candidate for Chicago School Board District 6, campaigns at the South Side YMCA on Monday, November 4.
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Ashlee Rezin/Sun Times
Carmen Gioiosa, candidate for Chicago School Board District 4, speaks to voters waiting outside the Lincoln Park Public Library to vote on Monday, November 4.
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Anthony Vazquez/Sun Times
Thirty-one people running to represent 10 geographic districts. The voting districts are large, with approximately 275,000 residents each, and are spread across several neighborhoods.
But the elections are at the lower end of municipal elections, so lower voter turnout is a concern. Candidates and community groups have struggled with a lack of awareness that these elections are taking place for the first time, with many voters confusing them with Local School Council elections.
Nevertheless, Tuesday’s results will shape the new composition of the Education Council, which will grow to 21 members. The mayor will continue to appoint eleven members, including the president, until 2027, when the board will be fully elected.
Election night will also help determine how many of the 10 elected members will join Mayor Brandon Johnson and his allies in the Chicago Teachers Union, how many will emerge from the movement that supports and vigorously opposes charter schools and other “school choice” options against the union – or how many will be independent of both.
The CTU endorsed and funded candidates in each of the ten districts. One of them, veteran activist Aaron “Jitu” Brown, is largely guaranteed a seat since he is the only name left on the ballot. District 5that covers the West Side. He has two write-in opponents.
The CTU has through its political action committee and several others $1.6 million spent to promote their candidates – including several CPS mothers, a teacher and a pastor – and attack their opponents with negative ads that tie them to the school privatization movement and former President Donald Trump. The powerful CTU had a natural campaign advantage with nearly 30,000 members, many of whom served as ground troops and knocked on doors to sway voters.
But more conservative school choice advocates who oppose the CTU think this is their moment to put a dent in the union’s power and that they must prove that the union has lost popularity.
The struggle between these two movements has played out in several races, and most aggressively and prominently in the 3rd District on the near northwest side, 4th arrondissement on the north side, the 7th And 8th districts on the southwest side and the 10th arrondissement on the south side.
The recent controversies – the mayor pushing an unpopular loan to cover the CPS CEO’s budget deficit Pedro Martínez refusedthe mayor laid the groundwork to fire him and then the entire Board of Education became dissatisfied and resigning – has put the school board race in the spotlight.
The Illinois Network of Charter Schools and Urban Center Action are among the groups hoping to capitalize. They have spent more than $3 million to not only drum up support for their candidates, but also to run negative ads against CTU-backed hopefuls, whom they warn would be controlled by the mayor and the union.
“Mayor Johnson’s political agenda is causing chaos in our public schools,” reads a flyer sent out in many districts by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools super PAC.
The majority of board members will still be appointed by the mayor, but INCS President Andrew Broy said he would like to win at least some seats. There is a “big difference between having 19, 20 or 21 board members aligned with the mayor and with CTU, versus having a ‘caucus’ of members with opposing policy ideas,” he said.
INCS does not have a target for how many candidates it can get onto the board; it says it supports hopeful people with realistic opportunities.
“We are here to win races, not just spend resources,” Broy said.
The union and progressive groups have criticized INCS and Urban Center Action for taking a lot of money from millionaires and billionaires, some of whom do not live in Illinois.
U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Chicago), a CTU ally, said the school board elections are a “crossroads” for the future of public education in the city.
“The same people who did everything they could to block an elected, representative school board in Springfield are at it again,” Ramirez said. “This time they are trying to buy the election.”
In six districts there are also independent candidates who are not affiliated with any group. Although no more money is being spent, some say voters appear to be looking for people not affiliated with the teachers union or their opponents.