The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners voted to kick off a final school board hopeful from the ballot Tuesday — bringing the total number of candidates removed to seven and effectively finalizing the slate for the November election.
Candidate Kernetha Jones, who lives in District 5A on the West Side, was removed for failing to specify her subdistrict in her nominating papers.
Tuesday’s ruling will likely solidify the school board ballot with 44 candidates. Candidates and objectors have a narrow window to appeal Board of Elections’ decisions before the ballot is certified Aug. 27. Six appeals are already pending in Cook County Circuit Court.
“Sometimes these cases last longer than that, but it’s out of our hands now in the court system,” said Adam Lasker, general counsel for the Board of Elections.
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All other objections have been overruled or withdrawn.
For the first time, all 21 seats of the Board of Education will be up for election. Previously, the board had seven members appointed by the mayor. It is currently in a two-year transition period with 10 elected members and 11 appointees.
After ballot challenges, five of 20 district-level races will go uncontested, including two districts where only the elected incumbents filed to run.
The elected model was long championed by progressives as a vehicle for equity and representation at Chicago Public Schools. But some board hopefuls voiced frustration as they navigated a time-consuming, costly objection process — which typically requires hiring an attorney. More than half the candidates faced objections, which often contest the validity of signatures on nominating petitions.
Jones, who was removed Tuesday, said she wasn’t aware she had to specify a subdistrict on her nominating papers. “The process is very unjust, it’s very biased, it’s very unfair for the children,” she said.
Appointed board members Angel Velez, representing District 9A on the South Side, and Cydney Wallace, representing District 8A on the South Side, were among the candidates removed last month. Velez currently serves as board vice president.
Also previously kicked off were newcomers Krista Nichols Alston (District 10A), Marlo Barnett (unspecified district), Rosita Chatonda (District 10B) and Tameka Walton (District 10A). Walton is running as a write-in candidate and was endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union.
In the six appeals filed in Cook County Circuit Court, staunch objectors have refused to take no for an answer. That includes challenges against Ed Bannon (District 1B), Norma Rios-Sierra (District 3A), Jason Dónes (District 3B), Anusha Thotakura (District 6A) and Yesenia Lopez (District 7B). All but Lopez are endorsed by the CTU.
The appeals are based on the so-called dual circulation rule, a provision in election law that prohibits petition circulators from collecting signatures for multiple types of candidates in the same election cycle. That includes working for candidates in different parties or for both independent and partisan candidates. School board races are nonpartisan, but challengers argued the rule still applied because some candidates used circulators who also collected signatures during the March Democratic primary.
The Board of Elections, however, overruled that argument. The appeals are still pending. Urban Center, a pro-school-choice group that has opposed CTU, was behind the initial objections against Bannon, Dónes and Thotakura.
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“It’s what we said before. We think that they didn’t follow the rules,” Urban Center Vice President Bobby Sylvester said. “We think that this is important to safeguard the process and make sure that all the candidates have the same playing field.”