The four candidates for Board of Education president shared the stage for the first time Thursday night, largely sticking to familiar campaign scripts as they weighed in on issues facing Chicago Public Schools at a packed forum on the North Side.
Current board member Jessica Biggs and former board appointee Sendhil Revuluri spoke to their past experience serving on the governing body of the nation’s fourth-largest school district. Chicago Teachers Union former political director Hilario Dominguez echoed CTU’s progressive policies, while trial attorney Victor Henderson sought to cast himself as an independent outsider.
The forum, held at McCutcheon STEAM Elementary School in Uptown, was the first of its kind leading up to a historic November election.
Candidates took turns addressing a wide range of topics, from student outcomes to property taxes to district finances. The district’s 2026-27 budget has emerged as a dividing line: Board members aligned with CTU approved a spending plan banking on $150 million in state funding that has yet to materialize, leaving CPS vulnerable to midyear cuts.
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Dominguez, who has been endorsed by CTU, pointedly and repeatedly called for more money from Springfield. “With a deficit as large as we have at CPS, there is no solving it without help from the state,” he said. “That’s why we’re going to fight for progressive revenue, that includes taxing the billionaires that have the money to fund our schools.”
CPS is only considered 70% funded by the state’s own funding formula. While all candidates said the district should fight for more state funds, Dominguez’s opponents called for a less bullish budgeting approach.
“If we say that the state should give us more money, I’m curious which people have actually looked at the state budget and said, ‘What is the plan to make that happen?’” Revuluri said.
Biggs said she would advocate for a “five-year financial recovery plan.” Henderson called for an outside “forensic audit … which means you go through the books at CPS to make sure everything is on the up-and-up.”
“I just don’t want to be in the echo chamber at CPS, just like any other large institution,” Henderson said. “There are people who are going to tell us the truth, and there are going to be people who are going to want to protect their jobs.”
CPS is transitioning to a fully elected, 21-member Board of Education, with an at-large president role at the helm. The position wields especially significant influence because the president determines what goes to a vote at board meetings. The board is currently composed of 10 elected representatives and 11 appointed by the mayor, including the current president, Sean Harden.
With four contenders, the race for board president is the most contested — even after North Side board member Jennifer Custer dropped out last week.
Candidates were asked whether they would close or consolidate schools as CPS enrollment continues to drop. The issue is a political third rail in Chicago, where the 2013 mass closures of 50 campuses, almost entirely on the South and West sides, sowed deep distrust in CPS and city leadership. Dominguez — who has vowed not to make any school-level cuts, even with the district facing persistent shortfalls totaling hundreds of millions of dollars — was the only candidate to outright refuse to close schools.
Revuluri argued that “some of our schools are too empty to offer our students a rich and complete learning experience.” Biggs and Henderson skirted around the question, though both said they disagreed with the top-down approach of the 2013 closings, where the list of shuttered schools came from City Hall.
Biggs pointed to research that closing schools does little to save districts money. “For me, you can expect that there will never be a top-down mass closure situation,” said Biggs, whose district, 6B, stretches from the Loop to Englewood. “It’s also important that we’re in communication and responsive to the requests and demands of communities.”
The forum ended a half hour early, in part because McCutcheon’s crowded multipurpose room didn’t have air conditioning in 80-degree heat. The school, which serves mostly low-income, Black students, is also one of the only CPS campuses in the city without an on-site gymnasium. The board hopefuls were asked whether they would advocate for McCutcheon to have a gym.
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Biggs pointed to funding from special taxing districts, known as TIF funds, and used the question as an opportunity to call for strong partnerships with City Hall. Dominguez pledged he would “look for state and federal dollars to make it happen.” Henderson said he’d “definitely support the idea,” noting “the beauty of a system” with elected representatives.
Only Revuluri said he would not, arguing that it’s not the board president’s job to get involved in managerial and school-level issues. “You see what happens when a board engages in micromanagement and falls off the wagon of focusing on results,” he said. “We go nowhere.”