Early voting is underway, and many are hyper-focused on the national midterms, when voters will select congressional representatives that may dramatically change the balance of power in Washington, D.C.
Don’t look to the East, Chicago voters. Democrats will win big in your deep-blue city. The name of the Chicago game is the school board elections.
Chicago mayors have appointed and ruled the Chicago Public Schools board for decades. Now, for the first time, city voters will choose all 21 members of the board, and its president.
This is a consequential contest. Voters will select one candidate from their school board subdistricts. Forty-six board candidates are vying for 21 seats; some will win two-year terms, others, four years. The board president runs citywide.
That next president will hold sway over setting the agenda for a body that approves the CPS budget, sets district-wide policies and priorities and hires and evaluates the system’s CEO.
Yet, I detect little enthusiasm or even awareness about these races. I ask voters about the school board elections. Most shrug. They are focused on the midterms, they say. Or, they reply, I don’t have children in the public schools. Why should I care?
This school board will decide how much taxes we all will pay, how much public debt we all will be burdened with and whether our city’s future leaders can achieve.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for those who pay for and use the schools to have a voice.
The board presidency is the marquee race, and it’s brutally competitive. It kicked off almost a year ago with five contestants. Jennifer Custer, a current elected board member, dropped out in August. Sendhil Revuluri, a previous board vice-president, left the race last week.
The three still standing include a current board member and former school principal, Jessica Biggs; Hilario Dominguez, a former special education teacher and former Chicago Teachers Union deputy political director; and Victor Henderson, a criminal defense attorney and certified public accountant.
They agree on many issues. A notable exception is that Dominguez, who unlike the others, will not consider the prospect of closing or consolidating schools.
All have been dogged by controversy.
Biggs, who was elected to the board in 2024, served as principal at Burke Elementary School in Washington Park on the city’s South Side. She was fired in 2018, accused of record-keeping and paperwork violations, and placed on the school district’s do-not-hire list.
She says it was punishment for speaking out on CPS failure to address dirty and under-resourced schools. Biggs appealed the ruling several times, and, in 2025, CPS reversed the decision and removed her from the list.
Campaign ads have attacked Dominguez, pointing to public records that show $35,000 in unpaid property taxes that are tied to a building his family owns. “I am on a payment plan,” he recently told WGN-TV.
Last week, the CPS inspector general reopened an investigation into allegations that Dominguez had “inappropriate interactions with a CPS student in 2017 while working at the Resurrection Project,” the Tribune reported. Dominguez has denied the claim, but pledges to cooperate in the investigation.
Henderson is contending with the fallout from a 15-year-old child custody case, in which his ex-wife alleged their son was abused and beaten by Henderson. He denies that, arguing that he was exercising loving but necessary discipline.
As the charges and countercharges fly, what truly defines these contests is money.
Revuluri suspended his campaign “in part because he is unable to compete with the money pouring in from labor unions and other special interest groups,” the Tribune reported.
In a statement, he pointed to “the gusher of special-interest cash has crowded out the voices of real Chicagoans.”
“Gusher,” is putting it mildly.
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Campaign fundraising in the school board races stood at $1.8 million from last October to June 30 of this year, according to an analysis by WBEZ and Chalkbeat, a news site that covers public education. Most of that total — $1.2 million — went to board president candidates.
Millions more are expected to pour in from the CTU, which is backing Dominguez and other CTU allies, and the Common Ground Collective, a business-oriented fund which supports Biggs and others. The Illinois Network of Charter Schools and The Urban Center are also spending big in the school board races.
The charter network’s war chest “is by far the largest among political action committees with a stake in the election at more than $4 million,” according to the WBEZ/Chalkbeat analysis.
Special interests want to buy and own these candidates. Do not let them.
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Chicago, this election matters
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune each Wednesday. Write to her at [email protected].
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