The importance of Chicago’s first school board race

This is the first election that school board members will be listed on the ballot in Chicago. Voters will elect 10 officials to the Chicago School Board, alongside Mayor Brandon Johnson’s 11 appointed members. 

As election day rapidly approaches, it’s easy to focus on the presidential candidates and maybe a few senators and representatives. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have taken up so much space in our brains, on our Instagram feeds and in various arenas across swing states this election season. But they’re not the only candidates on the ballot.  

Down-ballot races appear lower on the ballot and are often for smaller positions in local elections. While it may be tempting to randomly pick a name or skip over those sections entirely, it’s these local elections that often affect residents the most. 

The Chicago school board elections have popped up in recent news, increasingly becoming a topic of interest for the election. 

In July, CPS introduced a $9.9 billion budget proposal, aiming to cover a $500 billion deficit. This did not appear to appease Mayor Johnson, as Chalkbeat reported he instead called for CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to take out a high-interest loan to pay for the teachers’ pension fund. 

Over the course of the next few months, representatives from the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the school system butted heads in public bargaining sessions, according to reporting from Chalkbeat in mid-August. But the real controversy came when Martinez refused to take out the loan and Johnson called for him to resign. In response, every member of the board resigned and Johnson named their replacements in the same week.

Jazzlyn Marks, a teaching intern and DePaul student, was confused by the whole situation. 

“My experience with CPS hasn’t been the best,” Marks said. “I found it to be very unorganized.”  

Marks has been working in CPS for about a year. While working with migrant students who often don’t speak English very well, she noticed a lack of resources and a lack of translators for migrant students. Marks believes the school board needs to step in and provide these resources so teachers can properly do their job. 

Marks’ sentiments are shared by the CTU and Mayor Johnson. As a former teacher and CTU organizer himself, Johnson closely aligns with the group on his policies around education.

“Mr. Johnson says he has little reason to say no, because he believes the agenda he and the union share is the right one,” Dana Goldstein reported in a recent New York Times story on CTU’s influence on Chicago politics.

Ellen Rosenfeld, a school board candidate for district four, hopes that the 10 elected positions will allow for more diversity of opinion on the school boards. 

 “The 11 appointees will most likely be Chicago Teachers Union, [so I am] hoping that the 10 elected are not so that we can begin to have conversations that don’t align with just one special interest group.” Rosenfeld said. “That’s the whole point of the board. That’s what I’m super excited about.”

Rosenfeld’s hope that the elected board members are non-union was also reinforced by the board’s recent actions.

“Following the news that the entire board resigned, I was very upset about it, because I felt like Pedro Martinez made the right call, not taking on a high-interest loan and knowing that it would be unsustainable debt,” Rosenfeld said.

“I would say that the Chicago Teachers Union showed, with the election of Mayor Johnson, they are the big dog right now,” said John McCarron, an adjunct lecturer at DePaul who specializes in local politics. “Without the Chicago machine knocking on doors and ringing doorbells and making phone calls, you suddenly have thousands of teachers who are out there talking to their friends” about the needs of the school district.

Ultimately, the budget issue isn’t an easy one to fix. John McCarron, an adjunct lecturer at DePaul who specializes in local politics, said,“The money available for education depends on the value of real estate in the district.”

On November 5, Chicago voters will have a say in who decides education policy. In a school district with 325,000 students, the results of this election will undoubtedly affect many Chicagoans.

“Do your research and vote for the best candidate in every district,” Rosenfeld said. “For the elected school board, get informed, understand what this 21-person ballot looks like.”

Header photo credit: “I voted!” by Dean Wampler is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0