Despite being massively outspent, candidates backed by the Chicago Teachers Union won seven of 21 school board seats and were leading in three more — likely enough to throw up formidable opposition to classroom cuts, school closures and other measures that they see as contrary to their progressive agenda.
The CTU’s candidate for board president, Hilario Dominguez, lost to Jessica Biggs. Candidates not backed by the CTU won nine of the remaining 10 seats, and a non-CTU candidate was leading in another race that was too close to call. A 10-member CTU bloc would be enough to give Biggs trouble.
CTU’s biggest opponent in this race was Michael Sacks, billionaire and former advisor to Rahm Emanuel, and the political group Common Ground Collective, which Sacks put $6.8 million into over the past two months. Common Ground Collective only won three contested races, though the group endorsed an additional five unopposed candidates.
Biggs took $1 million from Sacks, but was not formally endorsed by the Common Ground Collective. With these results, Biggs’ lacks the two-thirds majority needed to overturn any resolutions that may pass at December’s board meeting where sitting board members will cast votes for the final time.
The current school board, half of which is appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson and is aligned with the CTU, could approve a moratorium on school closings and try to tie the incoming board’s hands when it comes to future cuts.
The CTU did not have candidates in five of the 20 district races after failing to put up candidates in two of those races, while three of their candidates got pushed off the ballot through petition challenges.
The CTU was outspent by a margin of 4-to-1 with Sacks alone pumping more than $8 million into the races.
Biggs, a current school board member and former principal, billed herself as a consensus-builder and, on the campaign trail, often pointed to her “broad coalition” of support, including the Service Employees International Union, which represents support staff in CPS.
But, even in her victory speech, Biggs took a veiled jab at the current CTU-controlled board, saying “families are tired of chaos and uncertainty.”
“They want stability, and they want this board to turn its focus back to our students,” she said. They want schools they can trust, teachers who are supported, and leaders who put kids first.”
And Biggs will have to deal with a strong teachers union that is likely not happy with her.
Common Ground Collective ran commercials against Dominguez that contained half-truths about a misconduct allegation and continued repeating them even after the CPS inspector general found the allegations to be unsubstantiated.
Biggs did not speak out against those ads and benefited from them — a fact CTU officials and board members will likely remember as they think about working with Biggs and her allies. Dominguez, who was on leave from his job as CTU deputy political director, will likely return to his post wary of Biggs.
Many experts say that Sacks was so involved because he saw the school board race as a proxy for the mayor’s race in February. Sacks and the business community have already contributed a lot of money to Alexi Giannoulias, who they are hoping can defeat Johnson.
A stronger-than-expected showing by the teachers union could be a good omen for Johnson. But in general, teacher unions tend to do well in school board races, said Jeffrey R. Henig, a professor emeritus at Columbia University’s Teachers College, who co-wrote a book about outside money in school board elections.
Voters trust teachers to know what should be happening in schools, and they also dislike outsiders trying to impose their will, he said.
“In school board races, and in other state and local races, candidates have been able to defeat folks who have bigger campaign budgets by pointing a finger and saying: ‘This person is being funded by billionaires who have no investment in public education,’” Henig said.
Retired teacher and incumbent Karen Zaccor said that when she knocked on doors in District 4a, which includes Uptown and some of Lake View on the North Side, few voters asked her about her CTU endorsement or said they were against the CTU. In fact, many people she came across were teachers or had teachers in their family, she said.
“More people were anxious about the wealthy swaying the election and taking away seats from more qualified candidates,” she said.
Zaccor only got $34,000 from the Our Schools political group, while a trio of anti-CTU groups — the Common Ground Collective, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and The Urban Center — spent more than $700,000 either supporting her opponent or opposing Zaccor.
Zaccor won her seat and Debby Pope, another incumbent, former teacher and CTU stalwart, was also reelected in District 2b, just north of Zaccor’s area.
Some CTU-aligned newcomers won, too. That includes Connie Anderson, a mom who ran to represent District 10b, which stretches across the Far Southeast Side of the city.
Anderson said she came across a lot of working-class families who liked her message of fighting for more equitable schools and making sure that the board was student-centered.
“We received really good reviews,” she said.
She bested Patrick Watson, a legislative aide for Ald. Anthony Beale, one of Johnson’s harshest critics on City Council, despite raising significantly less money. Watson got about $500,000 from anti-CTU political groups — four times more than Anderson got from the CTU-funded political group Our Schools.
The newly elected school board members will be seated on Jan. 15. But what happens over the next two months will have big consequences for the start of their term.
In July, CTU-backed school board members voted for a budget that counts on $150 million in uncommitted revenue from the state. They did this to bring back some of the 1,000-plus teachers and other staff who were laid off earlier in the summer to close CPS’ $732 million deficit.
The state legislature, however, has not approved any additional money and will not be back in Springfield until next week’s veto session. CTU President Stacy Davis Gates said, regardless of who won the election, she and others will be in Springfield to fight for that money.
Yet if it doesn’t come through, the new school board will likely have to figure out how to curtail expenses to balance CPS’ budget. It is unclear exactly how out of whack the district’s budget would be without additional state funding.
Chalkbeat Chicago reported in early October that CPS had hired back only 350 teachers. If that holds true, it would mean an additional $35 million cost — much less than the $150 million added by the board.
Still, if there is a significant hole, the new board will have to figure out how to close it. That could mean turning to staff furloughs or midyear layoffs.
But Hal Woods, chief of policy at the advocacy organization Kids First, said he does not think some board members understand how limited their options are.
“Are you going to cut teachers? Are you going to cut aides?” he said. “When you have teachers and parents coming to the board meeting saying: ‘You are cutting my school,’ that puts school board members in a tough position.”
