Minutes after the clock struck 5 p.m., Patricia Easley sat on a window ledge in the Chicago Board of Elections supersite furiously signing her name.
“Thank you. It means so much to me,” she said to the election workers waiting for her.
Easley wanted to run to represent a Chicago School Board district on the city’s West Side that’s currently held by longtime activist Jitu Brown. But when the official list of candidates came out Tuesday evening, she wasn’t among the 51 names.
Tuesday was the deadline to enter the race for a seat on Chicago’s first fully elected school board. All 20 district seats and the citywide president position will be up for grabs in the Nov. 3 election. Voters will get to cast a ballot for a school board member in their community, plus the president.
About a dozen people showed up in the final hour to submit their petitions in hopes of landing a prominent spot on the bottom of the ballot.
In two districts, one candidate is running unopposed and they both are incumbents. Ellen Rosenfeld, who represents the near North Side, and Angel Gutierrez, who represents the Southwest Side, do not have challengers.
Six districts have three people running, while the other 12 have two. Two candidates did not specify what district they were running in, and it’s unclear how that will be resolved.
Of the incumbent board members, only Sean Harden, the current president who was appointed by Mayor Johnson, is not running. Two current board members — Jessica Biggs and Jennifer Custer — are giving up district seats to run for president.
A total of five candidates are running for board president, a powerful position that holds sway over what the board debates and votes on. Four of them — Biggs, Custer, former board member Sendhil Revuluri and attorney Victor Henderson — submitted petitions on the first day and will face off in a lottery to get the top spot on the ballot.
Hilario Dominguez, the deputy political director for the Chicago Teachers Union, submitted his petition Tuesday. Carrying a box full of papers, he said he had collected more than 9,000 signatures — likely seeking to make his candidacy challenge-proof by having more than three times as many names as he needed.
“We got to show Chicago, really, that there’s a candidate out there that wants to talk to everyone, and that recognizes the importance of having a coalition,” he said.
To get on the ballot, district candidates need between 500 and 1,500 valid signatures, while the president needs at least 2,500.
Candidates and interest groups are expected to lodge signature challenges almost immediately, as they did two years ago when 10 board members were elected.
The deadline to file objections to petitions is Tuesday.
In 2024, 27 of 47 candidates faced challenges and 14 were knocked off the ballot. Lawyers hired by the Chicago Teachers Union filed many of those challenges, but this time, more entities are likely to get involved.
This November’s election and the transition from a partially elected, partially appointed board marks the culmination of years of work by advocates. They pushed for a fully elected board, arguing that it would inject democracy and community voice into a governing body that for decades was under mayor control.
But in order to fully realize that goal, there are gaps in voter awareness to overcome. Two out of three Chicago residents didn’t know the board would become fully elected, according to a September 2025 poll by the nonprofit Kids First Chicago. There are also questions about whether the big money expected to flow in this year’s races will influence the elections.
Whoever is elected to the board will face several challenges, including how to tackle the district’s ongoing financial woes, declining student enrollment and federal probes by the Trump administration. Charter school accountability may be on the agenda, too, as several publicly funded, privately run schools have closed in recent years.
The board has several responsibilities, including opening and closing schools, hiring and evaluating the CPS CEO and approving the school calendar. Members spend 30 or more hours a month on their duties, though they aren’t paid. Some have raised concerns that lack of compensation discourages parents from low-income families from running to represent their communities.