When the entire Board of Education resigned in October and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced their replacements, he said he hoped they could stay on the 21-seat board that will take office in January. The way the law is written, that wasn’t a given.
But, as it turns out, all six can stay on. The mayor’s office said it hopes most will agree to continue.
Even ignoring the strife that led to the mass resignations, picking board members was a guessing game. That’s because the law requires the 10 board members who will continue to be appointed by the mayor to live on the opposite side of their voting district than the 10 elected members — meaning the elections would be determinative. The president, who the mayor also will appoint, can live anywhere in the city.
“Some might call me ‘genius,’” Johnson said in an interview Thursday, two days after the elections. “Look, I don’t predict elections, but it looks like I got it pretty close.”
Current board vice president Mary Gardner is the only member who doesn’t live on the opposite side of her district as the newly elected member, Aaron “Jitu” Brown in the West Side’s 5th District. But the mayor could appoint her president.
But the rest could continue based on where they live: Michilla Blaise in the 5th District, Debby Pope in the 2nd District, Rafael Yáñez in the 7th District, Frank Niles Thomas in the 9th District and Olga Bautista in the 10th District. The mayor’s office didn’t say whether any had yet agreed.
This is the latest development shaping Chicago’s first-ever elected school board after decades of advocacy for elections, years of figuring out the details and months of campaigning.
Here are answers to other key questions surrounding the results of Tuesday’s election.
Who will hold the most power on the new school board?
At the end of the day, it’ll be the mayor and his allies at the Chicago Teachers Union.
The historic school board elections led to split results in which neither the union nor the opposing pro-charter school movement won a majority of the 10 races.
The union’s endorsed hopefuls won four district seats. Candidates who received anti-CTU, pro-charter school campaign cash won three races. And independents unaffiliated with either movement won one seat and are leading in two uncalled races.
Counting the four CTU-endorsed candidates who won election this week and the mayor’s 11 appointments, that’s 15 of 21 members who will be ideologically aligned with the mayor and union for the next two years.
Who are the newly elected members?
All but two are parents. Four are white, three Latino and three Black.
And they send their kids to a mix of neighborhood and magnet schools, but none send their children to charter schools.
Going into the school board election, there were concerns that the members would not represent the demographics of the student body or the interests of parents who send their kids to the schools.
CPS students are 11% white, 47% Latino and 35% Black — so that feared mismatch played out in the election results.
Two are in their 30s without children, but both are CPS alumni. They are Carlos Rivas, a Humboldt Park resident on the West Side who will represent District 3, and Yesenia Lopez, a Gage Park resident on the Southwest Side in District 7.
Therese Boyle of District 9 on the far South Side, and Angel Gutierrez of District 8 on Southwest Side sent their kids to Catholic schools.
Jennifer Custer in the 1st District on the North Side, has a son at Locke Elementary, their neighborhood public school. Jessica Biggs of the South Side’s 6th District has a daughter at a magnet school. Brown has a son in the magnet program at Kenwood High School.
Ellen Rosenfeld of the North Side’s 4th District sent her kids to an elementary school with a neighborhood and selective component and a selective enrollment high schools. Meanwhile, the son of Ebony DeBerry in the North Side’s 2nd District, started at a neighborhood elementary school but then went to North Side College Prep, one of the most selective high schools in the city.
Will anyone who lost still get on the board?
Intriguingly, yes, it’s possible.
Of the six CTU-endorsed candidates who lost, Karen Zaccor in the 4th District, Anusha Thotakura in the 6th District and Felix Ponce in the 7th District would be eligible to be appointed by the mayor because they live on opposite sides of their districts than the candidates who beat them.
Zaccor and Thotakura said Thursday that they hadn’t heard from the mayor’s office but would accept an appointment. Ponce couldn’t be reached for comment.
Zaccor said she was “not going to be a puppet for anyone under any circumstances.”