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Former principal and current school board member Jessica Biggs has won the race to serve as Chicago Public Schools’ first elected board president for the next four years.
As of Wednesday morning, she had 48% of the vote, while Chicago Teachers Union organizer Hilario Dominguez held 30% and attorney Victor Henderson trailed with 17%.
Biggs will step into the key role at a pivotal moment for the city as the 21-member school board becomes fully elected and breaks away from 30 years of mayoral control. Preliminary results for the 20 district representatives indicate Biggs will likely preside over a divided board, with at least nine members backed by the Chicago Teachers Union. In January, the board president will become a full voting member after only being able to cast tie-breaking votes the past two years.
The bruising race drew millions in campaign cash, a flurry of vicious attack ads, and a gauntlet of forums and debates at which the candidates questioned each other’s records and stances.
Biggs said she would run a constructive, collaborative board focused on students and financial stability.
“The challenges facing our district are enormous, from our finances to our enrollment to the trust we need to rebuild with families,” Biggs said. “But our resolve is just as big.”
She was backed by the SEIU Local 73, the union representing support workers in CPS which was once a close CTU ally but had a falling out over a recent contractual dispute. The Common Ground Collective, a political action group heavily funded by billionaire and Democratic philanthropist Michael Sacks, also supported her candidacy.
“We rolled up our sleeves,” said Dian Palmer, the CPS support worker union’s president, before introducing Biggs at a victory party Tuesday night. “We left nothing on the table.”
In her victory speech, Biggs said her candidacy was buoyed by families yearning for stability in district leadership and tired of political squabbles.
“For too long decisions about our schools have been made in the backrooms of City Hall, and families have been left to live with the consequences,” she said. “Tonight that changes.”
Dominguez, a former CPS teacher on leave from the district and his role with the union, struck a defiant tone in his own election night speech, returning to a theme he and other CTU-backed candidates hammered throughout their campaigns despite the union’s power: that they were underdogs facing off against opposition fueled by wealthy Illinoisans.
“We had people who believed public education was worth fighting for even when the odds were stacked against us,” Dominguez told supporters at the CTU’s headquarters.
“Keep your head up, Chicago,” he added. “We got to get back to work tomorrow. In this city, we answer to no billionaires.”
He promised to continue pushing for more state dollars and to pursue new initiatives such as offering preschool to all city 3-year-olds. His campaign was almost exclusively funded by the CTU. The union was looking to hold onto an 11-member majority on the board but will likely fall short.
Henderson, whose campaign was largely self-funded, pledged to push for more transparency. He said he would seek to conduct a forensic audit of CPS to rout wasteful spending and to bring in outside academic experts to better understand how the district’s students are doing.
All three candidates had to defend their backgrounds during the campaign. Biggs was fired from the district in 2018 after its internal watchdog said she misreported student attendance and sent staff to pick up students from their homes without proper documents on file—a move she has argued was retaliation for speaking out about CPS missteps.
Dominguez faced allegations that he acted inappropriately toward a teen involved with a nonprofit where he worked roughly a decade ago. He has held up a recent district inspector general’s report that concluded there is not enough evidence to substantiate those claims.
And Henderson pushed back on allegations from his divorce proceedings two decades ago that he abused his sons and wife, insisting he disciplined his children appropriately.
Reema Amin contributed to this report.
Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.