CHICAGO — Chicago’s first fully elected school board will take office without a decisive majority for either side, and it faces immediate decisions on some of the most contentious issues for the nation’s third-largest school district — including potential midyear cuts.

Voters on Tuesday elected 21 members to serve on the governing body of Chicago Public Schools, including Jessica Biggs, who won the race for board president. The district was previously run under mayoral control for decades. Biggs defeated two opponents, attorney Victor Henderson and former Chicago Teachers Union deputy political director Hilario Dominguez. A fourth candidate, Sendhil Revuluri, suspended his campaign in September but still appeared on the ballot.

The election pitted the CTU against several pro-school-choice groups seeking to counter the union’s influence.

The progressive CTU’s power on the board has waned, but its opponents fell short of the decisive victory many expected. Instead, Biggs will inherit a divided board, with a narrow majority not aligned with the CTU and a likely nine-member bloc that is. That means she won’t have the two-thirds majority required for certain votes, such as budget amendments.

Candidates backed by the CTU campaigned against school closures and a push for full state funding, which currently hovers at 70% under Illinois’ funding formula. Those supported by anti-CTU groups, meanwhile, talked up fiscal restraint and independence from City Hall and Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former organizer with the union.

Bridget Lee — executive director of the Academy for Local Leadership, a Chicago-based education advocacy nonprofit — cautioned against viewing the board through a lens of competing factions. The focus, she said, should be on the collective responsibility board members share toward improving CPS.

“I don’t necessarily agree with, you know, ‘This team got 10, this team got 11,’” said Lee. “I think the city and students got 21 passionate community leaders who have the opportunity to make sure the system is doing what it needs to do to support our young people.”

And board members don’t always vote in lockstep. Incumbent Yesenia Lopez, who represents District 7B on the Southwest Side, was endorsed by the CTU in 2024 but broke with the union on key issues, including both of the board’s contentious budget votes. She didn’t receive the CTU’s backing this cycle, but Our Schools PAC, which is heavily funded by the union, endorsed her.

Lopez said she considers herself an independent, and noted that many board members don’t fit neatly into a political box. “It comes to each vote or whatever subject we’re discussing,” she said. “What’s the impact to the constituency I represent, and also the greater impact to the city?”

Strong showing for union-backed candidates

Votes were still being tallied and The Associated Press had yet to call a number of races. But if current leads hold, nine CTU-endorsed candidates are poised to win seats on the board. In five of those races, CTU candidates held leads of more than 25 points. The results are notable given that the CTU was heavily outspent — and that the union’s pick for board president, Hilario Dominguez, lost by roughly 17 points in the citywide election.

The CTU has sought to cast the race as a David-versus-Goliath fight between deep-pocketed interests and union-backed candidates. CTU Vice President Jackson Potter told the Tribune that many of the union’s preferred candidates prevailed because “voters are acutely aware that money in politics is pernicious and harmful and undemocratic.”

Potter attributed Dominguez’s defeat — a significant blow to the CTU’s political muscle — to the flood of outside money in the president’s race. He also cited attack ads about a CPS Office of Inspector General investigation into allegations that Dominguez behaved inappropriately with a minor in 2017. The OIG closed the probe about two weeks before the election, finding the allegations unsubstantiated.

“What was being advertised was the knocks against Hilario, over and over again,” Potter said. “I think that repetition and the money spent was the determining factor, not the quality of the candidate.”

Meanwhile, candidates endorsed by the Service Employees International Union, the second-largest union in CPS, are on track to win 10 seats, including the board president race. The two progressive labor unions were once allies, but their relationship fractured last year amid a labor dispute. SEIU has since accused the CTU of pushing the district to make financial decisions that jeopardize workers’ interests. Only six candidates had both CTU and SEIU backing.

“I think we had a pretty good night,” said Anthony Driver, executive director of the Illinois State Council, who chairs the SEIU-funded super PAC Brighter Futures Chicago. Biggs’ win, he added, “shows that she was able to build a coalition and gain the trust of voters. It speaks to her ability to lead.”

Including Biggs, 12 candidates on track to win are incumbents, while nine are newcomers. Sixteen are women.

Chicago Board of Elections spokesperson Julie Metea said final results are delayed because of a surge of 34,000 same-day voter registrations Tuesday. It was the second-highest number of same-day registrations in the city’s history, after the 2024 presidential general election, she said.

In District 3B on the Northwest Side, CTU-backed Jason Dónes maintained a razor-thin lead over incumbent Carlos Rivas for days following the election. With all precincts appearing to be counted as of Friday, Dónes was leading by fewer than 200 votes.

A board divided

In a Tribune interview the day after Election Day, Biggs laid out her priorities for Chicago’s historic new school board, returning to themes of her campaign — chiefly what she called “real focus and intention on school improvement.”

Her tenure will begin during a precarious time for CPS: Without additional funding from Springfield, the district is facing midyear cuts. CTU-backed board members passed a $10.1 billion budget counting on $150 million in new state funding, over objections from district leadership. At the time, the union pointed to commitments from several lawmakers, but those funds have yet to materialize.

Cuts floated this summer, including layoffs, furloughs and a midyear spending freeze, may be back on the table. Biggs voted against the budget, but said the board should decide how to proceed at its December meeting, after the city finalizes its TIF surplus for CPS — a one-time infusion of cash from special taxing districts.

“There’s not an opportunity to wait until a fully elected board is seated to figure out how to move,” Biggs said. “We have a responsibility to the district, to our students, to teachers to be clear about a plan as soon as possible.”

Biggs also said she intends to let the district’s school closure moratorium lift at the end of the 2026-27 school year, a decision that is almost certain to splinter the newly empowered body and set up a standoff with the CTU and Mayor Brandon Johnson. She said closures are a last resort, and that she won’t shutter any building without community input.

The more immediate question is how to govern. “I’m not ready to accept that this is a divided board,” Biggs said.

To bridge the political aisle, Biggs said she hopes to build the board around “one-on-one conversations” and personal relationships. She pointed to the board’s newly implemented committee structure as a lever for effective governance, and said she’s weighing how to best organize the board’s staff.

Keeping members unified, though, may prove to be a tall order. With 21 members, Chicago will have the largest fully elected school board in the country, weighing some of the most contentious issues in the city.

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