July 14, 2026
Tonight, our House of Delegates met and overwhelmingly approved a slate of “Public School Champions” to run in November’s historic school board election. The union endorsed 15 candidates who will work to make our schools sustainable and community anchored. They will reject the calls for school closings. And, they will work to give our students the schools they deserve by investing in smaller class sizes, reopening libraries, investing in special education, and committing to fully funding schools in every Chicago neighborhood.
CTU President Stacy Davis Gates framed the historic election this way.
“We see this campaign as an opportunity to win the debate on the schools Chicago’s students deserve. Our young people deserve fully funded schools so that we are planning for a glorious first day of school next July instead of waging revenue and budget campaigns to keep school libraries on the South Side open,” she said.
The move to a fully elected school board is actual decades in the making and the result of tireless organizing by CTU and a broad and committed community coalition demanding that the people running our school district be accountable to the people the schools serve.
“The choice for the school board is extremely clear,” explained CTU Political Action Committee’s legislative committee chair Kat Zamarrón. “Chicagoans can choose public school champions who will move the district forward for Chicago’s students and families or hand the district over to billionaire-backed candidates who are campaigning to bring back the era of Rahm’s cuts and closures.”
The first-ever full school board elections are already coming under attack by conservative forces like Paul Vallas’ Urban Center, which recruited candidates to be “anti-CTU,” and has reduced Chicagoans’ choices by using technicalities to kick candidates off the ballot and billionaire Michael Sacks, who has pledged to spend endlessly to defeat candidates backed by the district’s teachers.
Austerity hawks like Vallas and Sacks see the November elections as a way to derail the advances CTU made in its 2024 contract: implementing mandatory recess for elementary students, reducing caseloads for counselors, increasing support for IEP’s and special education staff, and reopening and expanding libraries, sports, art, music, and dual language on the West and South sides of the city so that every neighborhood has world-class education for its students.
But that progress is in peril due to the governor and general assembly’s refusal to fully fund Illinois schools and deliver the $2 billion the state’s own formula says it owes to Chicago schools.
“Some candidates see the debt the state owes our students and are saying their job is to get our families to accept larger class sizes and sports teams being canceled because they refuse to pay athletic directors and coaches,” explained CTU Political Action Committee Chair Kim Walls-Kirk. “We’re endorsing candidates who will roll up their sleeves and deliver schools with libraries and enough counselors so our students have someone to help them. We’re reconstructing our schools from the destruction of Sack’s former mayor, Rahm. His school closures have brought nothing but harmful consequences. We share a vision with many in our community that CPS must become a Sustainable Community Schools district. The candidates we’re supporting have a vision for Chicago’s schools and it’s not in the rearview mirror.”
The CTU endorsed candidates for the Chicago Board of Education are:
- School Board President: Hilario Dominguez (endorsed in June)
- 1a: Ed Bannon
- 1b: Claudia Peralta
- 2a: Ebony DeBerry
- 2b: Deborah “Debby” Pope
- 3a: Norma Rios Sierra
- 3b: Jason Dones
- 4a: Karen Zaccor
- 5a: Aaron “Jitu” Brown
- 5b: Michilla Blaise
- 6a: Anusha Thotakura
- 7a: Emma Lozano
- 9b: Katherine Dunneback
- 10a: Tameka Walton (write in)
- 10b: Connie Anderson
Along with the endorsements, CTU delegates committed to devote the union’s full organizing strength to the school board campaign. That includes knocking doors, contacting voters and educating Chicago about the stakes in the historic elections.
Help elect public school champions
Background on all the endorsed candidates can be found in your memberlink portal.
In solidarity,
CTU Leadership
President Stacy Davis Gates
Vice President Jackson Potter
Recording Secretary Dr. Diane Castro
Financial Secretary Vicki Kurzydlo