The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners has removed five candidates in the upcoming race for Chicago’s first fully elected school board, including two sitting board members.
On Tuesday the board upheld challenges to the candidacies of Angel Velez, who represents District 9A on the Southwest Side and is the board vice president, and Cydney Wallace, who represents District 8B on the South Side.
The board also removed newcomers Marlo Barnett and Krista Nichols Alston, as well as Rosita Chatonda, who ran in 2024.
The decisions so far leave only one candidate in four races, including in Velez and Wallace’s districts. Ten other districts could also have uncontested races, once the board rules on outstanding challenges.
Velez and Wallace were both appointed to the school board by Mayor Brandon Johnson. Challengers said they didn’t have enough signatures to get on the ballot, and questioned whether their paperwork contained duplicate names, wrong or incomplete addresses and other issues, according to objections submitted to the board.
Velez said the decision was “frustrating” and “disappointing.”
He thought he was in good shape when he submitted his petitions. Velez said he collected 1,500 signatures, the maximum number allowed. He gathered many back in March outside polling places in his district during the primary elections.
But 80% of those signatures were challenged, he said, and he wound up just short of the 500 valid signatures needed.
Velez said he thinks the law establishing Chicago’s elected school board makes it too difficult to get on the ballot, especially for candidates who aim to represent low-income areas like Englewood and Auburn Gresham in his own district. Those communities often have low voter turnout and it can be harder to collect signatures.
“People move around a lot, people have unstable housing because of the disinvestment,” he said. “That’s the reason why I think it is a structural issue, because if you go to the North Side where a lot of people are registered to vote and come out to vote, it is easier to collect signatures.”
He points out that all of the candidates booted off the ballot so far were running in districts on the South Side.
Velez said he hasn’t completely ruled out trying to be a write-in candidate, but he is leaning against it. For one, he thinks it would be too difficult to get voters to write in his full name, Angel Luis Velez Rodriguez, which would be needed for the vote to be counted.
More than half of the 51 candidates vying for a seat on the board faced challenges. Each case is treated like a mini-trial with both sides presenting evidence before the board makes a final decision.
Incumbents Emma Lozano, Aaron “Jitu” Brown and Debby Pope remain on the ballot after challenges against them were withdrawn.
Challenges against two candidates for school board president, Jessica Biggs and Sendhil Revuluri, were also withdrawn, so they’ll too appear on the ballot.
Decisions on challenges against two other presidential candidates, Hilario Dominguez and Victor Henderson, are still pending.
Final decisions are still forthcoming in more than a dozen cases, with many likely coming at the election board’s next meeting on July 28.
Many of the challenges have been paid for by The Urban Center, a political action committee that’s supportive of charter schools and wants to curtail the influence of the Chicago Teachers Union.
Last month, the elections board allowed nearly two dozen candidates facing challenges to stay on the ballot after commissioners decided an elections law provision known as the dual-circulation rule didn’t apply to school board races.
Under state law, people can’t circulate petitions for candidates from two different parties in the same election cycle. Challengers wanted to disqualify 22 school board candidates, most of whom are aligned with the CTU, because people who circulated petitions for them also did so for partisan candidates in the March primaries. But school board races are nonpartisan.
Barnett, who filed paperwork to run for a seat in the 9th District, was removed because she didn’t specify whether she was running in District 9A or 9B as she gathered petitions.
She represented herself in the proceedings and said election officials didn’t communicate that requirement clearly in materials to candidates. She noted that in the 2024 school board election, the city was divided into 10 districts, and now there are 20, which created some confusion.
She said she respected the board’s decision, but that the objections process creates barriers that can discourage people from seeking office. Instead, she said, officials should make it easier for people to participate.
“I work so I had to take off today, pay for parking, and you know a lot of people don’t have the time,” Barnett said. “If they want better candidates to select from, to give voters a choice, then they need to step up their game.”
WBEZ reporter Sarah Karp contributed reporting.