Parents and other members of a Local School Council are asking Chicago Public Schools to sanction an organization that they say violated the district’s rules by electioneering at a back-to-school festival on school grounds.
Dad Adam Johnson, who has one child at Peirce Elementary School in the Edgewater neighborhood, said parents who walked up to an arts and crafts table hosted by the Common Ground Collective might have assumed it was a “kind of generic liberal, if not hippie-ish organization.”
But if they picked up a flier about the upcoming school board election and scanned a QR code, they’d see the organization was making endorsements, he said.
“The return-to-school celebration is, I think, supposed to be about the kids and about meeting the teachers, not about promoting a particular political agenda,” he told the school board earlier this month.
CPS strictly prohibits political campaigning on school grounds. CPS’ ethics office is investigating what happened at Peirce.
A spokeswoman for the Common Ground Collective said the group staffed a table and paid for the DJ at the Aug. 20 fair through its nonprofit, which is separate from the group’s two political arms. The spokeswoman also said the endorsements weren’t posted until after the Peirce Elementary event, pointing to social media posts timestamped on Aug. 24 as evidence.
The Common Ground Collective says it supported “multiple” back-to-school events, but CPS says it only received a complaint from Peirce’s LSC.
The controversy illustrates how schools have had to navigate some ethically thorny situations in the runup to the Nov. 3 election, when voters will elect all 21 members of the school board for the first time.
Some see this race as a test of whether anyone can wrest control from the powerful Chicago Teachers Union and Mayor Brandon Johnson, a strong CTU ally who appointed the majority of school board members.
As of Tuesday, $3.3 million has poured into the coffers of school board candidates. On top of that, political groups are spending on digital ads about candidates. Much of that has come from political action committees with ties to other entities and individual donors. That’s made it difficult for principals, parents and others to decipher who is truly behind an effort and whether it’s political in nature.
Others have raised concerns about electioneering, too.
Austin Berg, the marketing director for the Illinois Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank that supports limited government and personal liberties, sent a complaint to the CPS ethics advisor about school board member Michilla Blaise, who is running to keep her West Side seat. Berg alleged that Blaise made a social media post in violation of the rule that prohibits board members from conducting political activity while doing their official work.
Blaise says the video showed students dancing and welcoming her to a school. She promptly took it down out of concerns for student privacy, but she says she posted it because she thought “it was so cute,” not as part of her campaign.
In response to the heightened concerns about electioneering, CPS said it “recently issued guidance” to principals and Local School Councils to make sure they understand the rules.
Groups with nonprofit and political arms can confuse schools and voters
Founded just a year ago, the Common Ground Collective is an anti-CTU group that is heavily funded by billionaire Michael Sacks, who was a top donor and adviser to former Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The group says it aims to engage voters around “effective progressive policies” and wants to ensure “taxpayer dollars are used wisely and effectively.”
So far, Common Ground Collective’s political groups, which include a political action committee and a super PAC that has fewer limits on contributions and spending, have donated about $31,000 directly to school board candidates. They’ve spent another $944,000 on digital ads supporting or opposing certain candidates.
Parents said the Common Ground Collective handed out fliers in English and Spanish about the school board election at the Peirce Elementary back-to-school fair. But the QR code directed back to the group’s website, which eventually listed school board endorsements.
Photos provided by Nicole Granacki
Some of that has gone to one of the more contested school board races in a North Side district that includes Peirce Elementary. The current school board member, Debby Pope, a retired CPS teacher and a CTU stalwart, is running for reelection. Common Ground Collective has endorsed her opponent, Kyna Lenhof, the treasurer of the 40th Ward Democratic Organization, and contributed about $4,000 directly to Lenhof’s campaign. Common Ground Collective’s political groups spent another $37,500 on digital ads supporting Lenhof or opposing Pope.
Common Ground Collective, like many political groups, also established what is called a social welfare nonprofit, or a 501(c)4.
Some groups set these up because they legitimately want to promote social welfare, said Aaron McKean, the senior legal counsel at the Washington, D.C.-based Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit that promotes voter rights.
But others use this type of nonprofit to hide the identity of donors and obscure political spending, often known as “dark money,” McKean said. Federal law does not require 501(c)4s to reveal their supporters.
“It’s just evading disclosure,” McKean said. “When it comes to political spending, people have a right to know who is spending to influence their vote, and it’s these kind of poorly worded laws that allow big spenders to find ways to weasel out of that disclosure.”
According to its 2025 tax filing, Common Ground Collective’s nonprofit had $2.1 million, but it does not show who donated to the organization.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for Common Ground Collective said the organization has a legitimate social welfare mission and has made donations or hosted tables at school events to “provide backpacks, school supplies or sponsor engagement activities for kids to create fun and strengthen their comfort and excitement for starting the school year.”
Their website has a section called “CGC In Action” which shows the organization holding a holiday food drive with school board member Carlos Rivas at Nixon Elementary in Hermosa, supporting a community workout event at Juarez High School in Pilsen and handing out turkeys at Michele Clark High School in Austin. In photos of the events, people can be seen holding Common Ground Collective signs.
Lizzie Turner, the chair of Peirce Elementary’s LSC, said the Common Ground Collective approached their school’s principal, Luis Avila, by touting its social welfare mission.
In an email to the principal, which was shared with Turner and other LSC members and reviewed by WBEZ, the group described itself as “a 501(c)(4) nonprofit and advocacy organization dedicated to strengthening our CPS schools and working toward a future where every student has access to high-quality public education.”
In another email shared with the LSC, the Common Ground Collective representative said the group wanted to hire a DJ recommended by Che “Rhymefest” Smith, a current board member of a South Side district. Turner said the first-time principal is new to the school and likely saw Smith’s name as an indication that the offer was okay.
“He just incorrectly assumed that they were innocent and just wanted to help and were like, ‘Yeah, we’ll take a free DJ for our event,’” Turner said.
Because the DJ’s services were donated, the LSC didn’t have to approve it.
Turner said that the Peirce LSC and principal already got a stern talking to by CPS officials who wanted to make sure they understood district rules.
Now Peirce LSC members are asking CPS officials to make sure political advocacy organizations cannot “use partnerships, sponsorships, donations, or other access to CPS schools as a pathway to reach families with candidate advocacy,” according to the letter they sent to the district.
Smith says he never recommended any DJ to the Common Ground Collective and is unhappy that they dropped his name in that way. Smith, a hip hop artist, says his fame makes him vulnerable to being used.
In the situation at Peirce, school board member Ellen Rosenfeld also has come under fire because her husband is listed in tax filings as a board member of the nonprofit run by the Common Ground Collective. Peirce LSC members say Rosenfeld should have intervened to stop the group from tabling and handing out fliers on school grounds.
Peirce LSC members asked CPS to “reinforce clear ethical expectations for Board members and candidates regarding relationships with political organizations, school administrators, vendors, sponsors, and other outside entities during election cycles.”
Rosenfeld says the tax filing is wrong and that her husband has never been on the board. But she says as long as the endorsements weren’t on the website when the back-to-school fair took place, she sees nothing wrong with what the Common Ground Collective did.
She said many groups are doing what they can to get their names and their candidates in front of voters.
“The Chicago Teachers Union is trying to get its name out, SEIU is trying to get its name out,” she said.
Rosenfeld and Smith are both endorsed by Common Ground Collective, but they are both running unopposed.