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Spending on Chicago’s historic school board races skyrocketed past $9 million in the campaigns’ decisive final stretch, with anti-Chicago Teachers Union groups handily outspending the powerful union.
While the citywide race for Chicago’s first elected school board president has racked up the most eye-popping spending, many of the 20 local district elections have also drawn significant campaign cash. In some districts, super PACs seeking to wrest control of the board from the CTU have spent 10 times as much as the union or more.
Even some candidates whose names are the only ones on the ballot in their districts have amassed sizable war chests.
Overall, special interest groups have spent more than $2.6 million on advertising since the start of October alone. That brings the total for independent expenditures on school board races to more than $6.7 million, according to an Illinois Answers and Chalkbeat analysis conducted after last week’s quarterly campaign finance reporting deadline. The spending includes millions of dollars on attack advertising to blast opponents. Campaigns reported spending $1.6 million themselves through Sept. 30, with groups and businesses spending another $589,000 on “in-kind” donations through Oct. 15.
At stake is influence over the first fully elected school board, which hires the CPS superintendent, approves the system’s roughly $10 billion budget, and has final say over CPS union contracts.
As special interest groups continue to dominate campaign spending, the CTU, while still a formidable force, is lagging behind the collective spending of several groups aiming to curb its influence on the school board. That includes the city’s other major school union, SEIU Local 73, and its affiliated political committees. SEIU represents support workers in CPS and was once a strong CTU ally but has become a political foe after a dispute over employee representation.
Also opposing the teachers union is Chicago billionaire Michael Sacks, a longtime donor to Democratic causes who in recent weeks has made several six- and seven-figure donations to the super PAC Common Ground Collective — the single biggest contributor in the election — and directly to school board president candidate Jessica Biggs. Sacks and other wealthy donors have been a target of CTU-backed attack ads.
Another dominant spender is the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. The advocacy group is a longtime adversary of the teacher union, which is a vocal critic of charter schools and has pushed for more financial oversight and shorter contracts for charter operators.
Two years ago, when nearly half the school board was up for election for the first time, the teachers union went on a spending spree in the final weeks before the election, outpacing pro-charter groups. It’s too soon to count the union out, said Hal Woods, chief of policy at the parent advocacy group Kids First Chicago. Those last weeks will be decisive in races where few candidates enjoy much name recognition, and the CTU can galvanize its roughly 25,000 members with an adept ground game.
“The CTU has the bodies in a way no other group does, other than maybe SEIU,” Woods said. “A lot of it will come down to turnout and what will swing people at the last minute.”
Campaign cash gives candidates a significant edge, but it’s no guarantee of success. In the 2024 school board election, some who got a major financial boost from the CTU or the charter network floundered while others with modest war chests won decisively.
The battle over the school board presidency draws millions
The highest-profile school board race is for the board president, who sets the agenda and represents the board in high-stakes outreach to the city and the state. After current school board member Jennifer Custer and former board vice president Sendhil Revuluri dropped out, three candidates remain:
- Hilario Dominguez, a former CTU organizer backed financially almost entirely by the union and a group aligned with it
- Biggs, a former CPS principal who has drawn support from the SEIU, anti-CTU super PACs, and some former CPS leaders
- Victor Henderson, a lawyer who is running a largely self-funded campaign
Dominguez in particular has been a lightning rod for attack ads largely paid for by the Common Ground Collective, a political organization heavily funded by Sacks, a longtime fixture of Chicago politics. The group has spent at least $1.8 million on ads attacking Dominguez. That’s about two-thirds of its attack ad spending so far and almost half of the total the group has spent on school board ads this election cycle.
Sacks also recently became the largest donor to Biggs’ campaign after previously steering the bulk of his donations to Common Ground, which has not endorsed a candidate for board president. Approximately 37% of Biggs’ total fundraising has come from Sacks, with another 17% coming from SEIU.
Sacks did not respond to a request for comment through a spokesperson.
Dominguez’s campaign, meanwhile, has received 62% of its funding from CTU, with another 36% from Our Schools, a CTU-funded political organization. Less than 2% of his funding comes from individual donations.
Our Schools has had issues properly reporting the source of its funding. The group, run by longtime community organizer Rod Wilson, reported $300,000 in “non-itemized receipts” last quarter, meaning it did not disclose who gave it the money. After the Illinois State Board of Elections flagged the issue, the group amended its report to show that all of the money came from CTU membership dues.
Still, at the end of the most recent quarter, the PAC again reported only a lump sum of $700,000 in donations without specifying the source. Our Schools, rather than the CTU, appears as the sponsor on flyers and other messaging supporting CTU-endorsed candidates.
Matt Dietrich, a spokesperson for the state election board, said the board still considers the lack of itemized reporting by Our Schools an issue: “It’s really unusual that you would have this amount of unitemized receipts because they are required to itemize anything more than $150.”
Our Schools did not respond to a request for comment.
Andrew Broy, the charter network’s president, noted that the CTU has concentrated much of its firepower on the race for board president. His group, by contrast, has focused on securing a board majority.
But he said the charter network plans to step up spending in the presidential race in the final weeks before Nov. 3, possibly supporting either Biggs or Henderson in addition to the attack ads against Dominguez it has funded so far.
In internal polling by INCS and other groups, he said, “A large majority of voters are still saying they don’t know who the candidates are or haven’t made up their minds.”
Henderson reported $35,000 in contributions this quarter, with just over $300,000 in his campaign war chest as of Sept. 30. Henderson missed the deadline to file his quarterly finance disclosure and could face fines from the state. But Dietrich said the state usually waives late fees for a first-time filing delay.
Spending on district races ramps up as well
Even as the president’s race has commanded the most attention and spending, many district-level elections are also drawing significant cash. State contribution limits have been lifted in most of the races, which happens after a super PAC spends $100,000 or more in a single race or a self-funded candidate contributes that much into the race.
Across Chicago’s 20 school board districts, a few major battlegrounds have emerged.
In the Far South Side district 10B, outside groups have spent almost $200,000 to support Patrick Watson’s campaign and $50,000 on ads attacking his CTU-backed opponent, Connie Anderson. Anderson reported only $46,000 in support from CTU.
The North Side’s 4A district has seen more than $500,000 in spending from special interests this cycle. Karen Zaccor, who received $63,000 from CTU, is facing off against Ellen Sherratt. Common Ground, SEIU, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, and Urban Center have together spent at least $454,000 either supporting Sherratt or attacking Zaccor. Angel Alvarez is also running for that seat but has raised and spent comparatively little — reporting just $1,500 in cash on hand at the end of September.
The race between Zaccor, an incumbent and retired CPS educator, and Sherratt, a consultant who has worked with school districts to improve teacher hiring and retention, has become increasingly intense as money has flowed in. In a news release last week, Zaccor decried the large sums spent on attacking her, echoing the CTU’s argument that wealthy Illinoisans are trying to buy influence on the board.
She said a flyer funded by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools in support of Sherratt inaccurately described her as a CPS parent. Sherratt’s children attend a private school — what she has described as a personal decision her family made during the pandemic’s remote learning stretch. The charter network said it is correcting the error.
“I fought alongside fellow CPS parents to give Chicagoans a voice in their schools with the elected representative school board,” Zaccor said in a statement, “and we cannot allow billionaires to manipulate free and fair elections.”
Sherratt noted that legally her campaign cannot coordinate with super PACs spending in support of her candidacy, so she could not have corrected the error about where her children attend school. She argued that significant CTU spending in 2024 set the tone for this year’s expenditures.
“As a first-time candidate, I have been really humbled and proud of the support from a broad coalition,” she said, noting that she’s received donations from more than 330 individuals and groups.
This pattern repeats across the city. At least a dozen districts have a CTU-backed candidate facing a candidate who has received support from Common Ground or a charter school advocacy group, which often support the same candidates.
In those races, CTU is being outspent by charter school groups, Common Ground, and SEIU, sometimes by an order of magnitude. In the district with the starkest divide, the West Side’s 7A, special interests have spent about $25 attacking CTU-backed candidate Emma Lozano or supporting her opponent, Jesus Ayala Jr., for every $1 the CTU has spent supporting Lozano.
Five major special interest groups account for three-quarters of all spending in the district races: CTU, Our Schools, Common Ground, INCS, SEIU, and Urban Center. Together, they have spent more than $4.6 million on district races through advertising and donations, compared with $705,000 spent by district candidates from all other sources combined.
Che “Rhymefest” Smith, with no challengers on the ballot, raised $12,600 and spent $36,800 last quarter. He had about $25,000 left in the bank at the end of September.
But Smith faces a write-in challenge from Tameka Walton, who has CTU backing. He said he is taking the challenge seriously, fundraising and campaigning as though his name were not the only one on the ballot.
“I don’t believe the ‘unopposed’ moniker fits my race,” he said.
Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.
Andrew Adams is a data and interactives reporter for the Better Government Association’s Illinois Answers Project. Contact Andrew at aadams@illinoisanswers.org.