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Andrew Davis (Illinois)
Andrew Davis ran for election to the Chicago Public Schools school board to represent District 4b in Illinois. Davis lost in the general election on November 5, 2024.
2024 battleground election
Ballotpedia identified the November 5, 2024, election for Chicago Public Schools school board as a battleground race. The summary below is from our coverage of this election, found here.
Thirty-five candidates ran in the November 5, 2024, general election for 10 seats on the Chicago Public Schools school board (CPS) in Illinois. This was the first year Chicago residents voted for board members to oversee CPS. According to the Chicago Sun-Times' Nader Issa and Sarah Karp, "After a set of campaigns largely defined by opposing progressive and more conservative education movements, mixed election results Tuesday night gave neither the Chicago Teachers Union [CTU] nor charter school advocates a major cause for celebration in the city’s first-ever school board elections.”[1]
Overall, CTU-backed candidates—Jennifer Custer, Ebony DeBerry, Aaron Brown, and Yesenia Lopez—won four of the 10 seats. Candidates backed by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and/or The Urban Center—Carlos Rivas Jr., Ellen Rosenfeld, and Angel Gutierrez—won three. The winners in District 6, 9, and 10—Jessica Biggs, Therese Boyle, and Che Smith, respectively—were not endorsed by any of the four organizations.
To view all results, click here.
Since 1995, Chicago's mayor appointed all seven board members.[2] In 2021, Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed legislation that expanded the board from seven to 21 members beginning in January 2025.[3] Voters selected 10 new members on November 5, and the mayor was required to appoint the other 11 members under the legislation. The board was scheduled to become fully elected in 2027.[4]
According to Crain's Chicago Business' Judith Crown, "The election has become a referendum on the vision advocated by Mayor Brandon Johnson and the CTU [Chicago Teachers Union], which includes borrowing funds for a new teachers contract, limiting school choice and moving away from traditional metrics and rankings."[5] Johnson, who was a teacher with CPS and an organizer with the CTU, was elected in 2023. The CTU endorsed Johnson in the mayoral race.[6] Johnson appointed six new members to the board on July 5, 2023.[7]
How much of a priority charter, magnet, and elective enrollment schools have was a central issue in the election. In October 2023, the school board passed a resolution that called for transitioning "away from privatization and admissions/enrollment policies and approaches that further stratification and inequity in CPS and drive student enrollment away from neighborhood schools."[8][9] At the time of the election, all Chicago students were assigned a neighborhood school based on their ZIP code, but they were also able to apply to charter, magnet, or selective enrollment schools.[10][11] During the 2022-23 school year, about 56% of CPS students attended neighborhood schools.[12]
Proponents of placing more emphasis on neighborhood schools said those schools disproportionately serve the most disadvantaged students, who require greater resources to educate.[13] Proponents of alternatives to neighborhood schools argued that more choices allow families to find the right education for their children.[14]
The CTU and the Illinois Network of Charter Schools (INCS), an organization that advocates for charter schools, backed competing candidates who took different stances on the role of choice in the system. The CTU endorsed candidates in all 10 districts.[15] The INCS paid for digital ads and direct mail in support of seven candidates.[16] CTU Vice President Jackson Potter said, “You really have to de-emphasize choice in some way to really make the neighborhood schools rise.”[17] INCS Executive Director Andrew Broy said, “The question is do these candidates running for school board support the concept that parents should have a choice of where to send their kids to school.”[16]
The Save Our Schools Coalition, of which CTU was a member, also endorsed the 10 candidates CTU endorsed.[18] The CPS's former CEO, Paul Vallas, endorsed candidates who generally supported charter schools through the group he co-founded, Urban Center Action.[19] Vallas was also a candidate in the 2023 mayoral election.
Click here to see the candidates each group endorsed.
Funding, absenteeism, school closures, and safety were also issues in the election.[20][21][22][23] Candidates took stances on the October 4, 2024, resignation of all seven members of the board. The board's decision to resign allowed Johnson to appoint replacements. Click here to learn more about the resignation. Click here to read our coverage of this event in Hall Pass, our weekly education newsletter.
The legislation requiring 21 school board members made it one of the largest school boards in the country. Of the 13,194 school districts in the country, only 240 — or about 2% — had school boards with more than 10 members at the time of the election. Those 243 districts were spread across 18 states.
Elections
2024
See also: Chicago Public Schools, Illinois, elections (2024)
General election
General election for Chicago Public Schools school board District 4b
The following candidates ran in the general election for Chicago Public Schools school board District 4b on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Ellen Rosenfeld (Nonpartisan)  | 41.6 | 49,351 |
| Karen Zaccor (Nonpartisan) | 30.2 | 35,825 | ||
 | Kimberly Brown (Nonpartisan) | 9.4 | 11,128 | |
 | Thomas Day (Nonpartisan) | 7.7 | 9,126 | |
 | Carmen Gioiosa (Nonpartisan) | 7.1 | 8,414 | |
| Andrew Davis (Nonpartisan) | 4.0 | 4,719 | ||
| Total votes: 118,563 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Davis in this election.
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Andrew Davis did not complete Ballotpedia's 2024 Candidate Connection survey.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Chicago Sun-Times, "CPS School Board election results leave both CTU, charter interests without clear win," November 6, 2024
- ↑ The Chicago Reporter, "History of Chicago Public Schools," accessed October 24, 2024
- ↑ LegiScan, "Illinois House Bill 2908," accessed October 24, 2024
- ↑ CBS Chicago, "Gov. Pritzker Signs Legislation To Create Elected School Board For Chicago Public Schools," July 29, 2021
- ↑ Crain's Chicago Business, "Charter school supporters and CTU rivalry heats up ahead of school board elections," October 21, 2024
- ↑ WWTW, "Chicago Teachers Union Endorses Brandon Johnson for Mayor, Urges Him to Make Bid Official," September 28, 2022
- ↑ City of Chicago, "Mayor Brandon Johnson Announces New Appointments to Chicago Board of Education," July 5, 2024
- ↑ Chicago Public Schools Board of Education, "Resolution Regarding Values and Parameters for New Five-Year Transformational Strategic Plan, SY25-SY29," October 24, 2024
- ↑ WBEZ Chicago, "Brandon Johnson’s Board of Ed looks to move away from school choice, toward neighborhood schools," December 13, 2023
- ↑ Chalkbeat Chicago, "Explaining Chicago Public Schools: The types of schools," September 18, 2024
- ↑ Chicago Public Schools, "Admissions Policy for Magnet, Selective Enrollment and Other GoCPS Schools and Programs," July 27, 2022
- ↑ Chalkbeat Chicago, "How do families use Chicago’s vast school choice system? Five people tell us their stories.," December 20, 2023
- ↑ Chicago Sun-Times, "Chicago could move away from school choice. Here’s what that means for parents and students.," October 28, 2024
- ↑ Ed Post, "The Right Choice: Keeping Chicago’s Public School Options Open," May 31, 2024
- ↑ Chicago Teachers Union, "Election 2024," accessed October 24, 2024
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 Chalkbeat Chicago, "Pro-school choice super PACs nearly double the money spent so far in Chicago’s first school board elections," October 2, 2024
- ↑ Crain's Chicago Business, "Johnson and the CTU are pushing for neighborhood schools over choice. Can CPS strike a balance?" October 21, 2024
- ↑ Our Schools, "Homepage," accessed October 28, 2024
- ↑ Illinois State Board of Elections, "Urban Center PAC," October 24, 2024
- ↑ Chicago Magazine, "Schoolyard Fight," August 13, 2024
- ↑ Chalkbeat Chicago, "Pro-school choice super PACs nearly double the money spent so far in Chicago’s first school board elections," October 2, 2024
- ↑ WTTW, "CPS Board Votes Unanimously to Prohibit School Closures Until 2027," September 26, 2024
- ↑ Chicago Sun Times, "We can't ignore the big problem of chronic absenteeism in our schools," September 15, 2024
