CHICAGO — Jessica Biggs, an elected school board member representing parts of downtown and the South Side, officially announced Monday she is running for president of the Chicago Board of Education.

Biggs — the director of the Southwest Organizing Project and a former Chicago Public Schools principal — is the fourth candidate to enter the race to lead the district’s first fully elected board.

All 21 seats of the board will be on the ballot in November. The current hybrid board consists of 11 mayor-appointed members and 10 elected members, including Biggs, who won her seat as an independent in 2024.

In an interview with the Tribune, Biggs said her top priority as president would be to stabilize the district’s financial footing and help the new board work together collaboratively and effectively.

“We spent a lot of the last year, probably two years, in a political back-and-forth, and it feels like Chicago deserves to get back to a focus on teaching and learning, students, school improvement,” Biggs said. “I really think I’m the right person to help us do that.”

The board president will play an outsize role overseeing district policy and approving the district’s billion-dollar budget — working closely with new CPS CEO Macquline King.

The race is expected to be highly contested.

Sendhil Revuluri, who was an appointee on the board from 2019 to 2022, launched his campaign in October. Elected board member Jennifer Custer, who represents District 1B on the Northwest Side, announced that she is running last month. Custer was elected with the support of the Chicago Teachers Union but has frequently opposed City Hall. She is a former suburban teacher and principal.

Victor Henderson, a business trial lawyer who sits on the board of the Urban Prep Academies charter network, also confirmed to the Tribune that he is running.

The inaugural school board elections in 2024 largely set union-backed candidates against advocates for charter schools and school choice, as both sides vied for control of the newly expanded governing body. To run for president, candidates must collect 2,500 signatures from Chicago residents and turn them in to the city between May 18 and 26.

Biggs said she is again running as an independent candidate. She did not say whether she would decline donations from CTU, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools or Urban Center — which were the biggest contributors last election cycle — but noted that she is “working to build a coalition that is representative of Chicago.”

“I’ve had a ton of autonomy to make decisions that I see as in the best interest of students in the city, and I would like to maintain that,” said Biggs.

Her campaign committee reported nearly $50,000 on hand in its most recent quarterly report. Her largest donors so far are the SEIU Illinois Council PAC, which contributed $10,000, and billionaire businessman and major Democratic donor Michael Sacks, who gave $7,300.

Biggs began her career as a special education teacher, and later served as principal at Edmund Burke Elementary in Washington Park for seven years. She lives in Bronzeville and she represents District 6B, which stretches from the Loop to Englewood. Her daughter attends a CPS magnet school.

As a board member, Biggs has emerged as a vocal critic of Johnson. In August, she voted to approve the district’s $10.25 billion budget, which excluded a high-cost, short-term loan and a contentious pension payment supported by the mayor.

She also chaired the board’s CEO search committee — a protracted, winding saga that ultimately led to the appointment of then-interim CEO King as a permanent leader. In February, Biggs and a faction of five elected board members accused Johnson and his allies of “sabotage” and “running political interference” in the search. They called for King to remain in her role at least until a fully elected board is seated.

Biggs said she is proud of the search committee’s work, pointing to the near-unanimous vote in support of King last week — despite the bumps along the way. “We’ve landed in a relatively unified space, and sometimes intervention is necessary to get there, right?” she said.

At the Southwest Organizing Project, she leads the Southwest System of Care, which connects residents to health and social services at neighborhood schools.

Her time at Burke ended on a rocky note. In 2018, she was abruptly fired and placed on the district’s do-not-hire list. A report from the CPS Office of the Inspector General accused her of altering attendance data and not collecting proper paperwork for student transportation. Her termination prompted outcry from the school community, WBEZ reported at the time.

Biggs appealed multiple times to remove her do-not-hire designation, which was finally withdrawn last August. She called her termination “devastating” and said that it was politically motivated. She also noted that Burke rose to the top rating in the district’s performance standards under her leadership.

“I am really proud of the work I did at Burke. I’ll always say that it’s probably the best work I’ll ever do,” Biggs said.

Biggs acknowledged the challenges facing the district, including its billions of dollars in long-term debt and dwindling enrollment. But she said she was optimistic for its future and the promise of elected governance.

“I think there are a million reasons to be hopeful, and we need to lean into what works,” she said.

____

©2026 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.