The Illinois Public Education Lovers Guide to School Board Elections, April 1, 2025
Last week, I shared a guide to all of the contested public library board elections for Illinois’s April 1 election. It’s been updated several times to reflect new information and feedback from readers.
This week, it’s time to share the guide to all of the contested elections for public school boards in Illinois’s April 1 election. The framing and resources for this guide are a bit different than the one for public libraries for many reasons.
It should come as no surprise there are hundreds more contested school board elections across the state than there are public library board elections. There are more schools, period. Building this guide took hundreds of hours, and I am grateful for the folks–acknowledged below–for their help in making this possible.
Digging up information about every contested school board election in Illinois after looking to find out where there were contested elections was not going to be possible with the work of a few hands. For context: we looked up how many seats were on the ballot, then who was running for each of those seats, and that work took anywhere from ten minutes to several hours, depending on the school and where it was located geographically in the state–some counties are far more forthcoming with information than others. Adding any additional hours to track down information about each candidate in 300+ contested races would mean this guide would not get done until after the election.
But rather than scrap the project when the time constraints became abundantly clear, it’s been reimagined as an opportunity for citizens to practice the vital skills of researching local elections and connecting with candidates on issues that are important to them. This guide and exercise might be valuable to you, as much as it might be valuable to a neighbor you know, a family member, a friend, or even folks you work with if you’re in a public school or library. Learning how to do your own research on local elections is a skill with tremendous benefit.
Though this guide will be beneficial for anyone who cares about public education, and it is framed through advocacy for school libraries and school librarians.
How To Use This Guide
This is a collaborative document. The first several contested elections, as well as a few more throughout, will have some information about candidates included. This might mean candidate profiles. This might mean a link to endorsements from local educational organizations. This might mean a candidate is highlighted in red because of something concerning in one of those profiles (one in DeKalb, for example, spent time at a recent candidate forum sharing the same tired, lazy lies about library books we’ve seen across the country, suggesting that maybe it’s okay to ban some books for the "sake of the kids”).
Everyone with access to this document will have comment access, meaning that you can include a comment with any pertinent information or links you’d like to have included. I will routinely go into the document and look through this comments and, as appropriate, incorporate them. For example: if you come across a series of local news interviews for candidates in a district, feel free to leave a comment with those linked.
Don’t feel like putting your feedback right in the document? Questions, comments, or insight into any races can be dropped into this handy form. This form is the same one being used in association with the Illinois Library Lovers Guide to Public Library Elections, so the language may reflect that.
How To Research Local Candidates
There is no specific means by which to track down information about any given candidate. This work will differ depending on your school district and where you’re located in the state of Illinois. More rural communities will, by virtue of their location, have different access to newspapers and digital tools than those in more populated suburban areas. The steps below are meant to be starting points.
Find out who the incumbents are in the election.
Incumbents are the candidates who are already serving on the school board and are up for reelection. You can find your incumbents by going to your school district’s website and navigating to the school board page.
Incumbents aren’t always the best candidate. But knowing who is already on the board helps in making tough decisions. Did they fumble an opportunity during their term that you find in your research? Were they vocal advocates for ensuring library services continued in the district? This information helps you make a decision, as their records are accessible and findable.
Search on Facebook for Each Candidate and/or Election
Starting at Facebook is a personal preference, but in an era where building a Facebook fan page and connecting with potential voters in local Facebook groups is easy, this tends to provide some good information pretty quickly. Plus, you can see what else the candidate is interested in, talking about, or endorsing.
There are two main ways to search, though others are possible. While searching for each candidate’s name is one route–and you can narrow down by location so you’re getting the correct Mary Brown–it’s often easier to simply search the school district itself.
Here’s an example for Aurora East USD 131.
Putting in the name of the district brought up four of the candidates quickly (you can only see two above, but scrolling down brings up two more). You’re able to then visit those candidate pages. In one instance, an individual who isn’t in the race made an endorsement for one of the candidates. This is helpful information, as it can provide context for what that candidate is bringing to the table.
By searching the school district name, you might also be able to pull up information about candidates who don’t have official pages. If they’ve liked a particular post related to the district, you can then go down the rabbit hole and find information about them that way. This was how I found a whole community’s drama around a public library tax issue that led to an obscene number of folks running for their board (scroll down to Coulterville Public Library).
Google Local Candidate Profiles in the News
Lots of local and regional newspapers will post profiles of candidates on the ballot. You can often find them by simply searching the candidate’s name and the district. You may need to remove any middle initials of the candidate’s name, and you may find your results are better if you limit your search to a timeframe of the last few months.
A moment here to revisit a recurring complaint I have about local news: so much is paywalled. While there are reasons for this that are legitimate, there is no world where it does any one any good to paywall local elections profiles like this. Shaw, as you see above, is notorious for doing this.
If your local community cannot read the profiles of the candidates on the ballot, how are they supposed to make an informed decision? Why are you putting these together in the first place? Democracy dies behind a paywall, as only those with the money to subscribe to publications–in this case ones that aren’t even truly local–are able to access information on a topic that absolutely, positively concerns their future.
Ahem.
Enter your public library.
My local library has an incredible resource for accessing otherwise paywalled news content. It’s the Chicago Area Community Newspaper Collection. All I have to do is put in my library card number and I’m able to then access the information behind those Shaw paywalls legitimately.
I used this particular candidate as an example because for a race that is non-partisan, she’s proudly MAGA. This is pretty useful information in making an informed decision at the polls.
An addendum to this step: anything you pull up on a candidate via Google, not just candidate profiles, can be helpful. In the last consolidated election, my local school board race was contested. There was little information about one of the candidates, but I was able to pull up a very helpful article about her that showed her holding an anti-masking sign during one of those “unmask the kids” campaigns. It told me what I needed to know.
Research Local Candidate Forums That Are Online or Forthcoming
Local candidate forums will continue until the days before the election, so see if there is one in your community. These are frequently hosted by the League of Women Voters, so searching for your local chapter can help you track down what they’re covering.
You can also search for your school district and candidate forum.
Even if a forum has already happened, it is worth looking to see if there’s a recording. The League of Women Voters has, for example, done a great job of making these accessible after the event.
Candidate forums are especially helpful when there are several good candidates from which to choose. They’re also precisely where you may have the opportunity to ask your candidates what’s on your mind.
Poke around, too, and see if your candidates are hosting any informal socials or gatherings. This is another opportunity to talk with them personally.
See Where Candidates Have Spent Their Money
This last tool won’t be applicable for everyone running in the contested elections, just as it won’t necessarily be something that everyone researching the candidates care deeply about. But it’s a neat tool that can provide some insight into candidate partisanship. We know Illinois school board races are nonpartisan, but that doesn’t mean the individuals running for office don’t have a political affiliation.
The Federal Elections Committee requires that any candidate running for federal office submit information about where they’ve received contributions. You can look up any individual you’d like in this database and see if they’ve contributed to the campaigns of a particular party, candidate, or Political Action Committee (aka, the PACs).
In the image above, you’ll see a pink arrow pointing to where you can look up the contributors. That’s where you’d put in the name of the candidate running for your local office. You can limit that search by city, or if you scroll down, you can limit by state (which might give you better information, as a candidate’s contributions may have happened when they lived in a different city). Then scroll down on the left panel to change the date range within which you search, or it defaults to very recent data.
Here’s an example.
Dana Wiley is an incumbent in the race for Huntley CSD 158. This particular race is a contentious one, as it has been in the last few rounds. The board suggested in 2023 when the state passed its anti-book ban law that they should simply opt out because many pushed the same nonsense rhetoric about naughty books in the schools fed to them by certain political agendas. Wiley is seeking reelection for the board. Putting her name into the database, adding “Huntley” as the city, with the date range of 1/1/2020 to 12/30/2025 brings up the following:
You’ll see Wiley’s made one small contribution in 2022. But to whom is the part of interest–it’s WINRED, a republican fundraising platform. This could be helpful information, given what the republican philosophies on education at the national level are.
Andrew Bittman, chair of the Huntley School Board and loudest advocate for eschewing state funds for not banning books, isn’t on the ballot this year since his term ends in 2027. But you can see his affiliations neatly in this database, too:
Be patient with this search tool, as it’s a massive database. It sometimes takes a minute to pull up information, if there’s any available.
You can also do a search for contributions to state candidates in the Illinois State Board of Elections database.
Advocating For School Libraries and Librarians
I’m handing this section of the guide over to the advocacy team at AISLE, which was instrumental in helping get this guide together. They spent hours sorting through information to identify these contested elections and listing out the folks on the ballot.
School librarians need advocacy from everyone to survive in today’s educational environment. With changing ideas in education over the last few decades, school librarians have often been eliminated despite the profession’s natural ability to flex and adapt to new technology and literacy needs. Many people are unaware that multiple studies have been done over the years definitively showing licensed school librarians have a measurable, positive influence on a school community, resulting in higher scores in reading and on standardized tests.
School board members often do not realize what librarians do every day in an educational setting, and it’s important for all library supporters to help spread awareness on the importance of licensed school librarians! Consider reaching out to school board candidates in your voting district and mentioning school libraries and licensed school librarians. If you are unsure what the staffing situation is in your area, you can use data from the SLATE project to look up districts and find out if they have licensed librarians on staff or if your school library is run by a paraprofessional or volunteer.
When you compose an email to a school board candidate, here are a few sample comments or questions you can use.
Start with a short introduction
“Hello, my name is Dewey D. and I am researching candidates for the upcoming school board election. One issue important to me is the state of school libraries and licensed school librarians in Illinois. It’s been shown in multiple studies that a licensed school librarian has many positive effects on a school, including higher reading scores.”
Need a librarian? Make potential school board members aware of that now!
“District X [fill in specifics here – “does not have a licensed school librarian in each building” or perhaps “only has X licensed librarians for Y number of students.” Then ask a relevant question for the specific situation.] “Would you support the district [what’s your specific question? “hiring a licensed librarian in each school in the district in place of paraprofessional staff?”]
A librarian in every school doesn’t mean you’re “safe.” It still would be beneficial to reach out.
“District X is fortunate to have a licensed school librarian in each building in our district. Would you support keeping librarians in these positions when faced with budget cuts?”
If you don’t feel comfortable directly addressing any specific situations/asking questions:
“As a voter in the upcoming school board election, I would like to share some important information about the role school libraries play in education.. I hope you will support school libraries if you are elected to the board. Attached is a document with more information.”
Thank you so, so, SO much to the folks at AISLE who helped with this massive undertaking.
Notes and Caveats
This guide only covers contested school board/trustee elections. That means there are more candidates than positions available. If your school district has three available seats and three candidates, it is not included.
Several counties throughout the state are not included. Those had no information available as of the concluding date of information gathering, March 10, 2025. Those counties are: Alexander, Boone, Brown, Cass, Christian, Clay, Clinton, Fayette, Franklin, Gallatin, Greene, Hamilton, Hardin, Henderson, Jackson, Jersey, Johnson, Kankakee, Livingston, Logan, Marion, Massac, McDonough, Mercer, Morgan, Perry, Pope, Pike, Pulaski, Richland, Saline, Schulyer, Shelby, Wabash, and Wayne. Getting coverage of 65 of Illinois’s 102 counties feels PRETTY GOOD, given that this has never been done before.
Districts are listed by how the state of Illinois lists them. You might not commonly call your school by its district name, especially if it’s something like CCHS 53. Before you begin to do your searching, learn the name of your district. You can usually find that on your individual school website (they’ll link to the district) or you can Google the name of a school within the district with “school district” and have it pop up. Note: some cities, towns, and rural areas have several schools with the same name but they are different districts.
Some districts have contested elections for only full term positions. Some have contested elections only for unexpired terms. Some have both, and some may have contested elections for part of the district’s boundaries (for example, only 2 candidates within a township boundary may be elected among those vying for 4 seats). If there is anything other than a straightforward contested election for full term school board candidates, that is indicated in the NOTES field of the document. That is the second column following the name of the school.
There is contact information for some candidates. That is public information made available with candidate lists. Do not contact these candidates at their homes. If they have included an email address, though, you may find it valuable to reach out to them that way. Candidates have no obligation to respond, so you may or may not hear back.
Illinois public school trustee elections are non-partisan. This means that individuals do not run under any party, such as democrat or republican. But that doesn’t mean partisan politics aren’t clear and present in what the candidates says or does. There is an example of that above.
You’re welcome to share this guide far and wide to help advocates for strong public schools and libraries make the most informed decisions possible.
Without further ado:
The Illinois Public School Advocates Guide to Contested School Board Elections, April 1, 2025