ONE People’s Campaign is excited to announce our endorsements for School Board for the November 2026 election. In district 2A, covering Rogers Park and West Ridge, we are thrilled to endorse Ebony DeBerry! In district 2B, covering Edgewater, parts of Uptown, Lincoln Square and Ravenswood, we are proud to endorse Debby Pope for re-election! In district 4a, covering Uptown and parts of Lakeview, we are excited to endorse Karen Zaccor for re-election!. All three of these candidates have demonstrated their commitment to fighting for progressive revenue and for community schools that serve our communities.
We believe in these candidates
All three of these candidates come from our movement and organization. They have been shoulder to shoulder with us fighting for progressive revenue, for improving social services and ensuring we have a city, state and school district where government is an instrument for the common good.
Ebony DeBerry is a life long community organizer and education equity, whose commitment to strong neighborhood schools rooted from her own experiences as a student, teacher, parent and LSC member for Gale Academy in Rogers Park. She was pivotal in the fight to save Gale from closure in 2012 and was a major organizing force within the grassroots push to win a fully elected and accountable school board. In her two years in office she co-sponsored the Green Schools Ordinance which established a pilot program to invest in expanding energy efficiency in CPS schools and successfully pushed for requirements that the CPS Superintendent have classroom experience. She has been deeply involved in the Parent Mentor program to bring parents, community members and teachers of color into public schools to better ensure that all students, particularly students of color and immigrant students, enjoy a rigorous and joyous education. She is running for re-election in district 2A
Karen Zaccor is a long time Uptown community organizer and teacher with nearly three decades of classroom experience. As the first head of the Stockton LSC she successfully fought to end discrimination against bilingual students, end racially biased tracking policies and to remove lead from the school campus. In 2010, she was a founding member and teacher of Uplift Community Schools in Uptown and taught there until June 2024. Karen organized alongside Northside Action for Justice (NA4J) and the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) to win an elected school board. Karen’s life and record are a testimony to her commitment to building truly equitable public schools across Chicago. Since being appointed in 2024, she helped write a large part of the board’s charter school resolution and also drafted an alternative renewal rubric, which is helping us move in the direction of greater accountability for charter schools and a renewal process that better allows the district to predict which schools are in trouble and offer support in a timely way. Karen has also been deeply involved in organizing school safety patrols to keep school communities safe from state violence like last November’s Operation Midway Blitz, and has been leading a push to call a special session of the Illinois State Legislature to address CPS’s budget crisis and long-standing unequal funding levels. She is running for re-election in district 4a.
Debby Pope is a retired bilingual teacher and union organizer with decades of experience in the classroom and in fighting for educational equity. Teaching in underinvested schools across the south, southwest and northwest sides for decades, she has long championed winning progressive revenue so we can ensure equitable funding to all public schools and give all students the education they deserve to thrive. In her two years in office she has been actively engaged She has been active in efforts alongside ONE People’s Campaign and other grassroots organizations to demand increased funding for CPS from Springfield, and was active in fighting against the 2013 school closures. She was one of 10 appointed members of the 2024-2026 school board, and is running for re-election to her seat.
Our endorsement process
To reach these endorsements, ONE People’s Campaign’s political committee compiled a candidate questionnaire which was circulated to all candidates in the above districts, with candidates in districts 4a and 2a being given until March 2nd to fill out and return, and candidates in 2b being given until July 12th. After reviewing the responses we received for each district, we invited candidates with broadly aligned answers to our two endorsement sessions We held our first endorsement on March 9th for candidates running in districts 2a and 4a, where we had endorsed candidates in 2024, and a separate endorsement session on July 21st for candidates running district 2b, where we had not previously made an endorsement. Endorsement sessions were open to CPS students, parents and other school community members and active OPC members. Decisions were made by majority vote of those in each endorsement session.
What we’re up against
This November will be only the second time we as Chicagoans will get to elect members of our school board, and the first time in a generation that the ENTIRE board will be fully elected and accountable to the people. It’s vital that we all show up and get involved. We know that anti-public education billionaires and charter school interests have already poured nearly $2 million into trying to influence this race, to grab back control of CPS and once again return it to the era of racist school closures and budgets balanced on the backs of our most vulnerable students. For the sake of our children, our communities and our democracy, we cannot go back to that era.
At ONE People’s Campaign, we know that our students and our communities need and deserve structural solutions to decades of disinvestment, not band-aid solutions that continue to push the pain onto our students so that billionaires remain unburdened. We envision a public school system in Chicago that is truly a public good, providing quality, well-rounded education to all Chicago students regardless of race, class, geography or immigration status. If this vision inspires you, join us September 5th as we launch our school board election canvass from 10:00am-2:00pm at 4750 N Sheridan Rd, Suite 201!