Parents and local school council members at Peirce Elementary School are pushing Chicago Public Schools to sanction a political group that staffed a table and handed out school board election fliers at the school's August 20 back-to-school fair. The group, Common Ground Collective, distributed English and Spanish fliers about the election that included a QR code directing people to its website, which listed school board endorsements.
The complaint, first reported by Chicago Sun-Times, prompted CPS's local school council to complain and seek sanctions, and the district's ethics office is now investigating what happened at Peirce. CPS policy prohibits political campaigning on school grounds, and a Common Ground Collective spokeswoman said the endorsements were not posted to the group's website until after the Peirce event, while the organization said more broadly that it supported multiple back-to-school events across the district. Peirce Local School Council chair Lizzie Turner and Principal Luis Avila lead the school where the incident took place.
Common Ground Collective paid for the DJ at the fair and staffed the table itself, according to the Sun-Times report. Peirce local school council members asked CPS to sanction Common Ground Collective over the incident.
Parents Take Their Complaint to the Full Board
The dispute did not stay confined to Peirce. On September 10, parents formally raised their concerns before the Chicago Board of Education during public comment, detailing how Common Ground Collective distributed materials and staffed a table at the school's fair, according to Board Rule. Parents at that hearing noted that one of two QR codes on the group's fliers returned a 404 error, while the other led to the group's homepage, where users could navigate to endorsement pages.
CPS guidance says political campaigning is prohibited on school grounds. The district has also recently issued guidance to principals and local school councils about electioneering rules.
This is not the first time CPS watchdogs have flagged political campaigns reaching into classrooms. A January 2025 report by the CPS Office of Inspector General, examined by WTTW, recommended that school board candidates attest that they would not send electioneering communications to CPS email addresses. That investigation had stemmed from former Mayor Lori Lightfoot's campaign sending emails to teachers soliciting student volunteers.
A Well-Funded Group With Insider Ties
Common Ground Collective was founded about a year before the Sun-Times report, according to Board Rule's reporting on the group's origins.
The group has a nonprofit and two political arms, and it has established a social welfare nonprofit under section 501(c)(4). Federal law does not require 501(c)(4) organizations to disclose their supporters, and Common Ground Collective's nonprofit reported $2.1 million in its 2025 tax filing that does not show who donated to the organization, according to the tax filing cited in the Sun-Times report.
Billionaire Democratic megadonor Michael Sacks has funded Common Ground Collective heavily, and per the Chicago Tribune, Sacks added more than $900,000 to the group's political action committee this month, around the same time his legal team issued a cease-and-desist letter to an advertising firm over social media videos criticizing his political spending. Sacks helped raise $10 million to launch Common Ground Collective to counter Mayor Johnson's progressive agenda, and the group opposes the Chicago Teachers Union.
Money Flowing Into a Historic Election
The stakes are high because the November 3 election marks the final phase of Chicago's transition from mayoral appointment to a fully elected school board, expanding the Board of Education to 21 members. That structural overhaul traces back to 2021 legislation, as Ballotpedia notes, and follows the 2024 hybrid election in which voters elected 10 members while Johnson appointed 11, producing a board split between four CTU-backed elected members and three charter-aligned winners.
School board candidates had received $3.3 million as of the Tuesday before the Sun-Times report published, and Common Ground Collective's political groups had donated about $31,000 directly to school board candidates while spending $944,000 on digital ads supporting or opposing candidates. The group endorsed Kyna Lenhof, who is treasurer of the 40th Ward Democratic Organization, contributing about $4,000 to her campaign and spending $37,500 on digital ads supporting Lenhof or opposing Debby Pope, a retired CPS teacher and CTU stalwart.
Total campaign fundraising for Chicago school board candidates had reached nearly $2 million, per Hoodline's earlier reporting.
Names Attached to the Endorsements
Rosenfeld is running unopposed.
Smith was identified as a source for a DJ recommendation in an email to Peirce's principal. Separately, Austin Berg sent a complaint to the CPS ethics adviser about candidate Michilla Blaise after she posted a video showing students dancing and welcoming her to a school; Blaise later took the video down and said she posted it because she thought it was cute, not as part of her campaign.
With Election Day now weeks away, the fight over Peirce Elementary's back-to-school fair has become one more flashpoint in a race already defined by unprecedented spending and sharp-elbowed tactics across all 20 electoral districts.
