Three candidates are vying for the District 6A seat on Chicago's school board, a district covering the Near North Side and West Town that has become a magnet for outside money as citywide spending on the races has surged past $9 million in the campaigns' final stretch. Incumbent Anusha Thotakura faces challengers Isaiah White and Brenda Lee Anderson in a contest that mirrors a broader citywide pattern of union and anti-union dollars flooding school board elections.
Thotakura was appointed to the board by the mayor in 2024 after placing second among three candidates in the city's first school board election, according to Chalkbeat. She is now seeking to keep her seat with backing from the Chicago Teachers Union and the Service Employees International Union, which represents school support workers, per the same report. As WBEZ notes, Thotakura and White have both made boosting reading and math scores their central campaign priority.
White, who works as a school support worker himself, has received campaign funding described by WBEZ as thousands of dollars from The Urban Center and the political arm of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. Chalkbeat's reporting adds that White's campaign has drawn money from political committees tied to The Urban Center, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, and the Common Ground Collective — with The Urban Center advocating for school choice across both public and private schools. He has also been endorsed by an anti-CTU political action committee that Chalkbeat describes as heavily funded by billionaire Michael Sacks, a PAC that says its aim is to engage voters around effective progressive policies.
Two Different Pictures of Anderson's Support
Brenda Lee Anderson, a Northwestern University lecturer on leave, presents a less clear-cut picture when it comes to institutional backing. Chalkbeat reported that Anderson is not backed by major special interest groups, while the Chicago Sun-Times listed her as supported by the Chicago Principals & Administrators Association and Leadership for Educational Equity's PAC. The two outlets appear to define major backing differently, and neither account resolves the discrepancy. The Sun-Times also listed Thotakura's support as including Our Schools Chicago alongside CTU and SEIU, and named Common Ground Collective, INCS Action PAC and The Urban Center as backers of White.
Where Thotakura and White have zeroed in on reading and math scores, Anderson's main goal is fixing CPS's chronic budget crisis, according to Chalkbeat. Separately, Block Club Chicago reviewed CPS records showing White was hired as a substitute in April 2024 before becoming a day-to-day Special Education Classroom Assistant.
A District With No Neighborhood High Schools
District 6A has just 14 public schools — the fewest of any school board electoral district in the city — and none of them are neighborhood high schools, per WBEZ's reporting. The district's students are a more diverse mix than those in most other districts, though its schools have a larger share of white and Asian American students than CPS overall. Two schools in the district received the state's highest rating, while 60 percent of District 6A schools fell into the lowest two of the state's six school-quality designations under 2026 state data — a ranking system that expanded from five levels the prior year. Those bottom two designations were called comprehensive and intensive last year.
Spending Surges Across the City
The District 6A race unfolds against a backdrop of extraordinary citywide spending. Chalkbeat reported that school-board campaign spending skyrocketed past $9 million in the campaigns' decisive final stretch, with special interest groups pouring more than $2.6 million into advertising since the start of October alone — pushing total independent expenditures on school board races above $6.7 million. The outlet also reported that anti-CTU groups have handily outspent the union across the races.
The Chicago Tribune offered a different accounting, tallying $5.9 million flowing directly to candidates since fall 2025 and another $6.8 million spent by independent expenditure groups — figures that measure different categories and time windows than Chalkbeat's total. The Tribune reported that the Illinois Network of Charter Schools' independent spending arm had shelled out nearly $2.1 million with more than $3 million still in its coffers, while SEIU gave $315,000 to its endorsed candidates from July through September and backed a super PAC that spent $692,000 supporting those candidates. Three pro-school-choice super PACs, per the Tribune, spent nearly $2.3 million on ads targeting Hilario Dominguez, the CTU's pick for school board president.
Money has flowed heavily to specific candidates elsewhere in the city, illustrating the scale of outside involvement in these races. The TRiiBE reported that Jessica Biggs had received $400,000 from Sacks as of an Oct. 15 filing, with another $300,000 reported by Oct. 20, while Dominguez had drawn over $600,000 from the CTU PAC and its affiliates as of Oct. 15, with more than $406,000 in additional CTU PAC money reported by Oct. 22. Chalkbeat reported that Sacks made several six- and seven-figure donations to the super PAC Common Ground Collective, which it described as the single biggest contributor in the election. The TRiiBE noted that state campaign-filing records were being updated frequently as the race continued.
