Chicago school board candidate Jessica Biggs faces scrutiny over 2018 firing
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
Chicago school board candidate Jessica Biggs was fired as a principal in 2018 and put on a do-not-hire list.
She is now in a three-way race to lead the city's first elected school board.
Background
Jessica Biggs is a Chicago Board of Education member for District 6, a former Chicago Public Schools special education teacher and principal at Burke Elementary on the city's South Side. She was fired as principal in 2018 following an Inspector General report and placed on the district's do-not-hire list, which the district removed her from in August 2025. She is now one of three candidates vying to become the first-ever elected president of the Chicago Board of Education, a body overseeing a roughly $10 billion annual budget.
How it unfolded
- 2018Biggs was fired as principal at Burke Elementary following a 2018 Inspector General report and placed on CPS' do-not-hire list.
- Aug 2025The district removed Biggs from the do-not-hire list.
- Sep 15, 2026Biggs, Hilario Dominguez and Victor Henderson appeared at a WTTW News forum for board president candidates.
- Oct 14, 2026The three candidates participated in a forum hosted by WBEZ, the Sun-Times and Chalkbeat.
- Oct 31, 2026The candidates met at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition for a Saturday morning forum ahead of Election Day.
- Nov 2, 2026Biggs spoke with voters at Broadway Armory Park in Edgewater.
- Nov 3, 2026Polls closed in the historic three-way race to become Chicago's first-ever elected Board of Education president.
Who’s saying what
- Biggs
- Biggs says she spoke out against policies harmful to her students and school, and that "these issues were really used to remove a really successful principal."
- Biggs
- Biggs says no single actor — not CPS, not City Hall, not Springfield — can solve the district's deficit alone, and she would convene City and State partners around a shared plan.
- Dominguez
- Dominguez advocates universal full-day pre-K starting at age three and says the first step is to fully fund classrooms.
- Henderson
- Henderson says "job number one is to change the culture" and that he won't let anyone "pull my strings," pointing to his rivals' union and PAC support.
Still unverified
Biggs' claim that she was terminated based on a rushed internal investigation after criticizing CPS practices is one she "has long maintained."