Chicago voters will make history this fall for the first time ever.

The entire school board for Chicago Public Schools will be up for election.

This follows decades of advocacy to eliminate mayoral control over the board, culminating in a 2021 bill that set the city on a path towards a fully elected board.

Our Matt Masterson joins us now with more on what we should know.

Matt, what is changing about the school board this year?

So this is the year it's finally going to be a fully elected school board for the last couple years.

It's been a hybrid board after CPS started its first round of elections in 2024.

>> Half of the board, which is 10 members were elected.

The other half still appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson.

As was the board president position picked by Mayor Johnson.

So he still had mayoral control over majority of the board.

That's all going away this year.

All 21 seats on the Board Education are going to be up for grabs.

So this is a massive change.

These seats, the these positions, they they set the district policies.

They set the district goals.

They are in charge of hiring and firing the CPS CEO, both of which they've done within the last year and a half.

They said that the district calendar.

So these are very important positions that Chicagoans will finally a say in picking for themselves.

Yeah, something we know that many Chicagoans have been working for for quite sometime.

How did we get here It's been years and years since 1995, the board has been under mayoral control and bills have been brought repeatedly year after year after year trying to force an elected school board in Chicago.

Chicago famously was the only city in Illinois without an elected school board parents residents, the Chicago teachers union.

They fought for this for a long time saying that they were being denied a voice in of how this education system is run.

It's it was the 3rd largest now the 4th largest school district in the country and parents felt they were iced out from control on this.

So the headwinds finally change in 2021.

Bill made it through the through the Senate on to the desk of Governor JB Pritzker who did ultimately signed into law, bringing about the changes that we saw first hybrid board.

Now the fully elected So what will voters see other Ballot bowl?

So this fall, district is going to broken up into 20 subdistricts that the city is going to be broken up into 20 some districts, each of is going to elect its own board member residents will be able to vote for their own one representative there.

The board president is also going to be a separate election.

That is a citywide race that's not tied to any geographic district like the rest of the seats.

So voters will also have a say in that one.

So voters will see 2 seats that they'll be voting on the board president in their own local representative that will see him there what do we know anything about who might be running president?

There's a handful of candidates so far to current board members.

Jennifer Custer and I just could bigs are both running former board member Central Rivlary is announced his campaign as well as has a board member from Urban Prep Victor Henderson.

So there's there's still time for candidates to announce their campaigns.

But for now, there's only handful of