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Includes Updated Vote Counts. First time candidates Clare Kelly in the City’s 1st Ward and Devon Reid in the southeast 8th Ward hold short leads in their aldermanic races, but mail-in votes are still outstanding and a final determination may be a few weeks off.
In the District 65 School Board election, Donna Wang Su holds a 46 vote lead over Marquise Weatherspoon.
The City Elections
In the Tuesday, April 6 General Election, Evanston’s first municipal race in four years, newcomer Stephanie Mendoza appears to be a clear winner in the
District 65, District 202 elect new school boards
Unofficial results show voters re-elected Joey Hailpern, Soo La Kim and Elisabeth “Biz” Lindsay-Ryan, the board’s current vice president, to serve on the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 board. Newcomer Donna Wang Su is also projected to win a seat in the race, though Marquise Weatherspoon trails her by 46 votes.
Kim has over 20 years of teaching and administrative experience in higher education, and is currently the assistant dean of graduate programs in the School of Professional Studies at Northwestern. She is a founding member of Lincoln Elementary School’s equity committee and has been on the board since filling a vacancy in April 2020.
School candidate has two-week wait to see if she won
Donna Wang Su trailed in early returns but pulled ahead as ballots from Skokie precincts were counted.
Donna Wang Su.
Donna Wang Su says “she stayed up pretty late last night, refreshing the page” that had election returns.
Those returns came in much slower than expected, but when the counting was finished, Su took the fourth and final seat on the Evanston/Skokie District 65 school board, base on numbers released by the County Clerk’s office this afternoon, by just 46 votes over Marquise Weatherspoon, 5,438 to 5,392.
But because mail-in ballots postmarked by election day will still be counted if they arrive in the next two weeks, Su says she’s still “a little on the nervous side. I don’t feel comfortable” declaring victory quite yet. There’s still a chance that Weatherspoon could win. In fact, on her Facebook page, Weatherspoon posted that she “has not given up hope.”
Evanston Now
Push for STEM school in predominantly Black 5th Ward runs up against looming district budget deficits.
An image from the candidate forum.
School board candidates in Evanston/Skokie District 65 had a hard and sometimes painful discussion Wednesday night about something many parents want but the district likely can’t afford right now a new school in the 5th Ward.
It’s an issue which combines two challenging topics money and race.
All eight candidates, three incumbents and five challengers, answered questions in a Facebook forum hosted by Evanston Live TV.
The primarily minority 5th Ward has been without a school for decades, with children being bused to other parts of town. Non-incumbent Marquise Weatherspoon, a parent of four, said Black children often “do not feel included” in other schools. She said a 5th Ward school is needed.
Here’s who’s running for D65, D202 school boards this April
January 18, 2021
Eight candidates have filed petitions to run for four seats on the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 board in the upcoming municipal election. In District 202, only three incumbents have filed petitions, while the fourth seat remains open.
The filing period for board elections, Dec. 14 to Dec. 21, has passed, and the election will be held April 6. Below is a list of all confirmed candidates.
DISTRICT 65
Angela Blaising: Blaising is the vice president of capital markets at Hyatt Hotels Corporation and a mother of two D65 middle schoolers. In an interview with the Democratic Party of Evanston, she said her background in finance would help her balance the district’s budget and strategies for safely reopening schools immediately. Blaising emphasized that she believes in safely reopening schools, and that doing so is the equitable choice for supporting Black and brown students, who have been dispropor