Teachers Union Wins Big in Milwaukee School Board Races

Megan O’Halloran, Erika Siemsen, Marva Herndon and Missy Zombor. Photos from the candidates’ campaigns.

Four of the five candidates endorsed by the Milwaukee teachers union won in Tuesday’s school board election. Conservatives came up short against the liberal orientated candidates; however, they may have picked up one board member in Darryl L. Jackson.

Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association (MTEA) president, Amy Mizialko, made it clear where her union stood in making their endorsements: “MTEA members have endorsed five candidates who are unapologetic champions of public schools and who promise to work to protect MPS students, workers and our community from the continued attacks of the unregulated private voucher and charter school industry.”

Incumbent Megan O’Halloran in District 8 ran unopposed. Incumbent Erika Siemsen in District 2 defeated write-in candidate, Pamela Holmes. Incumbent Marva Herndon in District 1 defeated challenger Shandowlyon Hendricks Reaves. And in the open seat for District 3, Jackson, a businessman, beat union endorsed candidate Gabi Hart.

The most high-profile race was the city-wide seat, where union endorsed Missy Zombor beat former school board director Jeff Spence.

These four elected liberal school members, added to present board members Jilly Gokalgandhi, Marcela (Xela) Garcia and Henry Leonard, make up a seven-member body clearly favoring a pro-public school, liberal agenda. Only school board member Aisha Carr shows signs of supporting privatization. While Jackson was supported by the business community, how he will actually vote is yet to be determined.

At a time when school board races across Wisconsin have turned into heated battlefields, and school board meetings are filled with shouts of anger and frustration, Milwaukee school races and meetings are a comparative sea of tranquility.

This is a far cry from when the Milwaukee school board was the state’s most intense battleground. In 2003, union endorsed candidate Tom Balistreri beat the more conservative, business endorsed incumbent John Gardner for the city-wide position. Estimates are that between to two candidates and third-party expenditures, over $400,000 was spent on this single, city-wide race. This race resulted in the liberals regaining control of the Milwaukee school board.

This time around, far less money was spent as Zombor defeated Spence, who was mounting a comeback. Spence was part of the conservative majority that lost control. He lost his District 2 seat in 2016.

In this race, Spence “received donations of $6,000 from charter and private choice school advocates, including Carmen Schools founder and former City Forward Collective director Patricia Hoben, Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce board member Cory Nettles, and former Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele,” as WUWM reported. Zomber got donations of $5,000 from the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association PAC Fund, $1,200 from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, $1,377 from the federal Democratic Party, and $1,000 from the IBEW. Zomber listed a string of endorsements from elected officials, labor unions and liberal organizations to mount an aggressive ground game.

Zombor was formerly the communication director for the MTEA and now the marketing director for Rethinking Schools, the progressive magazine, book publisher and thinktank. She replaces Bob Peterson in the school board city-wide position. Peterson is a former MTEA president and a founding member of Rethinking Schools.

Although other school board members are not directly related to Rethinking Schools, they share similar values. Beyond opposition to school privatization and support for labor unions, they support safety in schools through psychological services, restorative justice over increasing policing, and the arts over curriculum directed toward testing. They support diversity and LGBTQ+ rights over anti-critical race theory and alternative gender suppression. Milwaukee is likely to stick with Milwaukee Superintendent Keith Posley’s program of “Ambitious Instruction” and community schooling.

Zombor offered this take on her election win: “Voters made it loud and clear that they want their public schools to be controlled by the community and not a handful of wealthy donors, Chamber of Commerce, by school profiteers.” She adds that she “cannot wait to get started as the next city-wide Milwaukee school board director.”

In a series of school board elections, pro-voucher conservatives have failed to regain control of the Milwaukee school system.

Meanwhile Republican Wisconsin legislators introduced a bill to require schools with a history of violence to hire in-school police. Legislators may also be tempted to follow the lead of other states where conservative legislatures have narrowed the authority of school boards by outlawing critical race theory, passing “don’t say gay” legislation, and banning certain books. In all cases, though, a veto by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers would be likely.