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Thirty-four people are vying for five open seats on the board for the Detroit Public Schools Community District, a pivotal race that could result in multiple new people overseeing the largest district in Michigan.
It’s the largest slate since 2016, the year DPSCD was created and more than 60 people ran to serve on the new district’s board.
This race could be consequential because only two incumbents — Steve Bland and Bessie Harris — are running for reelection. Both were appointed to their seats last year to fill out the remaining terms of members who resigned.
The board’s current leaders — Board President LaTrice McClendon and Board Vice President Corletta Vaughn — are not running for re-election. The fifth open seat belonged to Iris Taylor, who died in July.
Thirty-one of the candidates are running for four-year terms while three of them — Ijazz Jackson, Aliya Moore, and Shawn Vaughn — are running for a two-year partial term.
Just 19 of the 34 candidates responded to a questionnaire Chalkbeat sent via email and text in July. They have a plethora of ideas of how to address some of the biggest challenges, including fighting high rates of chronic absenteeism, increasing enrollment, and dealing with the pending loss of the funding that allowed the district to hire academic interventionists.
In our voter guide below, you’ll read the candidate bios and their answers to our questions as they wrote them. Chalkbeat did not edit for grammar or punctuation. For more information on voting, go here.
Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org.
Clarification: Sept. 21, 2026: This story was updated to clarify that one of the five board seats in the November election will have a partial term that ends in 2028.
