New look coming to MPS board, as three incumbents decide not to run again,

The composition of the Milwaukee School Board will look much different after the April election, as three of four incumbents are not seeking reelection.

Candidates had until 5 p.m. Tuesday to file papers to be on the April ballot.

Jilly Gokalgandhi, who holds the District 5 seat; Marcela “Xela” Garcia, who holds the District 6 seat; and Henry Leonard, who holds the District 7 seat, will leave the board after their terms expire in April. The only incumbent running this spring is James Ferguson, who is running unopposed for the District 4 seat.

Ferguson also ran unopposed for the seat in a board-ordered special election in November. He is finishing out the remaining term of Aisha Carr, who resigned from the board last year.

In District 5, Christopher Fons will run unopposed. In District 6, Mimi Reza also will run unopposed.

District 7 will be the only contested seat this year, as Molly Kuether-Steele and Katherine Vannoy face off.

Neither Gokalgandhi nor Garcia immediately responded to phone calls from a reporter requesting comment.

Leonard said he made the decision to step down after talking to his wife.

“For her, she says it’s just too much. ‘We can’t go on decent vacations. We can’t make plans because you have to be on call, basically, if you’re going to do the job the right way, and I said ‘yeah you’re right. That’s true.’ So that was really the main reason why I didn’t run again,” Leonard said. “It wasn’t too taxing to me. I’m not stressed out about this job. It was challenging, but I liked to find ways to try to make things work together, try to get different groups of people to start working on the same page.”

The changes to the board come as the district has been trying to get its financial house in order since the Wisconsin Department of Instruction sent a letter to the district last May saying the district had failed to provide key financial reports. Some of those reports were months overdue.

The district has also been seeking a permanent superintendent since Keith Posley resigned last June. Eduardo Galvan has been serving as the district’s interim superintendent since July. In December, the board reopened the search for its next superintendent to find “a deeper slate of candidates.”

In addition, the district is trying to decide what to do about its facilities. In recent months the district released a list of schools that could potentially be closed or merged, upgraded or receive investments in the future.

Contact Alec Johnson at (262) 875-9469 or alec.johnson@jrn.com. Follow him on X (Twitter) at @AlecJohnson12.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: MPS board will look different after April election with new members

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