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Insufficient record — roster only

How we research: the LiberalMind standard — every candidate gets the same deep pass — service and voting record, campaign positions, local news, questionnaires and voter guides, endorsements, public statements, filings — and both columns of the ledger print: the dirt and the credits, each at the same standard of proof. What held up is stated as fact; what did not is labeled unproven or left out. Race roster: Washtenaw County sample ballot, cross-checked against Vote411 (League of Women Voters) race records and Ballotpedia News — grade: compilation.

The race

Ann Arbor Public Schools voters fill five seats on November 3 in two races. Four are full four-year terms, with nine candidates: Lyndon Dibble, Kelley Ellis, Becca Hogan, Rima Mohammad, Jennifer Oldham, Aaron Puno, Carolyn Siebers, Brandon Smith and Andy Spencer. The fifth is a partial term ending December 31, 2028, with three candidates: John Benson, Kevin A. Hudson and Don Wilkerson. The races run against a district backdrop the candidates themselves name: strained trust between the board and the community, communication failures, and fights over technology spending and teacher healthcare costs. One name on the partial-term ballot requires explanation up front, because it is the strangest fact in either race: Don Wilkerson was elected to this board in 2024 — and resigned in May 2026. He is now asking voters to hand the seat back five months later.

The candidates

Full term — Rima Mohammad (incumbent). Credits: the only incumbent in the full-term field — a sitting trustee (term 2023–2026) seeking re-election, with a term of board service behind her and the local Ann Arbor AF podcast's "voting for" recommendation (its formal endorsements went to Hogan and Smith; its hosts said they are also voting for Mohammad and Puno). A trustee who has done the job through the district's trust crisis and asks to continue it starts with a record her eight challengers do not have. Dirt: none found — no adverse item against Mohammad surfaced in the coverage worked; the district-level criticism of the board's communication applies to the board she sits on collectively, and we print it that way rather than pinning it on one member.

Full term — Lyndon Dibble. Credits: the most complete published platform in the field, filed in full with Vote411. An AAPS graduate (12 years in the district's schools, a 19-year resident) running on youth and recent classroom experience — "as the candidate with the most recent classroom experience, I am best situated to connect with and assist our current students" — with three named opening policies: restore the 80-20 healthcare cost split for educators; review the district's technology policies and contracts, which he argues are oversized ("AAPS is using and spending too much on technology and... it harms students"), with cuts evaluated alongside students and teachers; and restore real communication from district leadership, which he calls "bare-minimum" today. Dirt: none found. The weighing point: restoring the 80-20 healthcare split costs money his technology cuts would have to cover, and his file does not show the arithmetic — a platform with named items and unnamed math.

Full term — Becca Hogan and Brandon Smith. Credits: the Ann Arbor AF podcast's two formal endorsements in this race — the city's best-known local-politics outlet read the whole field and picked these two. Dirt: none found for either. The honest limit: beyond the endorsement and the ballot, neither campaign's platform, biography or questionnaire answers were retrievable in the sources we worked — their files are an endorsement line each, and we grade them as such rather than borrowing the podcast's judgment as our own research.

Full term — Aaron Puno. Credits: Ann Arbor AF's hosts are voting for him (short of a formal endorsement). Beyond that, no platform or biography was retrievable in the sources worked. Kelley Ellis, Jennifer Oldham, Carolyn Siebers, Andy Spencer: all four are on the county ballot; Spencer submitted written responses to the Student Advocacy Center's candidate forum (he could not attend), which at least places him in the forum record. Beyond that, no retrievable platform, questionnaire or coverage surfaced for any of the four in the sources worked. In a nine-person race for four seats, five candidacies are, on the reachable record, names.

Partial term — Don Wilkerson. Credits: he has actually held the seat — elected in 2024 as part of the board's current majority cohort, and he took the GoodParty.org pledge. Dirt — documented and decisive for us: he resigned the seat in May 2026, months into the term voters gave him, and is running to reclaim it in November for the remainder (to December 2028). Resignations happen for honorable reasons, and no reason discreditable to him surfaced in the coverage worked — but a trustee seat is a four-year promise, and the candidate who broke the last one five months ago asks voters to underwrite the same promise again. The burden was his to explain in a published record; none was retrievable.

Partial term — John Benson. Credits: Ann Arbor AF's formal endorsement for the partial seat — the only candidate in this race with an organized local endorsement behind him. Dirt: none found. The limit: like Hogan and Smith, his file beyond the endorsement was not retrievable in the sources worked.

Partial term — Kevin A. Hudson. On the ballot; no platform, endorsement or coverage retrievable in the sources worked.

Pros and cons

Record gaps

The deep pass on this race worked: the Washtenaw County sample ballot via ballotviz (the full-term nine and the partial-term three); Vote411's Ann Arbor school board race record (Dibble's complete questionnaire answers); the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan's school-board election hub (the forum, the seat counts, Spencer's written responses); Ann Arbor AF's Episode 86 general-election endorsements (Hogan and Smith endorsed, Puno and Mohammad "voting for," Benson endorsed for the partial seat — a progressive local outlet, its picks printed as its picks); GoodParty.org's Ann Arbor candidate and officeholder listings (Wilkerson's pledge; the current board's terms; Mohammad's incumbency); and Ballotpedia News' coverage of the Wilkerson resignation and return bid. Named gaps: Hogan, Smith, Puno, Ellis, Oldham, Siebers, Spencer, Benson and Hudson published nothing beyond the forum record and endorsement lines that we could retrieve; Wilkerson's published explanation for resigning and returning was not retrievable. Those gaps are printed, not filled.

OUR CALL

Full term: ENDORSE Rima Mohammad for re-election — the field's only incumbent, with a term served and no adverse record — and ENDORSE Lyndon Dibble, whose Vote411 platform is the only complete, named, arguable program any challenger published. We make no endorsement for the remaining two full-term seats: the rest of the field divides between an outlet's endorsements we cannot independently document (Hogan, Smith, Puno) and candidacies with no retrievable record at all (Ellis, Oldham, Siebers, Spencer), and we do not fill seats with guesses. Partial term: ENDORSE John Benson — the race's one organized endorsement, against an opponent whose documented record is a promise already broken once. Kevin A. Hudson's finish is insufficient record, documented above.

This article is part of our complete Election 2026 coverage — every race, researched the same way. Read the full breakdown on our website.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Result pending. No verified call (Associated Press or official) as of November 4, 2026. This page will be updated when the race is called or certified. The original article above is unchanged.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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