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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: Detroit Department of Elections official candidate list, via Chalkbeat Detroit — grade: official. Thirty-four candidates is the largest field in this series; where the record on a candidate is a name and nothing else, this article says exactly that, name by name.

The race

Detroit elects a new majority of its school board on November 3. Five of the seven seats on the Detroit Public Schools Community District board are open: four full four-year terms, contested by 31 candidates, and one partial term ending in 2028, contested by three. The churn behind the ballot is extraordinary. Board chair LaTrice McClendon and vice chair Corletta Vaughn were both disqualified from the ballot over campaign-finance late fees (Vaughn, who owed $950 per a July county filing, chose not to run again; McClendon paid her fee but decided against refiling, citing family). Member Iris Taylor, who had filed for re-election, died in July 2026. Two other members resigned last year — Angelique Peterson-Mayberry (now a Wayne County commissioner) and Sherry Gay-Dagnogo (now the City of Detroit's ombudsman). The two incumbents who remain on the ballot, Steve Bland Jr. and Bessie Harris, are themselves 2025 appointees.

The question under the election, stated by Superintendent Nikolai Vitti himself to Chalkbeat: the November vote is "a watershed for the District. We will either move forward with greater progress and momentum or backwards." Vitti — nine years in the job — argues the district's progress "has been built by a strong majority-led School Board that believes... the School Board governs the District and holds a Superintendent accountable to manage and lead the District day to day." Several candidates are running explicitly to remove him. Parents and students, in the coverage, ask for urgency on early literacy, facilities and administrative transparency. With 34 names, the honest way to grade this ballot is in tiers: the records that exist, the slates that organized, and the names that published nothing.

The candidates

The incumbents (full-term race).

Steve Bland Jr. — a pastor, appointed in July 2025 to fill Peterson-Mayberry's seat, now seeking a full term. Credits: a year-plus of service on the governing majority through the board's most turbulent stretch — two leadership disqualifications, a member's death, a superintendent relationship that held. He was chosen through the board's appointment process, not elected, and November is his first verdict from the voters. Dirt: none found in the coverage worked.

Bessie Harris — a retired special-education teacher and principal, appointed in October 2025 to fill Gay-Dagnogo's seat (she was permitted to serve only through 2026 under Michigan Association of School Boards policy, and chose to run for a full four-year seat rather than the partial remainder). Credits: the deepest classroom-and-building résumé on the ballot — special education is where this district's obligations are heaviest — plus a year of board service. Dirt: none found.

The organized alternative (full-term race). Dr. Jameel Smith and Terry Whitfield run as the "Detroit Kids Deserve Better Slate," endorsed by 482Forward Action, the education-advocacy network — the only non-incumbent candidacies in the 31-person field carrying a named civic organization's slate endorsement in the coverage worked. Credits: organized, accountable-to-somebody campaigns in a field of solo filings. The limit: their individual records beyond the slate were not retrievable in the sources worked, and we grade the endorsement as what it is — a documented civic vetting, not a governing record.

The BAMN slate (full-term: Liana Mulholland, Nicole Conaway, Tabrian Joe, Elizabeth Ann Williams; partial term: Shawn Vaughn). The slate of By Any Means Necessary — the activist organization — runs five candidates across both races on an explicit program: win a board majority, remove Superintendent Vitti, and challenge state officials over funding tied to Detroit's emergency-management era, alongside positions on buildings, finances and enrollment. Credits, honestly stated: it is the only fully articulated governing program in the race besides the incumbents' record, its candidates are experienced campaigners (Conaway, Joe and Moore have run for this board before), and its critique of emergency-management-era finance is a real Detroit argument with a real history. Our weighing: a board majority organized by an outside activist movement to fire the superintendent as its first act is the opposite of the governance standard Vitti's quote describes — the board governs, the superintendent manages, accountability is continuous rather than decapitating. Voters who want confrontation with the state and the superintendent have their slate, named here in full; it is not ours.

The former members (full-term race). LaMar Lemmons and Georgia Lemmons, a married couple, both previously served on the DPSCD board; LaMar also served on the pre-2016 Detroit Public Schools board. Tawanna Simpson is likewise a former board member. Credits: institutional experience no other challengers can claim — they have actually done this job, in this district, including through the emergency-management years. The limit, printed plainly: no retrievable record of their prior-tenure positions, attendance or votes surfaced in the sources worked for this pass, and a return bid graded on memory rather than record is not one we can endorse — or condemn. Their names are the field's best-known after the incumbents'; their files, in what we could reach, are résumé lines.

The partial-term race (seat ending 2028). Aliya Moore — an education advocate who has run for this board before; persistence plus an education-specific advocacy record makes hers the most developed file of the three. Ijazz Jackson — a home health aide; no further record retrievable. Shawn Vaughn — the BAMN slate's candidate; graded with his slate above.

The rest of the full-term field (20 candidates). Natalie Bien-Aime, Michelle Broughton, Katrina Brown, Cidney Calloway, Bobby Christian, Vilma Escamilla-Durán, Daniel Ferguson III, Duane Grisby Jr., David Harris II, Henrietta Ivey, Christopher Hubbard, Shinese Johnson, Theodore Jones, Clement Lett, Phillip Lloyd II, Darious Morris, Tyshea Pope, Danetta Simpson, Calesther Smith-Arnold and Theresa Williams — each is on the official ballot, and for each, the deep pass through Chalkbeat's candidate guide and coverage, the appointment and disqualification reporting, and the slate and endorsement record retrieved no individual platform, biography or record sufficient to grade. That is not a judgment on any of them as people; it is the documented state of the public record in the largest school-board field in Michigan, and it is why slate organization and incumbency dominate the calls below. (One name is absent from the ballot by tragedy, not choice: Iris Taylor, the incumbent who died in July; the board filled her seat by appointment for the remainder of 2026 from candidates who are not on this ballot.)

Pros and cons

Record gaps

The deep pass on this race worked: the Detroit Department of Elections' official candidate list (31 full-term, 3 partial-term, via Chalkbeat); Chalkbeat Detroit's candidate guide and its explainer, appointment, disqualification and student-voices coverage (the incumbents' appointment histories; McClendon's and Vaughn's late-fee disqualifications — $950 owed in Vaughn's case; Taylor's death and the appointment process for her seat; the Vitti watershed statement); Chalkbeat's partial-term reporting (Jackson, Moore and Vaughn's files; the Gay-Dagnogo seat history); RustWire's BAMN slate reporting (the slate's five candidates, its majority-and-removal program, the 482Forward "Detroit Kids Deserve Better" endorsement of Smith and Whitfield, and the at-large mechanics). Named gaps: 20 of the 31 full-term candidates have no gradeable individual record in anything reachable, and the former members' prior-tenure records did not surface in gradeable form. Those gaps are printed, not filled — in a field this size, they are the story.

OUR CALL

Full four-year terms (vote for four): ENDORSE Steve Bland Jr. and Bessie Harris — the two sitting members, one a pastor appointed through public process, one a retired special-education teacher and principal, both with a year of governing this district and no adverse record — and ENDORSE Dr. Jameel Smith and Terry Whitfield, the 482Forward-backed Detroit Kids Deserve Better Slate, the only challengers carrying a documented civic vetting. We decline the BAMN slate on its stated program, printed above; the former members' return bids are ungraded for want of a retrievable record; and the remaining candidates' finishes are documented insufficient record, name by name, above. Partial term (to 2028): ENDORSE Aliya Moore — the education advocate with prior runs and the race's only developed file, over a BAMN slate candidacy we decline with its slate and a candidacy with no retrievable record.

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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