Domonique Flowers and Ashley Esposito Lead Baltimore School Board Election Results

“I’m really excited that the voters decided to put their trust in me,” Domonique Flowers said just past midnight Wednesday. “I want to make sure that I bring back trust to the school board.”

The challenger’s optimism reflects a shift in Baltimore’s school board race, where incumbent Kwame’ Jamal Kenyatta-Bey is on track to lose his seat after four years representing voters on the 12-member Board of School Commissioners, The Banner reported. With returns from all city precincts at least partially reported, Flowers held 26.9% of the vote Wednesday morning, while Kenyatta-Bey trailed at 22.5%. The top two vote-getters will secure four-year terms.

Election Results | Midterm Elections in Maryland

Ashley “Ash” Esposito appears likely to keep her seat, leading the field with 27.7% of the vote after establishing a similar advantage in the summer primary. Jamar Day, at 22.4%, rounds out the field and is unlikely to win a position. No candidates had conceded as of Wednesday morning, and not all votes had been tallied.

A board remade by voters for the first time

The election marks only the second time Baltimore residents have directly chosen school board members. Esposito and Kenyatta-Bey originally won their seats in 2022, the first year the city allowed voters to elect two of the board’s 12 seats. The remaining nine seats are filled by mayoral appointment, and one seat goes to a student elected by high schoolers.

Maryland Election Results: 11 p.m. update

Flowers, an attorney and adjunct professor, spent over a decade working with Baltimore students as a substitute teacher and in after-school programs. A former Maryland PTA board member and father of a 5-year-old in a city elementary school, he has represented students in IEP and 504 meetings as a special education attorney. If he secures the seat, Flowers told students at a candidate forum that he would push the district to train staff on addressing student mental health issues “that I have never seen in my entire life,” adding that many of his student clients had been ignored or misdiagnosed.

Esposito’s lived experience shapes her platform

Esposito, a community organizer with a child in the public school system, has been open about how her neurodivergence, learning needs and years in the foster care system inform her work on the board, where she has championed a moratorium on school closures. Identifying as a Democratic socialist, she has focused on uplifting working-class families and students with additional needs, including those with disabilities, English learners, students experiencing homelessness, and those in foster care.

Maryland Election Results: 6 a.m. update

Speaking around 12:45 a.m. Wednesday, Esposito expressed gratitude for her apparent victory. “It just felt really good to do it again, especially as someone like myself who am not an educator,” she said. “I’m someone who has lived experience of not getting a K-12 education in the ways I needed to.” She said her first term made her a better mother and advocate, and over the next four years she plans to form a cohort of foster youth and other students with low graduation rates to advise the board on policy, while also seeking written protections for immigrant students as federal deportation efforts increase.

Kenyatta-Bey’s four-year tenure ends

Kenyatta-Bey taught in Baltimore public schools for more than three decades and sent his own child and grandchildren to city schools. Long involved in theater, he advocated for expanded arts education across the district. Though an incumbent, he did not publicly take positions as firmly as his opponents and lacked a campaign website, relying instead on word-of-mouth for his second run.

Day, who works for the Maryland Department of General Services after a career as a teacher and community organizer, entered the race after the district closed his nephew’s charter school, the Baltimore Collegiate School for Boys, earlier this year. With 22.4% of the vote, he acknowledged the difficulty of his position. “The odds are definitely not in my favor right now,” Day said, adding that if he loses, he plans to apply for one of the two mayoral appointment vacancies. “If that’s not the case either, there’s always 2028,” he said. “I know my campaign left a mark on Baltimore.”

Power and policy at stake

School board members set districtwide education policy, hire and oversee the superintendent—titled CEO in Baltimore—and approve the school system’s budget. The elected members will work alongside CEO Jermaine Dawson, who has focused on improving chronic absenteeism rates, raising student test scores, and addressing enrollment imbalances between overcrowded and underutilized schools.

Flowers said he looks forward to working with Dawson to ensure all Baltimore students graduate college- and career-ready. The board currently has two additional vacancies the mayor must fill, including one that opened after commissioner Mujahid Muhammad resigned following an FBI search of a building associated with his nonprofit.

Final certification of the election results remains pending, with all precincts reporting at least some Election Day votes but the complete tally unfinished.