Like many districts in Chicago’s first-ever school board elections, progressive and conservative groups have coalesced behind two opposing candidates in the North Side’s 4th District.But that doesn’t tell the whole story in this district, where there are six candidates with varying views on key education issues.The lakefront district is one of the city’s wealthiest, with 33 schools in Lincoln Park, Lake View, North Center and most of Uptown.All six candidates are Chicago Public Schools parents and all have worked in education in some form.Retired longtime teacher Karen Zaccor is backed by the Chicago Teachers Union and several progressive organizations, including Northside Action for Justice, her activist home. She taught for 28 years at Stockton Elementary, Arai Middle School and Uplift Community High School and served on the local school councils at all three.Ellen Rosenfeld, a current Chicago Public Schools employee in the community engagement office, is supported by a slew of other groups, including some establishment Democratic organizations and more conservative “school choice” groups — the latter of which Rosenfeld has said she did not solicit. She’s also a former teacher at Dulles and Hartigan elementary schools and a parent at Whitney Young Magnet High Schools. She served on Bell LSC as a parent.Kimberly Brown is a marketing executive and adjunct professor. She’s a Nettlehorst Elementary parent who served on the school’s parent teacher organization board. She previously founded a nonprofit focused on teaching and developing middle managers and another that aimed to empower mid-career women.Thomas Day is a parent at Hawthorne Scholastic Academy who founded a nonprofit that brings lab inventions to commercial and defense markets. A veteran of the war in Iraq and former journalist, he has worked as a substitute teacher in CPS and lectured at the University of Chicago.Carmen Gioiosa is a Lincoln Elementary parent and serves as the LSC chair there. She used to teach Italian at Schurz High School and led the implementation of small learning communities. She worked in CPS’ central office supporting at-risk students.Andrew Davis founded the Education Equity Fund, which makes zero-interest loans to CPS educators pursuing doctoral degrees. He’s a Lincoln Park High School parent — and Lincoln Elementary before that — and was on the local school councils at Newberry Math and Science Academy. He was the board chairman of the Global Citizenship Experience Lab School, a tiny downtown private high school that closed last year.Gioiosa is the only candidate who supports standardized testing more than once a year, though “with reservations.” She said testing can be used to show students’ progress, highlight skill gaps to address and identify school-wide areas for improvement.Zaccor and Rosenfeld are the only two who don’t support requiring all schools to select from a certain curriculum authorized by the school board, both arguing educators should be able to personalize lessons for their unique classes.Rosenfeld is the lone candidate who said the school board should continue raising the property tax levy to the maximum allowed by the state each year. But she said that’s out of necessity and there need to be new revenue sources to address the district’s structural deficit.“It’s probably unpopular, but CPS’ financial state dictates that need,” she said.Davis said all focus should be on securing more state and federal funding. He proposed merging the Chicago teachers pension with the state’s version.“Absent this locally paid-for obligation, CPS would gain over $500 million in funds that I would want invested in neighborhood schools,” he said.Zaccor, meanwhile, was the only supporter of the Board of Education’s decision earlier this year to prioritize neighborhood schools and shift away from school choice.“It’s a choice for the few,” she said. “It is undeniable that CPS’ practice of over-resourcing selective enrollment and magnet schools and opening charter schools has come at the expense of equitably resourcing neighborhood schools.”And Day is the only hopeful who said he’d support closing under-enrolled schools. He said he’d do it by consulting communities to decide how schools would close and ensure buildings are repurposed.“We could adopt a process similar to Congress’ method for closing military bases: establish an independent commission to recommend closures, with the board voting up or down without amendments,” Day said.All six candidates said they support busing for general education students, but Brown notched an endorsement from the advocacy group CPS Parents for Buses.“When we don’t support all children getting to school in a safe and district-managed way, we’re not serving the public good and are actually hurting working parents — mostly women — and Chicago’s economy,” she said.The candidates mostly share similar views on the political strife surrounding CPS in recent months.Five of the six hopefuls said they support CPS CEO Pedro Martinez staying in the role, most citing stability for the school system, especially during CTU negotiations. And the same five said they oppose a short-term, high-interest loan that the mayor has pushed because they view it as fiscally irresponsible, though no candidates shared solutions to the district’s budget deficit.Rosenfeld said forcing out Martinez would be a disservice to Chicagoans: “What CPS communities are begging for is stability. What CPS families are begging for is stability.”Gioiosa said she had a good experience working with Martinez on a parent leadership council and called him “steadfast and dedicated” to families. But she said she didn’t know what his performance evaluation looked like.Zaccor was the one candidate who said she was undecided on both Martinez and the loan.“I do not want to be a board member who bases my decisions about anything on what I read in the [news]paper,” she said about Martinez. “I have to assume that there is a job description with performance standards and descriptors of performance levels, and that evidence is required to make a decision.”She said the loan “sounds like a terrible idea, but perhaps all the options out there right now are not good options.” She said it would be the board’s responsibility to look at various solutions, consult experts and determine which is “the least bad.”In response to a question about maintaining independence if elected to the board, Rosenfeld said she’s “willing to work with anyone who has the best interest of our students in mind, but I am not beholden to any one candidate, union or group except” voters.Zaccor said her job will be to represent families.“If the best ideas for how to serve my community and our schools come from students, those are the ideas I will champion,” she said. “The same is true if those ideas come from the congregants of a church in my district, LSC parents or members of a community organization. And, yes, if the best ideas and approaches for serving our schools come from CTU or the mayor, those will be what I champion.”