Allegations against former Chicago Teachers Union political director Hilario Dominguez have become central in the race for school board president.
Dominguez is facing off against school board member and former CPS principal Jessica Biggs and trial attorney Victor Henderson for the presidency in the Nov. 3 elections.
A report from the Chicago Public Schools inspector general released Friday sheds new light on those allegations. The office found insufficient evidence to substantiate them and closed the case. But the 34-page report says far more than the headline his campaign has been promoting.
Here are five things to know.
1. The report says the alleged victim’s account is believable, realistic and not outlandish.
The former CPS student was 17 in the summer of 2017 and a paid intern at The Resurrection Project, where Dominguez, then 24, was a youth supervisor. She alleges two incidents. Alone with him in his car on a work errand, he asked her something along the lines of, “What type of guys are you into?” A week or two later, in a hallway at the office, he grabbed her around the waist, lifted her off the ground and swung her side to side with their bodies pressed together.
The inspector general’s office wrote that she “described the two incidents during her OIG interview in a believable manner, and she articulated the emotional distress she felt at the time.” It called her descriptions “realistic and not outlandish.”
The investigation “did not find that one party was significantly more credible than the other.”
So why no finding? The office cited no identified witnesses, the passage of nearly a decade, and the fact that her account to investigators covered less than what The Resurrection Project’s 2018 records described. And even if the incidents happened, it said, Dominguez’s conduct may not have been sexually motivated. It may have been “an ill-advised matchmaking effort or attempt to relate to her as a mentor.”
2. The report says Dominguez’s alleged conduct “would not be acceptable behavior for a CPS staff member” and would violate today’s Boundary Standards.
“To be clear, Dominguez’s alleged conduct — asking [her] about her dating preferences on one occasion and physically picking her up, holding her body against his, and swinging her from side to side on another occasion — would not be acceptable behavior for a CPS staff member,” the report states.
“Currently, such conduct would violate CPS’s standards for staff/student boundaries … even if it was not sexually motivated.”
Those standards didn’t apply here only because CPS hadn’t adopted them yet. They were published to staff in January 2018, months after the alleged conduct. Dominguez also wasn’t a CPS employee at the time, though he worked for the district before and after.
Is he a CPS employee now? The report’s first footnote says that on Oct. 9, CPS told the inspector general that Dominguez “is still on a ‘special leave’ relating to his position with the [redacted].”
If this is union leave from his job at CPS, it’s the same arrangement Mayor Brandon Johnson has used. As I wrote last year, Johnson remains on union leave from the classroom, accruing seniority. A June 2023 internal CPS memo from the district’s chief talent officer flagged his employment status as a potential conflict of interest in his dealings with CPS.
A school board president who is also a CPS employee on leave would raise the same questions.
3. The Dominguez campaign is misrepresenting what the report says
Before the report, Dominguez’s lawyer Larry Suffredin called the allegations “proven false.” Suffredin is a paid lobbyist for CTU.
Dominguez posted a short outcome letter from CPS’s Title IX office on his campaign website under the headline “Office of Inspector General Clears Hilario in Full.”
The report says something different. It found insufficient evidence under a preponderance standard, not that the events didn’t happen. It found the alleged victim’s account believable and neither party more credible. And it said the conduct she described would be unacceptable for any CPS staffer today. It also says, to be fair to Dominguez, that “there has been no determination that Dominguez crossed boundaries.”
The young woman put it this way in a statement: “While I am disappointed in the failure of this report to affirmatively verify my experience, it certainly does not exonerate Hilario Dominguez, or ‘clear him in full,’ as he claims.”
4. At least one of his major backers recognizes the report is not definitive.
Dominguez’s top financial backer is the Chicago Teachers Union, where he formerly worked as political director. The primary entity CTU is financing to promote its endorsed school board candidates is called Our Schools PAC.
I received a text last week from Our Schools PAC in support of candidate Debby Pope in District 2B, so I asked about the OIG investigation into Dominguez.
“It’s impossible to know for sure what actually happened,” the staffer acknowledged, “and it’s not uncommon for investigators to fail to address the harm experienced by survivors.”
This is in stark contrast to how the Dominguez campaign described the allegations, and the report.
5. The dynamics of this case warrant an independent investigation
As I wrote last week, the district’s structure invites doubts about the inspector general’s independence.
Johnson appointed CPS Inspector General Philip Wagenknecht effective Jan. 14, 2025, one day before the power to appoint that office passed from the mayor to the school board. The office reports to a school board where Johnson appointed the majority, including the president. Johnson, like Dominguez, is a former CTU organizer whose campaigns are bankrolled by the union. He has said “I support Hilario Dominguez,” and he publicly called on the office to resolve the investigation quickly.
The national standard for inspectors general asks offices to consider “whether there is anything about their situation which might lead others to question their independence.” This case clears that bar easily.
Wagenknecht says politics played no role. “No one outside this office has influence over how OIG investigations are handled, and there were no external efforts to influence this matter,” he said Friday. The mayor’s office says it never contacted the inspector general during the investigation.
But calls for an outside review are growing.
Sixteen City Council members called Thursday for an independent investigation, saying in a statement: “The Mayor’s hand-picked CPS Inspector General rushed a finding to meet the deadline he publicly demanded, sending a devastating message to every girl weighing whether to report abuse.”
Mayoral candidates Matt Brewer and Susana Mendoza, and at least eight school board candidates, called for an independent investigation last week: Michelle Pierre (1B), Kyna Lenhof (2B), Pete Gonzales (3A), Ellen Sherratt (4A), LaPamela Williams (5A), Isaiah White (6A), Jesus Ayala (7A) and Patrick Watson (10B).
New board has an opportunity to start fresh
Whoever wins on Nov. 3, the new school board should take up a question this case has raised. Right now, the CPS Law Department represents the board, the district’s departments and, by default, the inspector general’s office. This creates conflicts of interest. As I wrote last week, school boards in Denver, Miami, Austin and New Orleans have their own counsel. Chicago’s board should, too.
The new board will have plenty more on its plate when it’s seated in January. The Chicago Policy Center’s CPS Excellence Agenda offers a platform for that work, including research-proven reading instruction, zero-based budgeting, a 14-vote requirement for all new borrowing and opening full bargaining sessions with the Chicago Teachers Union to the public.
Holding the district accountable starts with how it handles allegations like this one. It should not end there.
Solid reporting fox in the CTU henhouse as usual