By Jason W. Brooks
Mail | X: @JasonWBrooks2

​Chandler Unified School District President Barb Mozdzen will have plenty of company on the ballot this fall.

Mozdzen is the lone incumbent running for reelection, though three seats will be on the ballot. She and six challengers appear to all have collected more than the required 400 signatures to run for the CUSD Governing Board this fall.

Board members Jason Olive and Joel Wirth confirmed months ago they wouldn’t seek re-election to the five-member board. 

According to the Maricopa County School Superintendent’s website, Zeyna Pruzhanovsky collected the most petition signatures with 1,417. Pruzhanovsky is a teacher who doesn’t work for CUSD. She is a regular speaker at CUSD board meetings.

Mozdzen submitted the second-most signatures with 742.  First elected to the board in 2008 and re-elected in 2012, 2016 and 2020, Mozdzen is a retired legal assistant who was a CUSD parent and PTO member.

Claudia Mendoza turned in 714 signatures. A person by that name was recently hired by Mesa Public Schools as the new Sousa Elementary School principal.

A Claudia Mendoza also was the principal of ASU Prep for 12 years, has a master’s degree and is a doctoral candidate in the Educational Leadership and Administration program of Northern Arizona University.

Eloyce Gillespie submitted 624 signatures. She was the first to file a statement of interest in the race, having done so in April 2023.

A person by that name has spoken at a handful of CUSD meetings within the past two years. There is also an Eloyce Gillespie listed among the Sun Lakes Republicans.

Ryan J. Heap turned in 592 signatures. His LinkedIn profile lists his job title as a staff design verification engineer with Cirrus Logic; his background includes work at General Dynamics.

Leanna DeKing turned in 550 signatures. She’s a policy administrator with the Arizona Department of Economic Security. Her background appears to involve foster children.

Omar Farooq Chaudhry submitted 402 signatures.

The others who have filed statements of interest were Jenine Cortes, Michael Westby and Steve Hewitt. Each candidate had to gather at least 400 signatures from eligible CUSD voters by July 8.

Carley Morgan filed a statement of interest in June of last year, but has since withdrawn it.

School boards don’t have primary elections in Arizona. The election is Nov. 5. The voter registration deadline is Oct. 7.

The petitions are still subject to challenge before the ballot is finalized.

We’d like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments on this topic.  Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.  Email Jason W. Brooks at jbrooks@iniusa.org.

Jason W. Brooks
Associate Editor

Jason W. Brooks is a News editor for the Daily Independent and the Chandler Independent.

He covers the Chandler area for both yourvalley.net and the monthly print edition while writing for and assisting in the production of the Daily Independent.

Brooks is a well-traveled journalist who has documented life in small American communities in nearly all U.S. time zones.

Born in Washington, D.C. and raised there and in suburban Los Angeles, he has covered community news in California, New Mexico, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and northern Arizona.