Editor’s note: This story, originally published at 4:07 p.m. Nov. 19, 2025, was updated to reflect that Wylea Chase filed her candidacy on Nov. 19.
Wylea Chase, a former director of operations for the Black and Brown Coalition for Educational Equity and Excellence, officially joined the 2026 race for the county school board Wednesday by filing her candidacy with the state elections board.
Chase told Bethesda Today in October that she was planning to run for an at-large board seat. With her filing, Chase became the third candidate to join the race, and the second candidate for an open at-large seat.
Chase told Bethesda Today in October that she wanted to improve equity in schools, center the voices of teachers and students and help MCPS move past just gathering feedback about various issues “to being actionable.”
“We don’t go beyond [feedback] right now, quite frankly. We have a lot of committees, we have a lot of advisory groups, and there’s a lot of talking back and forth and really awesome ideas that are shared, but then it’s like, they go into this black hole and it feels like a box checker,” Chase said. “I’m not saying that the community are the ultimate decision makers, but we would really love to see the things that we spent our time and talent on, volunteering our time, be somewhere in the final decisions.”
Four board seats will be on the ballot in the June gubernatorial primary election including the District 3 seat held by school board President Julie Yang, Grace Rivera-Oven’s District 1 seat, Brenda Wolff’s District 5 seat and an at-large seat held by Karla Silvestre. Candidates must file paperwork with the county and state election boards to officially appear on the ballot. The last day to file is Feb. 24.
Silvestre and Yang have announced that they are seeking County Council seats instead of running for re-election. Yang is running for the District 1 seat held by Andrew Friedson (D). Friedson is running for county executive to replace Marc Elrich (D), who cannot run again due to term limits. Silvestre is running for one of the council’s at-large seats. Two at-large councilmembers, Democrats Evan Glass and Will Jawando, are also running for county executive.
Rivera-Oven, the school board vice president, is the only board member who has announced she will run for re-election. As of Wednesday, Wolff has not publicly announced whether she is running for re-election to a third term.
Brett Di Resta filed to run in the school board race in September, originally for the at-large seat, before withdrawing in October and re-filing to run for the District 3 seat. Omar Lazo, a Montgomery College trustee and small business owner who ran unsuccessfully for the Montgomery County Council in 2022, filed to run for the at-large seat on Monday.
Chase was the director of operations and community engagement for the Black and Brown Coalition, an advocacy group for students of color who attend Montgomery County public schools, from September 2022 until June, according to her LinkedIn profile. From 2019 to 2022, she served as the director of partnerships and corporate engagement for Leadership Montgomery, an organization “that supports public, private, and nonprofit leaders in Montgomery County,” according to its website.
