Sangamon Sun

District 186 Sub District 5 School Board incumbent Tiffany Mathis lost her seat to political neophyte Buffy Lael-Wolf. Mathis garnered only 45.3 percent of the vote against 54.7 percent  earned by her opponent.

Despite losing the seat, she promised to be steady in her support to the community and  wished her challenger well.

“Although I did not win in tonight’s election, I thank each and EVERY one of you who supported my campaign during this very important election,” Mathis wrote on Facebook. "Please know that I will remain an ACTIVE and PRESENT servant & leader and that I will continue to advocate, support, and help our community in any way that I can, as I always have! Congratulations to my opponent, I wish her good luck and hope that she will keep our hard working families and MOST important assets, our youth, at the forefront of her decisions over the next two years. Education is ESSENTIAL.”

Mathis has been advocating to resume in-person learning.

“I am extremely proud of the progress that I helped make possible during my time on the District 186 School Board and that our in-person students were able to begin their 4 day school schedule today!”

She believes that going back to school would help children and their families better during this crisis.

"Look what's happened since January," she told the State Journal-Register, the Sangamon Sun reported. "Our percentage rate is low. We knew a vaccine was going to come out. We knew following the guidance available to us worked. The whole point of school being open was to mitigate the number of congregant settings that kids would have to find themselves in."

Mathis had 542 votes, 112-point below Lael-Wolf’s.

If she had won, this would have been her first full-time term after being appointed in 2019.

Mathis is the CEO and executive director of the Boys and Girls of Central Illinois.