When she ran for office at the age of fifteen, she was the youngest documented candidate ever for a publicly elected school board seat in the United States.
After announcing her campaign and working with allies from the Human Rights Party, Yaco completed the procedural requirements for candidacy by submitting a petition with signatures from more than eighty-five qualified electors requesting that she be certified as a candidate.
The Office of Operations of the Ann Arbor Public Schools denied certification of Yaco's candidacy in an attempt to stop her bid for a seat.
[2] It requested that the court declare the statute unconstitutional on the ground that it denies persons under eighteen years of age equal protection of the law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
[3] Yaco's campaign has been credited as one factor among several leading to the formation of the city's experimental, alternative Community High School later that year.