The Richmond School Board is losing another incumbent member.

Tichi Pinkney Eppes, who represents the 9th District, was notified this week by the city Electoral Board that she had too few signatures on her candidate petitions to qualify for the November School Board election.

Ms. Pinkney Eppes said she fell seven signatures short of the required 125 — a virtual repeat of four years ago when she sued in federal court to get her name on the ballot after being notified of a shortfall in the number of signatures.

This time, she said she will not fight the disqualification to seek a second, four-year term, virtually assuring the election of her challenger, Linda Owen, who will be the only contender for the seat representing a part of South Side.

“I see this as a sign. I prayed to God to show me if this was the role I should be in,” Ms. Pinkney Eppes, 53, said Wednesday, “and God has given this sign that I can’t get the work done as a politician. I am not a very good politician.”

She joins four other incumbents who will not be returning to the board in January. They include Kim B. Gray, 2nd District, and Kristen Larson, 4th District, who are running for seats on Richmond City Council, and Dr. Derik E. Jones, 8th District, and Donald Coleman, 7th District, who decided to leave the board for personal reasons.

J.E. Dawson Boyer, who was appointed to fill the 1st District seat after Glen Sturtevant was elected to the state Senate last fall, will run for the seat in November.

Ms. Pinkney Eppes said that her disqualification would clear the way for her to become an advocate for individual children and others who need someone to speak on their behalf.

She previously was an advocate for employees in the Attorney General’s Office.

In recent months, she confirmed that she went beyond her School Board duties to serve as an advocate for families in her district and go with them to meetings with school employees to set up individualized education programs (IEPs) for their children.

The resignation of Richmond Public Schools director of exceptional education, Zenia Burnett, was announced Wednesday. She went public with her concern that Ms. Pinkney Eppes and another School Board member, Mamie Taylor, 5th District, were using their positions to interfere with the IEP development by serving as advocates for specific families.

Ms. Pinkney Eppes said her work as an advocate in those cases “re-energized me as to my purpose outside of politics.”

This is not the first time she has been criticized for going beyond her board duties. In October 2014, the School Board censured Ms. Pinkney Eppes after she admitted she tried to transfer confidential student files to a private company that provides psychological services for students.

While she was unable to open the files, she said at the time she did it to help bring services to students who she said were not getting mandated services from the school system.