Fifth district school board candidate Aaron “Jitu” Brown said that the biggest problems in Chicago public schools are inequity and racism, and that he is the right candidate to work with communities to change the system.
“The biggest issue in Chicago public schools is deep-seeded inequity — inequity that says it’s okay to have an apartheid school system, where a child that lives on Diversey and Ashland has one reality, and a child that lives on 53rd and King Drive, or lives on Madison and Pulaski, has another,” he said.
His comments came during Thursday’s informational session and meet and greet hosted by Community Organizing and Family Issues, an organization that empowers parents, primarily Black and brown women, to get involved in civic issues, at Chicago’s Service Employees International Union Healthcare in Pilsen. The meeting was intended to inform parents about the election, the school board’s role, and to hear from candidates about how they plan to represent their constituents.
“A lot of us know that people are running, but what are they running for? What is their job? What is their responsibility?” Lynn Morton, a parent leader of COFI’s West Side branch, told Austin Weekly News. She’s also a founding member of Parents Organized to Win, Educate, and Renew Policy Action Council, or POWER-PAC IL, which helped host the event and sits under the umbrella organization of COFI.
The school board’s roles include establishing direction, priorities and goals for Chicago’s school district. The group also approves the district’s budget, capital improvement plans, purchasing conditions, and contracts, plus the dismissal of principals, teachers and staff. They give the go ahead for district policies and school improvement plans.
“This is a moment in history that we should not squander,” Morton said. “We should be just as concerned about the school board election as we are about the presidential election, because this is going to hit closer to home faster.”
Though the current school board is made up of seven mayor-appointed members, after November’s election, the new school board will be made up of 21 members. Ten are publicly elected, another 10 appointed by the mayor, and one president is also picked by the mayor.
A new school board
After Chicago’s entire school board resigned earlier this month, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson appointed a new seven-person staff, including two members from the West Side.
One is Garfield Park resident Michilla “Kyla” Blaise, who is chief of staff for Cook County Commissioner Frank J. Aguilar. Blaise withdrew her name from the elected school board’s 5th District race in early September.
Mary Gardner, who became the school board’s vice president at the swearing in Thursday, is an Austin resident and community organizer on the West Side. With her daughter Crystal Gardner, she founded the 290 IPO, a group that organized weekly canvassing efforts for the Bring Chicago Home referendum, which would have restructured the real estate tax transfer fund to pay for homeless programs. It didn’t receive enough votes in this year’s primary election to be on the general election ballot. In 2021, Gardner was part of an activist group calling for Loretto Hospital’s board of directors to fire then-CEO George Miller, who earlier this month, was charged with accepting about $770,000 in bribes.
Gardner also formally objected to the nomination papers of three of the five candidates running for the 5th District, resulting in all three being removed from the ballot. Two, Kernetha Jones and Jousef M. Shkoukani, are still running for the 5th District as write-ins. Gardner did not challenge Brown or Blaise’s nomination papers.
Neither Blaise nor Gardner responded to interview requests by time of publication. But at Thursday’s meeting, Blaise said she would bring calm and focus to a new board that she said is already intensely politicized.
“We’re here for the kids and for the families,” Blaise said. “We’ll make sure the stage is set for greatness.”
Brown is running uncontested on the ballot for the 5th District, which represents the Austin, Galewood, Garfield Park, North Lawndale, Smith Park, Tri-Taylor, and West Loop neighborhoods.
Critics say that a mayor-elected school board doesn’t make the board accountable to the public. An elected school board does.
“I’ve been arrested for this right. I’ve protected this right, and I’m ready to invest in this right,” Brown said about an elected school board during the one-and-a-half minutes that candidates were given to tell the meet-and-greet audience why they’re running and why to vote for them.
Brown’s background
Brown grew up on Chicago’s South Side, and moved to the Austin neighborhood in 2006.
He has an extensive history of working to improve Chicago’s education system.
In the 1990s, he became an active volunteer at Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, where he helped convene students, parents and teachers to improve CPS. In 2006, he was hired as KOCO’s education organizer.
Brown is also an experienced local school council member of over a decade. In 1999, he became an LSC trainer, helping educate parents on their responsibilities in that role.
Though he’s never served as a public official, Brown said his work has never been about himself.
“What I’m used to is organizing with people around what they care about,” he said during a breakout session at the informational session for the 5th District.
“There has to be a unified board that is strong enough to withstand all the noise we’re going to get from all the privatizers who have been using the CPS budget as a pigs’ trough for the last 30 years.”
While Brown is against the privatization of schools, he hasn’t always been against all charter schools.
He tells the story of the Institute of Positive Education, where he was trained to work with young people, which became a charter school so that it could teach African-centered education.
Although charter schools can be founded in goodhearted missions, Brown said that many of these schools have smaller class sizes and more teachers than those in neighborhood schools. He aims to change this inequity.
“Instead of neighborhood schools getting the crumbs, neighborhood schools become the priority,” he said of his goal.
The deep-seeded inequity in CPS, Brown said, stems from racism. It’s the same systemic racism, he added, that created housing projects and Former Mayor Richard Daly’s shoot-to-kill pronouncement.
“Disinvesting in Black and Brown children is off the table,” Brown said.
Addressing the budget crisis
“Illinois has been the 49th in public education for as long as I’ve had a beard,” said Brown, 58.
While that number has since increased — to 34 out of 50 states, according to The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank — Illinois has a long way to go when it comes to its public schools, especially concerning the Chicago public school district, the largest in the state, and its budget.
The Chicago Board of Education passed a $9.9 billion budget for this school year with a half-billion-dollar deficit.
Meanwhile, Brown said, Gov. JB Pritzker announced his plan earlier this year to rebuild two prisons.
“They’re going to build two prisons in downstate Illinois, while Chicago children have been historically underfunded, and the prison population has plummeted,” Brown said.
The solution, Morton said, is at the state level. And Brown said he’d be on the bus to Springfield with COFI and POWER-PAC IL members to ask for more money from the state.
“How can you expect any city in the state of Illinois to pull that weight, but especially in a district like Chicago?” Morton told Austin Weekly News. “If the state isn’t doing their fair share, we’re going to constantly be in a battle over budget.”
“We have to band together,” Brown said. “I am a vessel for your voice, that’s it.”