At the end of June, 47 candidates filed nomination petitions for Chicago’s first elected school board. Five residents from the 5th District, which covers Austin, Galewood, Garfield Park and Lawndale, along with parts of Humboldt Park, Pilsen and Little Village, will throw their hats in the ring.
In the months leading up to the election, Austin Weekly News will highlight the 5th District candidates and their goals for Chicago Public Schools, if they win the November election.
What are the school board elections?
After about a decade of lobbying for an elected representative school board, Chicagoans in November will now be able to vote for 10 members for the board.
The first election of its kind in Chicago follows legislation signed by Gov. JB Pritzker in 2021, which changed the structure of the board. It expanded the school board from seven members who were appointed by the mayor. In January, after the election, the new school board will have 21 members, just under half of which will be elected by Chicago residents. Mayor Brandon Johnson will also appoint 10 members and a board president.
According to the Chicago Board of Education, the elected members will serve two-year terms and volunteer up to 30 hours a month, most of it spent at or preparing for board meetings. Meeting responsibilities include establishing district priorities, approving district policies, purchasing decisions, contracts and improvement plans.
“An elected school board will help students and their families have a strong voice in important decisions about the education system in Chicago,” Pritzker said in a statement.
“A board appointed by the mayor is not accountable to the public,” Brown, who’s running in the 5th District, said.
The new school board will cover 10 districts, which are divided into two subdistricts. The mayor will appoint school board members in the subdistrict that the elected candidate doesn’t live in.
While the school board’s 5th District represents the 24th, 28th, 29th and 37th Wards, District 7 also covers parts of the 24th and 28th Ward. District 3 covers part of the 37th Ward, while District 1 covers part of the 29th Ward.
In the upcoming months, Austin Weekly News will profile candidates running in the 5th District: Aaron “Jitu” Brown, Michilla “Kyla” Blaise, Anthony Hargrove, Kernetha Jones and Jousef M. Shkoukani.
Jennifer Custer, Charles Hernandez and Michelle Pierre are running for the 1st District. Carlos Rivas Jr., Jason Dones and Kirk Ortiz are candidates for the 3rd District. And in the 7th District, names on the ballot will include Yesenia Lopez, Felipe Luna Jr., Jesus Ayala Jr., Eva Villalobos and Raquel Don.
One of these candidates, Aaron “Jitu” Brown, 58, has lived in Austin since 2006 and has advocated for education justice for over 30 years. At least 20 of those years, he said, he’s been fighting to be able to have an elected school board in Chicago.
“I’m thankful that other people are running. I’m thankful that people have the right to run,” Brown said. “I’ve been on the front lines of the fight to have this right. I’ve been arrested for this right. I’ve been dragged out of school board meetings for this right.”
“I never intended on running for school board,” Brown added. But as he collected wins for community schools — at a time of mass privatization of Chicago’s schools, which he said leads to the closure of neighborhood schools and expansion of charter schools — he changed his mind.
“We have to have people on those school boards, not only who understand community schools and understand equity, but also can be trusted behind closed doors,” Brown said.
Brown’s background
Brown was raised on Chicago’s South Side, where he attended Chicago Public Schools.
In 1991, he began volunteering for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, which convenes parents, students, teachers and community members to improve the education system. In 2006, he was hired as the organization’s education organizer.
Brown has also served as a local school council member for over a decade and started training other members in 1999. KOCO’s Mid-South Education Alliance, a group that collects resources and serves schools in the Mid-South area of Chicago, was the first to train local school council members, a model replicated across Chicago, Brown said.
Brown is a national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, a nationwide group of organizations founded in 2012 that advocates for community alternatives to the privatization of public schools.
Throughout decades of fighting for Chicago Public Schools, Brown’s efforts have led to the creation of sustainable community schools, or hubs that serve as resource centers for the community beyond the school day.
In 2015, former Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed Dyett High School. Brown led other community activists and members in a 34-day hunger strike to protest the school’s closure, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Their efforts resulted in Dyett undergoing $14 million in renovations and reopening in 2016 as one of Chicago’s, and the country’s, first sustainable community schools.
“I talked with a few thousand people in the Bronzeville area, and we created a vision not only for Dyett, but for six of its feeder schools, what we call the sustainable community school village,” Brown said. “And now this model of education is spreading across the country. And Chicago has committed to becoming a sustainable community school district.”
Although he has no experience as an elected official, Brown has decades of community organizing knowledge around education.
“I’ve helped to improve schools and win education justice not only in Chicago, but across the country,” Brown said.
Brown’s goals for Austin schools
Brown’s own experience — he attended public schools on the South Side, his son goes to Kenwood Academy High School in Hyde Park, and he now lives on the West Side — has demonstrated the city’s lack of education justice.
“A baby that lives on Diversey and Ashland has a completely different educational reality. And it’s as simple as looking at course offerings [compared to] a child that lives in the Austin community or who lives in Humboldt Park,” Brown said.
“That inequity has been ignored for too long. I’m running to really push the City of Chicago to finally confront its ugly and then to do something about it, to actually put resources in the communities that have been so long ignored and give those communities a voice.”
While schools on the West Side possess some attractive qualities — Brown cites Michele Clark Academic Prep Magnet High School’s freshman connection program, where eighth graders are given a pre-orientation of sorts — Frederick Douglass Academy High School and Austin College and Career Academy High School are still both underpopulated and under-resourced.
Douglass enrolled only 33 students this year, and Austin High School had 165, according to Chicago Public School data.
To revitalize these schools, Brown said the community needs to be involved in creating a vision. One way to do this is by asking parents and students about what curriculum and wraparound support services should be offered in schools.
“People will fight for what they help to build,” Brown said.
Brown added that the key to revitalizing a community is making sure residents have equitable basic quality-of-life institutions, like grocery stores, affordable housing and schools.
“The way that you rebuild communities is that you invest in those basic quality-of-life institutions. And you can’t do that in a way that’s honest if the people that are directly impacted don’t have say-so over how those institutions function,” Brown said.
When asked about the potential for the construction of a new high school — which Rep. La Shawn Ford filed a resolution for in May — Brown said that the state of West Side schools is bigger than a new high school.
“I think there has to be a vision for public education,” Brown said. “In Austin, what is our definition of education? In Chicago? If you have a definition, then you can shape the institutions to align with that vision, but there is none.”
Brown’s hopes for CPS
What would Brown’s ultimate goal be if he’s elected to the school board?
“I would say it’s for a world-class, pre-K through 12th grade system of education within a safe walking distance of every Chicagoan’s home,” Brown said.
To pay for equitable schooling across all Chicago neighborhoods, Brown said there would need to be a restructuring of the district’s budget.
“You still have departments in Chicago Public Schools that are dedicated to privatization,” Brown said.
“We have to re-allocate those resources towards neighborhood schools and towards making education easily accessible for every child within CPS.”
Another goal is to hire more teachers of color.
Last year, just under 48% of CPS teachers reported were white, 21% Black and 23% Hispanic, state figures show. That contrasts with the 11% of students who say they are white, 36% who reported they are Black and nearly 47% who are Hispanic.
Brown suggests increasing the number of educators of color by investing in partnerships with post-secondary institutions, like Historically Black Colleges and Universities that have teacher development programs.
“Every child benefits from having a diverse teaching force,” Brown said. “And research bears this out: Children do better when they have teachers that can relate to them culturally.”
CPS officials told the Austin Weekly News that they’re working to increase the number of Black staff and students in CPS.
Although there was a 1.8% decrease of Black students enrolled in CPS from last year to this year, that decline is about half the rate that it was the last five years, according to CPS officials.
Last winter, the district launched the Black Student Success Working Group, which convenes students, parents, educators and other local leaders to help Black students succeed and provide recommendations to the Chicago Board of Education.
“Ultimately, I want to become the national model for how a big-city school district can actually be equitable and do right by its children,” Brown said. “And I think we have that opportunity right now.”