The fifth District is situated on the West and Near West sides of Chicago. It covers the neighborhoods of Galewood, Austin, Garfield Park, North Lawndale, Ukraine Village and United Center, in addition to components of Humboldt Park, West Town, West Loop and Little Italy.
Here’s what to find out about racing within the fifth District. For a have a look at how the elected faculty board will work and extra on races in different districts, click on right here.
Who’s working?
There is just one candidate nonetheless working within the fifth district: Aaron “Sniper” Brown.
How a lot cash was raised?
With just one title on the poll, the race within the fifth District isn’t very aggressive. But for his half, Brown managed to lift simply over $48,000 for his marketing campaign as of Oct. 21.
What are the candidates’ electoral platforms?
Aaron “Sniper” Brown
What is your background in schooling?
I’m a Chicago Public Schools alumnus and mum or dad and a proud resident of the Austin group on Chicago’s West Side. For over 30 years, my work has targeted on instructional justice and fairness.
For a few years I used to be the tutorial organizer on the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, one in all Chicago’s longest-running group organizations. I’ve campaigned for larger funding in public schooling, labored to enhance colleges serving black college students, and led youth management packages in colleges. I used to be the lead organizer of the marketing campaign to avoid wasting Dyett High School from closure, culminating in a 34-day starvation strike by me and others that led to Dyett’s reopening with greater than $14 million in new funding. Through that marketing campaign, I helped envision the Sustainable Community School mannequin now applied in communities throughout the nation. What we did for Dyett, I wish to do for the fifth district and metropolis colleges.
From 1999 to 2013, I served on native faculty boards and skilled tons of of LSC members throughout town. I used to be the group faculty coordinator at Chicago’s first group faculty, the South Shore School of Entrepreneurship from 1999 to 12005, and taught black historical past at St. Leonard’s High School, the nation’s solely accredited highschool serving the individuals who returned from jail. Since 2013, I’ve been proud to function the National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, an alliance of group organizations in 40 cities working to enhance colleges.
Why are you working for a seat on the Chicago Board of Education?
As a longtime educator, youth mentor, and group organizer within the instructional justice motion, I’ve seen the methods company and profit-driven pursuits have led our metropolis’s determination makers to fail our youth and our faculty system time and again. . In addition to working to get wanted investments in neighborhood colleges on the West and South Sides, stopping racist faculty closures, and increasing the sustainable group faculty mannequin, I’ve been a part of the struggle to get a democratically elected faculty board in Chicago for a few years. In 2015, I used to be one of many lead organizers who fashioned Organized Communities for Democracy in Education to carry a referendum on the poll in 37 of fifty districts that confirmed almost 90% of voters wished an elected board. My perception is that we’d like group voices on the board that governs Chicago Public Schools to make sure that our faculty district greatest meets the wants of our communities. As a CPS alumnus, CPS mum or dad, mentor and educator of numerous CPS alumni throughout town, and college group organizer, I’m pushed by a dedication to fairness and the imaginative and prescient that each younger particular person in Chicago deserves an schooling world class inside a secure strolling distance of their residence. Now that we are going to be electing representatives to our faculty board for the primary time, I’m dashing to work with the group to take steps towards that imaginative and prescient.
How would you describe your marketing campaign platform?
As a college board consultant, my high priorities will likely be investing in neighborhood colleges and preventing for extra equitable faculty funding. For too lengthy, structural racism in Chicago Public Schools has meant separate and unequal schooling based mostly on race and sophistication. Families have been neglected of selections that influence college students’ lives. Standardized testing has been weaponized in opposition to Black and Brown kids. Neighborhood colleges have been underfunded, uncared for and utterly closed. Entire communities have suffered from one of these sabotage. The resolution should be to remodel CPS into an equitable district the place each baby and group has entry to a high quality neighborhood faculty, inside strolling distance of residence. I’ll prioritize the growth of the sustainable group faculty mannequin, which can contain:
- Ensure full and equitable funding for CPS
- Invest in high quality colleges in each neighborhood
- Increase and retain black academics
- Ensure a extra culturally related curriculum
- Move away from racist and punitive standardized checks
- Support native faculty boards
What is crucial concern going through CPS college students?
Inequality and underfunding are on the coronary heart of the issues plaguing Chicago Public Schools. Currently, CPS merely doesn’t have sufficient funding to fulfill the wants of our roughly 320,000 college students. The State of Illinois isn’t adequately paying instructor pensions for CPS because it does for different faculty districts or isn’t totally funding its Evidence Base funding mannequin. To have totally funded colleges with librarians, well-maintained services, counselors, and affordable class sizes, we should remedy the income downside by turning to our state and federal governments to completely fund our faculty system. Instead of pitting the wants of some younger folks and a few colleges in opposition to one another, whether or not they’re Black college students in disused faculty buildings, ESL college students, or college students with disabilities, we must always unite round a plan for totally funded colleges.
Provide three or 4 key factors you need voters to find out about your marketing campaign.
- I knock on doorways, attend group occasions, and go to colleges every week all through the fifth District to attach with mother and father, group members, and voters!
- I’m a coalition builder who leads with humility, compassion and braveness. I’ll interact the fifth District in reinventing public schooling in our communities!
- I’m satisfied that “group knowledge in collaboration with tutorial experience results in faculty enchancment.”
To learn this candidate’s questionnaire in full, click on right here.
The candidate responses proven right here have been edited for size, fashion and readability.
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