Among the 10 school board races in which Chicago voters will elect a member to the Board of Education this fall, one candidate, Aaron “Jitu” Brown, faces a clear path to victory in District 5.
Brown was initially one of five candidates who’d filed to run in the 5th district, which spans from the borders of Oak Park and Cicero to the Loop. But, with political consultant Michilla “Kyla” Blaise withdrawing her name from the race last week, according to the Chicago Board of Elections, Brown’s name will be the only one to appear on the ballot for which votes will count.
Brown, a national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance, has been a long-time community organizer advocating for education equity in Chicago.
Brown told the Tribune in an email that he and his team have been, and will continue to, campaign to inspire people to vote for him and his mission of creating equity in Chicago’s school system.
“We are working to build relationships and trust with the people across the district through community conversations, door-knocking, and coalition building,” Brown said. “Our campaign’s goal is to build a vision with the residents of the district, not for them.”
Many schools in primarily Black and brown neighborhoods have been neglected, resulting in them being underfunded and shut down, Brown said, adding the solution is building equity across the board in district schools.
“Instead of addressing inequity and investing in schools that need resources, the status quo has been intentional under-resourcing and the proliferation of the charter industry,” Brown said. “Inequity is the enemy and my intention is that we face it,” he said.
Blaise, who serves as Chief of Staff for Cook County Commissioner Frank J. Aguilar, did not respond to requests for comment.
Because Blaise withdrew after the ballot was certified, her name cannot be removed from the ballot without possibly delaying voting, Board of Elections spokesperson Max Dever said in an emailed statement. Despite Blaise’s name appearing, votes for her will be invalid, according to the email.
However, Brown will not be running entirely uncontested. Three candidates who were removed from the ballot during the objections process – in which the minimum 1,000 constituent signatures that candidates are required to file can be deemed invalid for a variety of reasons—are aiming to run as write-in candidates. More than half of all candidates faced at least one challenge to their nomination, a common practice used to narrow the competition in Chicago elections.
Kernetha Jones and Jousef M.
both filed their required declarations of intent to run as write-in candidates by the Board of Elections’ Sept. 5 deadline. A third candidate, CPS parent Anthony Hargrove, the Associate Director of Breakthrough Urban Ministries’ teen mentoring program, said he will seek an extension to file, given the time-consuming nature of the objections he fought through mid-August.
Shkoukani and Hargrove both expressed dismay that voters will be presented with a lone, valid name on the ballot come November – and determination to continue connecting with residents despite the uphill battle that write-in candidates face in garnering votes. Jones, a retired school teacher, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“It’s double the work,” Hargrove said of running as a write-in candidate. “I wish there was a better path for parents to have a voice here in the 5th district, seeing that it’s one of the largest districts,” said Hargrove, who previously worked in multiple district schools as a Dean of Students and is married to a CPS teacher.
After his resources were exhausted during the review of the signatures he’d gathered – prompted by challenges to his nomination – Hargrove was 45 signatures short of the minimum required when he was ejected from the ballot, according to a Board of Elections report.
First-time candidates like himself weren’t given tutorials on checking that signatures belonged to district residents, until it was too late, Hargrove said. “We were stuck in a position where the things we didn’t know, it cost you for not knowing,” he said of the objections process.
Shkoukani, an attorney who founded and led Unified Under Hope, a nonprofit that matches college-age tutors with younger students of similar backgrounds and interests, said it’s “incredibly frustrating” that the ballot has been narrowed to a single candidate.
“When we talk about a democracy, we talk about options for parents, for community members, for folks with skin in the game, as to what they hope for, in terms of the outcome of their students’ education,” Shkoukani said.
“If we’re back to just one candidate, we might as well just go back to the mayoral appointment system,” he said. But, in the remaining weeks of the race, Shkoukani added that he will continue doing what he would if his name were on the ballot – and has maintained high hopes that he’ll have a better shot at winning the seat in 2026.
“At the end of the day, this was a lesson learned for me in terms of what I need to do, in the campaigning process and in the early stages of getting signatures. And I hope to apply those lessons learned in 2026 and come at it much stronger,” he said.
According to a Chicago Board of Elections spokesperson, write-in votes will not be immediately reported but rather counted within the two weeks following Election Day.
