Chicago’s first school board elections will feature just 1 candidate on ballot for District 5

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Voters on Chicago’s West Side will have just one choice on the ballot for representative in the city’s first school board elections, after Michilla “Kyla” Blaise submitted her formal withdrawal from the race to the Chicago Board of Elections Friday.

That leaves Aaron “Jitu” Brown as the sole candidate in District 5 , which stretches from the West Loop to Austin. It includes 105 schools — the most of any of Chicago’s new school board districts — with 36,485 students enrolled last school year.

Although District 5 has the most schools, it does not have the highest enrollment. Half of its schools are deemed underenrolled, according to the space utilization formula used by Chicago Public Schools.

Neither Blaise nor Brown, could immediately be reached for comment.

Blaise is currently chief of staff for Cook County Board Commissioner Frank Aguilar. She is also board secretary for Westside Justice Center, a legal services nonprofit organization, whose executive director is current Board of Education member Tanya Woods. Blaise has worked as a political consultant in Chicago since 2011.

She told Chalkbeat in an interview last month before she withdrew that she hoped to focus on improving youth mental health, adding that children and families need a better understanding of how to process grief and loss.

Brown has been an education activist for several years. He leads the Journey for Justice Alliance, a progressive network of organizations that advocate for improving schools through more “community-driven” approaches, such as the community school model, that reject “privatization.”

He participated in a hunger strike in 2015 to push CPS to reopen Dyett High School in Bronzeville.

Brown is also a friend of Mayor Brandon Johnson. At a recent event during the Democratic National Convention, Johnson said that Brown is “gonna be elected for the first time ever in the history of Chicago to a school board that is governed by the people.”

Blaise’s withdrawal comes just days after the ballot was certified. But Max Bever, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections, said her name could still be removed from the ballot. He is determining how many — if any — ballots have been printed so far with Blaise’s name on them.

According to state election code, if a withdrawal is received after the ballot is certified, “votes cast for the withdrawn candidate are invalid and shall not be reported by the election authority.”

Vote-by-mail ballots are sent out Sept. 26, and early voting begins in Chicago on Oct. 3.

The ballot for District 5 will have a space for write-in candidates as well.

Three other candidates had filed to run in District 5 but were removed from the ballot after challenges to their petitions. They were: Anthony Hargrove, an associate director of the Back To Our Future program at Breakthrough Urban Ministries and a former dean at Chicago Public Schools; Kernetha Jones, a retired CPS teacher; and Jousef M. Shkoukani, an attorney and founder of Unified Under Hope, an education nonprofit.

Jones and Shkoukani have both filed paperwork to run as qualified write-ins, according to Bever.

Reema Amin contributed reporting.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org .