Appointed vs. Elected School Boards
Jitu Brown, Roger Eddy, and Jesse Ruiz
Monday, Feb 9, 2015
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Speakers
Jitu Brown
Jitu Brown, married and father of one child, is the national director for the Journey for Justice Alliance, a network of 30 grassroots community based organizations in 23 cities organizing for community driven school improvement; and he was formerly the education organizer for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO). Born and raised in the Rosemoor neighborhood on the far south side of Chicago, Jitu attended Wendell Smith Elementary School and Kenwood Academy High School. Jitu studied at Eastern Arizona College and Northeastern Illinois University, majoring in communications with a minor in Spanish. Jitu started volunteering with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO) in 1991, became a board member in 1993 and for a number of years served as the organization’s board president. He joined the staff as education organizer in 2006. He has organized in the Kenwood Oakland neighborhood for over 17 years bringing community voices to the table on school issues. He helped develop the Mid-South Education Association, a grassroots advocacy group made up of administrators, parents, teachers, young people and local school council (LSC) members to meet the needs of schools in the area. They were the first group to certify parents as LSC facilitators, which has become a model being replicated across the city of Chicago. In addition, they successfully organized to stop several school closings in the area and secured resources for neglected neighborhood schools. The KOCO has served as a resource for organizations nationwide, dealing with school closings and the elimination of community voice from the decision-making process. Jitu also teaches African-American history at St. Leonard’s Adult High School, the only accredited high school in that nation that exclusively serves people who have been formerly incarcerated. A believer in working locally and thinking globally, Jitu has taken youth leaders from KOCO to the United Nations, to the Passamaquoddy Native American reservation in Maine and to the UN Conference on Racism in South Africa. He has been published in the national education magazine Rethinking Schools, appeared in Ebony magazine and on several talk shows, including MSNBC’s The Ed Show, Al Jazeera America, WBEZ’s Community Voices, Democracy Now and CLTV’s Gerard McClendon Live.
Roger Eddy
Roger Eddy has been executive director of the Illinois Association of School Boards for the past two and a half years, although he also brings 31 years of education and 10 years of legislative experience to the job. Until 2012, for the previous 16 years, Eddy served as superintendent of schools at Hutsonville CUSD 1, where he started his career in education as a teacher and coach from 1981 to 1988. He taught physical education, U.S. history, government, geography, and economics. He also coached basketball and baseball and served three years as principal of Hutsonville High School. He spent the next five years as a high school principal in Watseka before returning to Hutsonville in 1996 as superintendent. In 2002, he was elected state representative in the 109th district and was completing his fifth term in 2012 when he resigned to join IASB. During his time in the legislature, Eddy was considered a key education expert, serving on various education and education appropriation committees as minority spokesman and worked hard for fair and equitable education funding for Illinois schools. While a member of the Illinois House, he sponsored the Dual Credit Quality Act, legislation to add up to 10 additional Charter Schools for high school drop outs,in 2010, he successfully championed legislation which allows Illinois school districts to waive new state education mandates or rules that are unfunded and was chief co-sponsor of SB7- a nationally recognized school reform package. Eddy’s other public service includes: executive board member and co-founder of the United Way of Crawford County and Crawford County Leadership; advisory boards for Education Funding Reform and Early Childhood Education, including the Erikson Institute’s Early Childhood Advisory Board and National St. Louis University’s Funding Reform Commission. Other state and national education initiatives include national co-chair of the Council of State Government Education Policy Task Force and the University of Illinois Public Policy Institute Board. Eddy has been a delegate to the Wallace Foundation National Leadership Conference as well as a member of the Joyce Foundation National Commission on Teaching and Americas Future Education Dialogue Group. He also served on the Classroom’s First Commission and the Regional Superintendent’s Commission. Eddy has a Masters in Educational Administration and Specialist Degree from Eastern Illinois University. He did his undergraduate work at Northern Illinois University. Eddy and his wife, Becca, have five children: Matt, Lisa, Brenda, Beth, and Jessica. The couple also has four grandchildren.
Jesse H. Ruiz
Jesse H. Ruiz was appointed as the Vice President of the Chicago Board of Education by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in May of 2011. Mr. Ruiz also recently served on the U.S. Department of Education Equity and Excellence Commission. The two appointments are the latest in a career of involvement in public education for Mr. Ruiz. Mr. Ruiz served as Chairman of the Illinois State Board of Education from September 2004 to May 2011. The Illinois State Board of Education oversees the operation of the state's school system for 2.1 million students in grades Pre-K-12 and administers an $11 billion annual budget. He had also previously served on the Chicago Public Schools Desegregation Monitoring Commission. In August 2010, Mr. Ruiz was appointed to the ABA Presidential Advisory Commission on Hispanic Legal Rights and Responsibilities by the President of the American Bar Association. He is past President of the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois and Past Chairman of the Hispanic Lawyers Scholarship Fund of Illinois. He is also Past Chairman of the Chicago Committee on Minorities in Large Law Firms. He has taught corporate law at John Marshall Law School. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Commonwealth Edison Company, an Exelon company and on several other civic and charitable boards and committees. Mr. Ruiz is a partner at Drinker Biddle & Reath's Corporate and Securities Group and co-chair of the firm's Diversity Committee. He concentrates his practice in mergers and acquisitions and the representation of public and middle market companies. Mr. Ruiz is legal counsel to the 14 Illinois senators and representatives who formed the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus and the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus Foundation. Mr. Ruiz received his JD from The University of Chicago Law School, where he served as an editor of the University of Chicago Law School Roundtable, and his bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
