Exclusive guest blogger. Jay Travis on the March 18th primary is a fight for the future of our schools.

– Jhatayn “Jay” Travis.  Jay Travis is running against Christian Mitchell in the March 18 Democratic Primary for the Illinois 26^th District. She has been endorsed to date by the Chicago Teachers Union, Citizen Action Illinois, AFSCME, Illinois Federation of Teachers, Illinois Education Association, Northside Democracy for America, SEIU Local 73. Jay lives in Kenwood, where she helps take care of her niece and grandmother. Her campaign website is http://www.jayforus.com.

This past July, I took my 3-year-old niece for a walk in the North Kenwood neighborhood where our family first put roots down over sixty years ago. We walked past Florence Price Elementary School, which was closed in 2012. The hundreds of students who used to attend Price now have to travel to over three miles to attend school. The building that was once home to eager students and veteran educators is now used as a facility to train police dogs.

Across Chicago, and particularly in African-American neighborhoods, families like mine are facing the impact of school closings. An appointed and unelected school board has closed, consolidated, phased out or otherwise destabilized over 200 schools since 2001, including fifty school closings in 2013 alone. Last spring, over thirty courageous legislators sponsored a bill that would have stopped these closings. This crucial piece of legislation ultimately died in the General Assembly because of the overwhelming lack of leadership from the majority of our legislators.

The state’s failure to stop unproven and inequitable school closings is just one component of our elected officials’ abysmal track record on public education. They have also siphoned tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to corrupt charter school operators, forced more and more standardized tests on our children, and chronically underfunded our schools.

When Chicago voters go to the polls for the March 18 primary, we can begin to overturn this status quo. I am just one of a few primary challengers running with the grassroots support of the Chicago Teachers Union and the parents, students, and schoolteachers who have been directly impacted by years of state-sanctioned school closings, disinvestment, and over-testing. My race for the 26^th District, like several other primary battles this year, is a referendum on the failed education policies that have been forced upon families across Chicago.

Here in the 26^th District, which stretches from South Chicago to Streeterville, we are confronting an incumbent who has enjoyed the support of some of the wealthiest and most powerful politicians in the state—and who did nothing when seven school communities in the 26^th District were destabilized by last spring’s devastating school closings. Last week, I went door-knocking in the Woodlawn community on a street that was once anchored by one of these schools. As we talked with voters, it was clear that people felt that their elected officials had let them down.

I know firsthand how school closings disrupt the health and education of our communities. I was born, raised, and educated in the neighborhoods that comprise the 26^th District. Since graduating from Chicago Public Schools over 20 years ago, I have served my community. As the Executive Director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), I stood with parents to stop 20 of a proposed 22 school closings in 2004. In the face of subsequent attacks on our schools, we organized to bring more democracy and transparency to public education, strengthening Local School Councils and passing a voter referendum in support of an elected school board.

I am running on a common-sense platform that builds on my track record of service. As I did at KOCO, I will continue to build the coalitions we need to strengthen and support our schools. I will fight to revise the school funding formula and end the gross disparities between rich and poor school districts. I will work to improve, not close, our neighborhood schools, through investments in the research-based reforms that have consistently led to improved academic outcomes: smaller class sizes, wraparound supports, teacher collaboration and leadership, and rigorous, student-centered curriculum. I will continue to champion pathways to higher education and workforce development for young people across the city. And as I have done for the past ten years, I will continue to fight for our right, as taxpayers, to have a fully elected and representative school board.

This platform threatens some of Chicago’s most entrenched special interests, who know that the outcome of the March 18 primary will be a referendum on the future of our schools, and the quality of our elected leadership. That’s why they’re pouring money into postcards and advertising in the 26^th District, and in primary races across the city. It’s a desperate attempt to make up for voting records that have run counter to the interests of the families who have had their schools closed and their communities destabilized.

The families of the 26^th District, like families across Chicago, deserve elected officials who will stand with them to fight for the right of all children, regardless of their race or zip code, to have access to a world-class education in their own education. More and more voters, in my district and across the city, agree—and we’ll be voting on March 18 to show it.