Until this school year, Jason Brown was the director of Fine Arts at Riverview Gardens School District. He now works for Niles Township School District 219 in Skokie, Illinois outside of Chicago as curriculum director of Fine Arts.
“We know that exposure is one of the biggest things that students in our community lack,” Brown said. “My goal was to expose students to the entire fine arts – art, music, drama, dance – and we brought all of those facets of art into the district, which didn’t exist for probably the past six years.”
His mentor, Ron Carter – former band director at East St. Louis Lincoln High School who is now the director of jazz studies at Northern Illinois University – recommended Carter to the new district. It is a 2010 top-10 school with a more diverse and international student population and higher academic achievement data than Riverview Gardens.
Before he left St. Louis, Brown spent six years at Riverview Gardens, the first four as a principal at Lewis and Clark Elementary School.
The new Superintendent Clive Coleman noticed Brown’s extensive background with the arts “and knew that we had a great need for somebody to rebuild our Fine Arts Department because it had hit rock bottom,” Brown said. He was appointed as the director of Fine Arts a few days later.
“I was faced with rebuilding the entire K-12 Fine Arts Department and was faced with many challenges, because the resources had totally been depleted,” Brown said.
And he didn’t have a budget. The district’s budget had already been established for the school year. Brown assessed the situation and wrote a five-year plan with targeted goals. He revitalized the program through an infusion of grants, new and rekindled collaborations and community support.
Brown said, “I had to be creative to try to find was to solicit funds and build partnerships with external groups,” such as the Arts & Education Council, the Holland’s Opus Music Foundation and VH1’s Save the Music Foundation – “which gave the district $30,000 to purchase new instruments.
He reestablished the partnership with E. Desmond Lee Fine Arts Education Collaborative in the St. Louis area and became a member of its advisory board.
“Through that, I had a chance to connect with other arts organizations, such as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Jazz St. Louis, the Sheldon Concert Hall,” he said.
Through Jazz St. Louis, professional musicians came in to work with high school students, including Carter, his mentor.
Through the Scottish Rite Partnership and E. Desmond Lee, the district garnered a week-long artist in-residence. Working with the Sheldon, more than a thousand students received bus transportation and tickets to attend performances.
“My goal was ultimately to expose students at Riverview Gardens to the same artistic experiences as students across the metropolitan area are having,” he said.
There are academic benefits.
“All the research shows that students who excel in a quality fine arts program score higher on standardized tests than students who are not involved in fine arts programs,” Brown said.
He said schools get a bad name because they are not able to pass the MAP test – especially urban schools where it is predominantly African-American.
“Districts like Riverview Gardens are continued to be pressured by the state on student performance and that test seems to guide everything, ” Brown said.
“We know that academic achievement is very important, but we are not really interested in dealing with some of the main problems that contribute to children not achieving at the highest level – and it goes back to the home.”
Brown said he is proud that he had an opportunity to be raised in East St. Louis, where he received a rich fine arts experience at Lincoln High School.
“It was because of those rich experiences that I received in District 189 that I wanted to go on and share those experiences with students – especially students who were like me,” Brown said.
And he had a chance to do that, serving as band director at East St. Louis High School; in St. Louis Public Schools as a director of music, choir and band; and as a leader in fine arts in RGSD.
“There is always going to be a great need to support fine arts education in those kinds of communities,” he said, “and I am grateful that I had the opportunity to change students’ lives and expose them to some of the similar rich experiences that I’ve had.”
Brown is pursuing an educational doctorate degree at Lindenwood University. He earned his Master of Arts in Educational Leadership at Saint Louis University and a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary and Secondary Music Education from Eastern Illinois University.
