“Although I attended some of New York City’s top schools as a student, access to that level of education was not available in my low-income community. This experience has led me to my mission to build and lead a high-performing school that directly serves students living in some of San Antonio’s most distressed neighborhoods.”
Over the past several years, Akeem Brown (he/him/his) has dedicated his career to serving students living in San Antonio’s Eastside, a diverse, multilingual area that has experienced significant neglect and increased poverty. By founding a school, he seeks to provide his students with the pathways to opportunity he feels are lacking in many areas of the city. His proposed school will utilize a project-based learning model that focuses on public policy. Students will grapple with real-world issues and develop the skills necessary to be effective agents of change. The school will also adopt community-building traditions like morning circle meetings and weekly family gatherings and will use a “whole self” curriculum to teach social and emotional learning skills. “Our school should be an environment where children learn the skills that they need to advocate for themselves and the needs of their communities after graduation.”
Akeem began his career in education as a social studies teacher in Brooklyn, NY. He has since managed programming and communications for the City of San Antonio’s Office of EastPoint and served as the director of operations and interim CEO of San Antonio Growth on the Eastside, where he supported STEM instruction in the San Antonio Independent School District and oversaw a $23.7 million Promise Neighborhood grant. He has also served as director of communications and policy for San Antonio’s City Council District 2. Most recently, Akeem was the director of people operations at Compass Rose Academy. Akeem holds a Bachelor of Science in political science from South Carolina State University and is pursuing a master’s in organizational leadership from Our Lady of the Lake University.
