At dismissal at Cruz K-12 in West Ridge on Thursday afternoon, kids walked out of school holding paper flyers.
Students skipped across the lawn on North Ridge Boulevard to greet expectant parents — most of whom hadn’t heard about the charter school board’s vote the previous day to close the middle and high school. “After 26 years of serving Chicago’s communities, Acero Schools is planning a strategic reorganization,” they read.
The news was surprising.
“(My son) has already made friends,” said Tevin Willis, whose 10-year-old just transferred to the school because of its good reviews and academic records. “Now he’ll have to go through the whole process again.”
Thousands of students and hundreds of teachers were left in a lurch Wednesday after the Acero Charter Schools Board of Directors voted unanimously to close seven of Acero’s 15 schools, the latest turn of events during a week of turmoil for Chicago Public Schools.
Helena Stangle, Acero’s chief culture officer, said the board of directors’ decision to “consolidate their school system” did not come lightly.
Several factors informed the board’s decision, including insufficient funds due to a lack of federal and state dollars and CPS’ budget shortfall; declining enrollment; changes in the neighborhoods the schools serve; and inadequate spaces to ensure compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, Stangle said.
“When you look at the finances, the enrollment, the limitations from the facilities — that is why these schools are a part of closure,” she said. “But they are all excellent schools with great teachers and fantastic students and families.”
Following Wednesday’s announcement, Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates sent a letter to school district CEO Pedro Martinez, urging CPS to assume management of the schools Acero proposes to close.
“You and the Board must move quickly to establish a transition plan to ensure that these Acero schools remain open as district-managed schools, with seats guaranteed for all current students and jobs guaranteed for all current staff members,” Gates wrote in the letter.
When asked how much it would cost to fold the network into CPS’ roster of schools, CTU Research Director Pavlyn Jankov said the district already pays for the cost of running the schools.
“All our schools need more funding, but they’re getting as much support as a district school. The problem is that a significant portion of it is not going to students. It’s going to the charter school management,” Jankov said.
The Acero charter school network operates a string of publicly funded schools authorized and overseen by the district. The schools receive funding from CPS but are responsible for managing their day-to-day operations with those funds. In January, the Chicago Board of Education extended Acero’s charter through 2026.
Acero, which has a $119.5 million budget, anticipates receiving roughly $103 million in funding from CPS this year, according to Stangle. CTU members argue that the CPS dollars should continue going toward students.
While the network raises money for some programs, given the size of Acero’s budget and service to 15 individual schools, when combined with scholar fees, this represents just over 2% of all revenues. Nearly all of Acero’s budget comes from public dollars, according to the network’s website.
The charter network’s name — Acero — means “steel” in Spanish, honoring its roots in and commitment to the Latino community. The schools listed to close are: Casas on the Lower West Side; Cisneros in Brighton Park; Fuentes in Avondale; Paz in Little Village; Santiago in Ukrainian Village; Tamayo in Gage Park; and Cruz K-12 in West Ridge.
Closures will begin at the end of the current school year, affecting over 2,000 students and about 270 educators, according to CTU. Most of the seven schools slated to close serve Latino students, according to district data.
The vote by Acero’s nine-member board to close nearly half of its schools lacked transparency or accountability, said Matthew Luskin, chief of staff for CTU.
“Deciding to close half of the schools without showing your face and having a single conversation — with a single parent, a single student, a single educator — before you take that vote, that’s not a difficult decision. The difficult decision would be to commit to making this work,” Luskin said, who hadn’t anticipated the magnitude of closures.
Acero historically received five-year renewals on its contracts, but it is part of a cohort of charter networks that have recently received two- or three-year renewals, Stangle said. There “is significant pressure on charter operators across the city right now,” she said.
Indeed, in January, several charter schools received shorter renewals, as a way to hold them accountable if they were underperforming or not meeting standards for their students. Only charter schools that met or exceeded financial and academic standards and operated at the highest performance levels were eligible for a maximum 10-year renewal.
CPS evaluates its schools for “academic, financial, and operational performance,” district spokesperson Sylvia Barragan said in a statement to the Tribune. Charter schools must establish an Agreement and Accountability Plan with CPS and the Chicago Board of Education, she said.
“All schools, including District-authorized charter and contract schools, are required to meet academic and financial standards set by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and the District,” Barragan said.
She did not imply whether Acero schools met the standards or say whether CPS would take on the operation of the seven charter schools.
The initial school properties were generally decommissioned Archdiocese of Chicago school locations, according to a presentation to teachers and parents from Wednesday’s meeting at Acero Clemente Elementary in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood. The slides said about 1,700 students have exited Acero since 2018 — a 19% decrease in enrollment.
Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former educator and organizer for the CTU, has in the past opposed charter expansion. But he has also pledged as mayor not to close any schools.
Earlier this summer, Illinois Senate President Don Harmon said he passed on putting an amendment to extend a moratorium on public school closings in Chicago to a vote because he accepted Johnson’s promise not to shut down any schools or deplete funding. The bill initially was aimed at protecting selective enrollment schools from closures before it was amended to all schools, including regular neighborhood schools.
The Chicago Board of Education passed a resolution in December prioritizing neighborhood schools and doubled down in September when it approved a new five-year strategic plan reinforcing that vision. Earlier this month, all seven of those board members said they planned to resign, and Johnson appointed new board members just days later.
Acero Schools formerly operated under the charter school network United Neighborhood Organization or UNO, which stopped managing its 16 charter schools at the end of the 2014 school year due to a scandal over hiring practices. The Acero school network became completely self-managed in June 2015, when its management contract with UNO expired, according to the Acero website.
Acero is working with the district to agree to specific terms for the winding down of schools. It has launched a web-based resource center to update community members on the transition.
But teachers outside Cruz K-12 Thursday afternoon said there was still much up in the air.
Shauna Maybell-Abioye, who’s been a teacher at Cruz K-12 for six years, said that as a bilingually endorsed educator, she provides specialized care to immigrant students.
“I have migrant kids in my class who have gone through all kinds of horrors for years to get here,” she said. “I’m trained to work with those students.”
Maybell-Abioye said she believed the Board of Education might have more power than Acero’s board of directors in the final decisions over the closures. She said that means the November elections for Chicago’s first-ever partly elected school board hold even more urgency.
Maribel Hernandez said she lives near Cruz K-12 and worries about how her daughter will have to navigate a new bus route if the school closes. Hernandez cleans hotels and said she doesn’t have time for a long commute to another school, she said.
“It’s really important she keeps going here,” Hernandez said in Spanish.
Parent pickup, as usual, was over in less than half an hour. Most parents interviewed by the Tribune hadn’t heard that anything was changing in Acero’s management plans.
Chicago Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner contributed.
