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After months of uncertainty for hundreds of families and teachers who are facing closures at seven Acero charter schools, Chicago’s Board of Education will vote this week on keeping four of the schools open — backtracking from a plan to prevent the closures altogether.
According to Chicago Public Schools officials, the funding needs for all seven Acero campuses on the chopping block exceed a legal state limit on how much money the district can provide to charter schools.
A resolution included on the board’s agenda for its Thursday meeting calls for CPS to provide financial help to Acero in order to keep the Casas, Fuentes, Tamayo, and Santiago campuses open next school year. It then calls for CPS to figure out “the viability” of absorbing those campuses and turning them into district-run schools after next year.
Charters are privately run, publicly funded schools and are allowed to operate under a contract with Chicago Public Schools. Acero announced in October that it would close seven of its 15 campuses due to financial problems.
Under the resolution for Thursday’s board meeting, the Paz, Cruz, and Cisneros campuses would close at the end of this school year.
In a statement, Helena Stangle, chief culture officer for Acero, said Acero has been “cooperative, transparent, and open to all remedies,” and it’s “essential” for CPS to cover all operational and capital costs, as well as deficits, “so students get the educational experience they deserve in a safe building.”
“We await CPS BOE action to determine the next steps for our impacted scholars, families and colleagues,” Stangle said.
State law requires districts to fund charters by at least 97% and up to 103% of what it spends per student at district-run schools, which CPS said it would exceed under a plan to save all seven schools. A “per capita tuition charge” is calculated annually and this year’s budget set it at $19,339.34 per student enrolled.
The new plan would walk back the previous seven-member Board of Education’s directive to keep all seven Acero schools open by helping cover any deficits for Acero. That directive also called for the district to create a plan to turn five of the schools — Cisneros, Casas, Fuentes, Tamayo, and Santiago — into district-run buildings by the 2026-27 school year and explore whether it could do the same for Paz and Cruz, which CPS previously said contributed the most to Acero’s debt.
Parents and union leaders celebrated that resolution when it passed in late December on the same day the school board voted to fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. The union did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Plan would leave future uncertain for 4 Acero schools
Not only would the new resolution keep just four of the schools open next year with CPS’s financial help, but unlike before, it leaves open the possibility that those schools could also close by the 2026-27 school year.
Alfonso Carmona, CPS’s chief portfolio officer, had originally endorsed a plan to keep five of the seven schools open because it was the least expensive option CPS, which is facing at least a $500 million deficit next fiscal year. In a Feb. 4 email that Acero sent to schools staff, the network said its senior staff had met with CPS leadership to “reach agreement” on how they would keep the seven campuses open. Both parties also had additional meetings about “critical funding and liability matters,” the email said.
Board of Education member Carlos Rivas Jr. said district leaders have been meeting with board members to explain their options. He was not provided specifics of the problems that would need to be fixed at the Acero schools if CPS took over. The resolution appeared to be the only legal and financially viable way forward, he said.
CPS did not immediately say how much it would cost to keep the four campuses open; multiple board members said they didn’t know. CPS plans to provide an update on Acero at the meeting Thursday.
“This is obviously very damaging to our school communities and our families, especially [from] an organization that serves Latino families,” he said. “We can’t have Acero doing this willy-nilly. We need to figure something out in order to hold charters accountable for things like this.”
Carmona informed Acero parents in a Tuesday letter of the pending resolution.
“If the Board approves the amended resolution, the district will inform the affected families by Friday, February 28th, to begin the transition process and will provide information regarding options for families for next year,” Carmona wrote in the email obtained by Chalkbeat. “Throughout this process, CPS will continue to work in good faith to carry out the Chicago Board of Education’s vision.”
Acero Schools, once known as the UNO Charter School Network, opened the Paz campus in 1998. It was the network’s first and one of Chicago’s first charter schools after state law authorized the publicly-funded, independently-run schools. It ran into trouble about a decade ago with the Securities and Exchange Commission for defrauding bondholders, and CPS threatened to end the network’s charter in 2015 amid the fallout. But the school board ultimately renewed their agreement. In 2017, the charter network separated from the neighborhood organization and rebranded as Acero.
Acero announced in October it would close half of the schools it operates before the start of the 2025-26 school year due to a $40 million budget shortfall. Closing all seven schools would impact more than 1,800 students and about 200 staff members. Families and the Chicago Teachers Union — which represents staff at those schools — launched rallies and began attending board meetings to press CPS to prevent the closures.
But since then, parents say they’ve received no updates from Acero or CPS on what would happen next. At a board meeting earlier this month to review its agenda, several Acero parents and teachers pressed the district for more answers.
When Martinez told board members that CPS was “working diligently” on the issue, an audience member shouted back, “We’ve been hearing that for 126 days. There needs to be more.”
‘They kick us while we’re down'
Micha Thurston, an academic interventionist at Paz, said she felt blindsided when she learned that Paz was once again slated for closure. She’s taught at Paz for about a year. Despite hearing that families at other Acero schools on the chopping block were transferring out, just one family at Paz had left, she said.
“We’ve had parents that now have kids at our school, that went to our school, their siblings went to our school, their uncles and aunts went to our school,” Thurston said. “So they’re making it very clear that, like, they’re waiting it out with us.”
In its Feb. 4 email to staff, Acero said staff could enroll families for next school year, and that Acero would provide a disclosure to those families saying the network was still working with CPS on how it would keep the campuses open next year, according to an email obtained by Chalkbeat.
Thurston said the Paz campus just enrolled two students who had previously attended Acero schools, and their first day is Wednesday. Paz staff was planning a meeting this week with parent leaders to discuss strategies for boosting enrollment next year, she said.
It used to feel like CPS was on their side, Thurston said. Now it feels like Acero and CPS are teaming up.
“It just feels like every turn they kick us,” she said. “They kick us while we’re down, they kick us some more and then they stomp on us.”
Becky Vevea contributed.
Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.
