Families and educators were left reeling Wednesday night after Acero charter schools leaders voted to close seven of its 15 schools next year during a board of directors meeting.
The schools are: Casas, Cisneros, Fuentes, Paz, Santiago and Tamayo elementary schools and Cruz K-12, Acero leaders announced at the meeting, which was held at Acero Clemente Elementary in Belmont Cragin.
The closures are planned to begin June 2025 and will impact about 2,000 students.
The network of schools operates primarily in Latino neighborhoods. The seven schools are in Brighton Park, West Ridge, Pilsen, Avondale, South Lawndale, West Town and Gage Park.
The seven schools enrolled about one-third of Acero’s 6,318 kids last year.
Lluvia Estrada, who has two children enrolled at Cisneros in Brighton Park, fought through tears as she explained the impact the closure will have on her children, who are in second and seventh grade.
“It’s very difficult for me because it’s 10 years that I’ve been at that school,” Estrada said in Spanish after the meeting. “Its difficult for me to have to explain to my children that they are going to close the school, that they won’t have the teachers they have been with.”
Estrada, like many of the more than 60 people in attendance, including dozens of Acero teachers represented by the Chicago Teachers Union, braced for bad news. CTU members said they had heard rumblings closures might be coming, but they didn’t expect it to be nearly half of the network.
Shouts of “cowards!” could be heard as Acero CEO Richard Rodriguez revealed the names of the schools to be closed. Several in the audience were left in tears.
Rodriguez attempted to explain what he called the “sobering proposal.” He cited a 1,400 student enrollment decline over eight years, increases in costs to staff and facility maintenance, and the dwindling Chicago population as key factors in the decision.
Rodriguez also said the network needed to be “nimble” in the face of a change in toward charter schools compared to 10 years ago.
“Our city looks very different now, Chicago’s population has greatly decreased, and attitudes towards charter schools are increasingly polarized and political,” he said. “Recent CPS Board of Education changes, with more on the horizon, requires us to be nimble. The current landscape requires us to think and operate differently …”
Advocates of publicly funded, privately managed charters have feared their schools would face more scrutiny after the Chicago Board of Education announced in December its intent to prioritize traditional neighborhood schools.
However, the board renewed contracts for dozens of charter operators in January, but most for shorter terms than they had sought.
Acero leaders said they assessed multiple factors in deciding which schools to close, including the cost of rent or mortgage, staff stability and attendance.
The network said remaining schools will enroll the impacted students, and town hall meetings will be held every month starting in October to update community members. It also said it will begin discussions with the CTU about impacted employees.
Richard L. Rodriguez, CEO of Acero Charter Schools, at a meeting for the Acero Charter Schools Board of Directors, at Acero Clemente Elementary, 2050 N. Natchez Ave. on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024.
Zubaer Khan/Sun-Times
But Caroline Rutherford, chair of the council of CTU members at Acero and an art teacher at Acero Marquez in Brighton Park, said that was too little too late. She said Acero did not communicate the plan with families or teachers before meeting to vote on the plan.
“They have had zero conversations with any of the members, any of the union leaders,” she said. “They did not inform us, meet to negotiate with us about any of this. They’re just making this decision unilaterally.”
Rutherford also protested the closures, pointing to a CPS resolution last month that put a moratorium on school closures through the 2026-27 school year. But that resolution only applies to district-run schools.
After the meeting Rutherford gathered with other CTU teachers, vowing to fight for their students.
“We’re going to go to school tomorrow and be there for our students,” she told them.
Meanwhile, Estrada said she has to start looking for a new school for her children.
And Cisneros accused board members of thinking only of themselves and not the families when making their decision.
“They are wrong because they don’t look at the pain of the parents or the pain in our children,” she said.
Contributing: Nader Issa, Sarah Karp