April 20, 2021

Dear Acero community,

This past May the world watched as George Floyd lost his life at the hands of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer. For 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the world witnessed a dark and difficult moment in history. In real-time we collectively experienced the failings of our systems of justice. The murder of George Floyd instigated introspection and an outcry against police brutality and the continued lack of justice and equality for people of color, in particular black men.

We watched as members of our community came together in protest and demanded change. We also witnessed the deep wounds and roots of hundreds of years of systemic racism. We still have so much healing to do.

Today, justice was served in the courtroom. However, this remains a somber moment for teaching and learning. We are reminded of the promise we made to you - to keep equity at the center of our work. Beyond our work in classrooms bringing light and truth to power, we must also continue to support our scholars and families who too often remain nested in fear and uncertainty because of their race, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

Change can happen and is happening. The work we are privileged to engage in fuels the change we wish to see in the world. Acero Schools will continue to listen, learn, seek feedback and update our practices to further empower and uplift our future changemakers.

United as a single Acero community, we stand in support of justice, tolerance, acceptance and human decency. We send our ongoing condolences to George Floyd’s family and loved ones and to so many others still waiting for justice.

Sincerely,

Acero Schools

April 15, 2021

Dear Acero community,

It is with the heaviest of hearts that we reach out to you again making space to process and mourn the tragic loss of precious life involving a police shooting.

The circumstances surrounding the death of Adam Toledo, a young soul who did not attend an Acero school but was a member of our city and Little Village community, have again elicited significant pain and anger. So many of us are simply exasperated.

Some of us will process our pain through peaceful protest and advocacy. Others, in particular our scholars, may further internalize yet another example of a young person lost in this way, some reminded of personal tragedies.

Our educators and staff continue to stand in service and in support of our scholars, one another and the families and caregivers that entrust us to educate your children. We collectively manage through this while witnessing in real-time the unfolding of events at home and bearing witness to the consequences of similar tragedies in Minnesota and beyond. We are bewildered by the frequency of these tragedies.

What can we do? We can support one another. We can peacefully demonstrate and continue to stand against violence. We can make available resources to help each other process what is underway. We can make space for discussions about what is happening, allowing our scholars and professionals to pause, question and learn during these critical moments.

If you are an Acero parent or caregiver whose scholar is in need of social and emotional support, linked are some resources intended for your use. While our professionals have selected these resources for our community, the people who staff our schools and network remain available to you. We are constantly examining and renewing our approach to the social, emotional and developmental needs of our scholars. We also continue to look inwards to find the right ways of bringing light and understanding forward during the darkest of times.

We continue to monitor happenings related to this matter focused on lifting up our community. In the interim, should you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact your school or our network at communications@aceroschools.org.

Sincerely,

Acero Schools

The Acero Schools community was saddened, angered and above all utterly, heartbroken to hear of another travesty in our Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. On Tuesday night, eight people were attacked and lost their lives outside Atlanta, Georgia. The majority of victims were women who were a part of the AAPI community. While we mourned, we listened and learned from the discussions spreading across the country, bearing witness to the rising number of hate crimes in the AAPI community.

We simply cannot continue to reflect upon the plight of our BIPOC communities without including the too often overlooked anguish of the AAPI community. History is happening now and Acero Schools stands on the side of equity, fairness and human decency.

Next week, Acero Schools will recognize the United Nations' Week of Solidarity with the Peoples Struggling Against Racism and Racial Discrimination. Specifically, we will highlight tools for supporting our AAPI communities, as well as others in our BIPOC communities and taking action against discrimination.

We endeavor to grow and educate ourselves in this work. We thank the University of Illinois of Chicago’s Asian American Resource and Cultural Center for their good work in providing reliable resources for the AAPI Community. If you are looking for resources, health services, or looking to report a hate crime, please visit UIC’s Community Resource Center.

If you are looking to attend a bystander intervention training please see below:

Bystander Intervention Trainings - Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Chicago

Contact: antihate@advancingjustice-chicago.org

iHollaback- Bystander Intervention Guide (5 Ds)

iHollaback- Free AAPI Harassment Bystander Intervention Workshops

If you are a member of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in need of support for mental or physical health, we wish to share the following resources:

Asian Human Services

Crisis Hotline- (773)-293-8488

Asian Health Coalition

180 W. Washington St., Suite 1000, Chicago, IL 60602

Sincerely,

Acero Schools

Today marks one year since we closed our doors and opened our minds to new opportunities, different ways of connecting and transformative ways of learning. While the past year has undoubtedly had its difficult times, we are proud to share the ways our Acero community has remained resilient within them. We look forward to the near future when we get to open our doors once again and bring back into the classrooms our scholars who have a new outlook about themselves, their education, and their future. Although we still have ways to go as we adjust to this new normal, we are excited to see what the future holds and are privileged to take this journey together. We are Acero. Somos Acero.

February 26, 2021

Dear Acero Schools community members,

It is with great anticipation that we reach out today providing an update on our eventual transition to hybrid learning. Before we begin, we want to thank you for your ongoing support and voice during this process.

As you may recall, hybrid learning includes a blend of onsite and remote (online) learning. Since we last updated you, we have witnessed extraordinary engagement and speedy feedback from parents and caregivers concerning your preferences. We have already heard from over 4600 families. For the plurality of respondents, remote learning continues to be the preferred learning modality. However, for just over one-third of other respondents, there is an urgent need to transition scholars to some form of hybrid learning. We seek to support all of our respondents.

Demonstrating our commitment to equity includes working toward educational offerings that are safe, accessible and engaging for all members of the Acero community. With this in mind, in addition to continuing to offer fully remote learning, Acero intends to offer 2 full days per week of full-day onsite learning with 3 days of full remote learning. This modality is available to survey respondents who indicated hybrid as their preference. While those who have selected hybrid as a preference may transition to remote learning at any time, those who chose remote may not transition to hybrid learning at this time.

As we’d previously shared, this will occur in safe and orderly phases. These phases are envisioned as follows.

• March 22: All school-based support staff return to school buildings 5 days/week

• April 12: All school-based instructional staff return to school buildings 5 days/week

• April 19: Kindergarten-Grade 2 and freshman scholars who opted for hybrid learning return to their school building.

• April 22: Grade 3-8, sophomore, junior and senior scholars who opted for hybrid learning return to their school building.

To finalize this plan the impact of returning to in-person instruction must be agreed between Acero Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). Today marks our first conversation with many more to come. An agreement will include consideration of health and safety protocols, risk mitigation, PPE needs and requirements and social distancing strategies all in accordance with CDC, IDPH and CDPH guidelines. While these conversations are always detailed and include a broad host of important considerations, Acero Schools is confident in our plan and ability to work collaboratively with CTU to do what is in the best interest of our scholars, families and school communities. Additionally, we are required to submit documentation to our authorizer, the Chicago Public Schools Board of Education, to advance this plan. As we discuss and agree on elements of our plan, updates will be provided on our Hybrid Learning Transition Hub website.

We continue to be deeply thankful for the trust you have placed in us. We remain committed to sharing updates with you and will keep you informed of developments. In the meantime, should you have any questions, concerns or wonderings, please do not hesitate to contact us as indicated within the following links (Spanish / English).

Sincerely,

Acero Schools

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, students who normally received free school meals at school are now eligible for a program to help your family buy groceries. Recently, the State of Illinois was approved to provide new Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer Program (P-EBT) benefits to all eligible Illinois students. This means that for each day that our students did not have access to an in-school lunch, P-EBT will provide benefits per student, per day.

Because all Acero Schools participate in the National School Lunch Program and in the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), all Acero students will be eligible for this benefit. Please note, you do not need to complete an application to receive these benefits. The Department of Human Services will be mailing cards to all eligible students.

Please read below for additional information:

What action needs to be taken now?

At this time, it is very important for all families to ensure that the mailing address on file at your school is current. A complete mailing address will be needed to receive the P-EBT issuance in the near future. If you have moved recently, please make sure to provide the updated address to your child’s school.

What is P-EBT?

The purpose of P-EBT is to provide food assistance to families with students who would have received free or reduced lunch while attending school but are not receiving these meals in school due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Who is eligible for P-EBT benefits?

The following students are eligible for P-EBT benefits for School Year 2020-21.

• Students must be enrolled in an eligible NSLP participating Illinois school and;

• Students must be enrolled in a Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) school OR must be determined eligible to receive free/reduced lunch for the 2020-21 school year and;

• Students are P-EBT eligible on school days in which a school meal was not provided to the student to consume at school. If “grab and go meals” are provided to students, this does not exclude them from being eligible for the P‑EBT program.

When will I receive the benefits?

The Department of Human Services should begin issuing new P-EBT cards to all known eligible students in March 2021. P-EBT cards will arrive in an unmarked envelope so it’s important to keep an eye out! Additionally, each child will receive their own card. It is important to keep this card safe because future benefits will be loaded onto the same card.

Click here to read additional information shared by the Greater Chicago Food Depository regarding this benefit.

Should you have additional questions or need to update your mailing address, please reach out to your child’s school.

Our new equity statement is here! Thanks to the input of our scholars, families, colleagues and community members the equity statement selected is:

We respect and value the unique backgrounds of each scholar, family, caregiver and staff member and elevate the communities we serve.

This statement received the overwhelming support of 43% of those surveyed. We are proud to have Equity as one of Acero’s core values and will continue to honor the importance of equity in the classroom and in our community. To learn more about our commitment to equity and anti-racist work, please click here for English and here for Spanish.

We are Acero! ¡Somos Acero!

On Monday, we honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King is many things to many different people and is often considered the most prominent civil rights leader in our nation’s history.

He was a steadfast activist committed to nonviolence and peaceful protest. On April 4, 1968, he paid the ultimate price for his beliefs when he was assassinated standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King was only 39 years old. He left behind a wife and four young children.

We are reminded of Dr. King’s writings, in particular a letter written in November 1963 while imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama. This correspondence, known as the “Letter From Birmingham Jail” was addressed to fellow clergy members in response to some suggesting that his activism in Birmingham was “unwise and untimely.” So much like now, protests over injustice were growing and tensions were high. Some felt Dr. King should concern himself with his own immediate community of Atlanta for fear of him being labeled an outside agitator. Others did not approve of the demonstrations in Birmingham at all. Faced with both criticism and skepticism, Dr. King made his position clear.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Approaching 60 years later, we continue to stand in awe of the simplicity of this statement and the enormous call to action that still stands today to do better.

This past summer, we shared Acero’s commitment to become an anti-racist network. We shared our ongoing commitment to create a supportive, inclusive, responsive and transformative learning and professional environment where scholars and staff are celebrated for their diversity, including the hallmarks of individual identity such as ethnic background and heritage, immigration status, sexual orientation, and gender or gender nonconformity, as well as diverse learning and mobility features and characteristics. This work is expansive, includes multiple steps and, done authentically, will take multiple years. This work will never truly be “done” if we are to continuously learn and improve. We embrace this and are deeply committed to this work.

Today, we’re sharing our progress to date. While this work is multi-faceted and includes everything from our curricular choices to social media campaigns and everything in between, we have developed a website to keep you fully informed of our progress and new developments. The website is structured to correspond with the areas of focus we committed to in August and, as a reminder, include the following.

Evaluate curricular resources and tools campus by campus using the “Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecard” published by NYU Metro Center

Review our values, focused on equity, resultant in changing our “Excellence” value to “Equity”

Cultivate a diverse and inclusive workplace that is more reflective of our scholars and communities

Continue to improve our “Language Learning Model”

Partner with expert organizations to provide ongoing training, professional development and workshops available to our entire school community focus on equity, diversity and inclusive practices

Create a continuous feedback cycle of our anti-racist agenda, stance and work

Evaluate and adjust any misaligned network policies and procedures

Examples of our progress are noted within each section on the webpage. Again, as we expand upon this work, additional content will be shared. We will also continue to periodically reach out to you directly. While this work is sometimes difficult and met with varied degrees of acceptance or belief, we continue to seek to endeavor. It is our responsibility to do so on behalf of our scholars, colleagues, families and communities. You deserve nothing less than our absolutely best efforts.

Sincerely,

Acero Schools

Heart-wrenching does not begin to describe what we saw happen in our nation’s capitol yesterday. While a joint session of Congress came together to formally count Electoral College votes to certify the elections of President-Elect Joseph Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, an insurgent mass stormed the most sacred nucleus of our democracy - the United States Capitol. We bore witness to the disparate treatment afforded to insurgants compared to that of peaceful protestors who advocated for justice in recent months. Four people lost their lives and our nation’s elected officials were compelled to shelter in place, gas masks in hand. Yesterday was violent, jarring and beyond disquieting. The extremely fragile balance of our democracy was broadcast for the entire world to see. Yesterday will be remembered by many as one of the darkest days in American history.

But it happened, and the Acero Schools community intends to approach this with courage and conviction. Our scholars return from winter break next week. Upon celebrating their return, we will take time across all of schools to reflect on the events of this past week. This includes creating a safe and open space for scholars to discuss what we all saw happen yesterday in a way that is socially and emotionally appropriate. We will also discuss the positive events that occurred which showcased the true American spirit, including a record breaking voter turnout in Georgia and our nation’s first Black senator from the south in more than 100 years.

We will listen, we will discuss and we will work through the lessons of this time together, as one Acero community. Like our namesake we are strong, we are resilient and we are lasting.

We are Acero, Somos Acero.

Sincerely,

Acero Schools