CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) - At a long and often emotional meeting, the Chicago Board of Education voted Thursday to save five of the seven Acero charter schools that the operator planned to close.
Late last year, the school board voted to spare all seven of the targeted Acero charter schools. But, at the end of Thursday’s meeting, punctuated by tears and anger from students and parents, the board voted to absorb five of the schools next year.
Board member Yesenia Lopez acknowledged it was a tough decision.
“This is about knowing what is the best that we can do moving forward with the resources we have at hand,” Lopez said. Our public education is not up for sale, not at the local level, not at the federal level, and I’ve seen that firsthand coming from the community.”
With the tension firmly fixed on Acero, board members Che “Ryhmefest” Smith and Jitu Brown agreed, the board must maintain vigilance against what they both called “bad actors” to prevent future crises like this.
The problem, said Brown, is operators like Acero, once known as UNO, could be given 15 charters in the first place.
“I don’t care how complicated you try to make it. I don’t care how many spreadsheets you show. What you believe is what you will do…Why are we having the same conversations in the year 2025 that we had in 2004?” Brown asked.
Brown and others protested closings under then Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
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