Aspira votes to close charter operator’s Haugan Middle School as negotiations over Acero closures continue.

Following months of intense debate regarding Chicago charter school closures, another operator, Aspira Inc. of Illinois, has opted to shutter the doors of one of its four schools serving Chicago Public Schools students.

Following a vote by Aspira’s Board of Directors Wednesday, Haugan Middle School in Albany Park will close at the end of the school year. More than 80 predominantly Latino students in grades 6-8 currently attend the school, according to CPS data.

“I’m heartbroken about it. You never want to be the guy that shuts down a school,” said Aspira President and CEO Edgar Lopez. “We tried to prevent it in different ways,” he said, noting that the nonprofit launched fundraising efforts and hired recruiters last year in an attempt to increase enrollment. “But the bottom line is that the students are just not there.”

According to Lopez, the middle school previously had as many as 800 students when it served as a feeder from the formerly K-5 district-managed school with a similar name, Haugan Elementary School. When the grade levels at CPS’ Haugan location were increased to also include grades 6-8 a few years ago, Lopez said Aspira’s middle school enrollment fell to around 300 students.

Then, in 2022, CPS co-located North River Elementary School, another K-8 district-managed school, in the same building. At that point, Lopez said, “We were drowning.”

CPS, which does not have the authority to prevent charter operators from choosing to close, said that Lopez informed the district in early December that Aspira planned to remove Haugan from its upcoming charter renewal application.

Aspira currently operates an additional two schools, Business & Finance High School and Early College High School, for which its charter authorization expires in June. A separate agreement presides over a third Aspira alternative school, Antonia Pantoja High School. All of Aspira’s other locations are in Avondale.

“I can’t save the school and put the other schools in danger,” Lopez said of Haugan, adding that the charter operator’s salary costs in the last year increased by around $1.5 million, stemming from its collective bargaining agreement with the charter division of the Chicago Teachers Union.

“We’re not hiding a surplus,” he said, alluding to debate surrounding the Acero Charter Network’s fall decision to close seven of its fifteen schools at the end of the school year.

Amid a contentious decision by the Board of Education in December to absorb Acero’s closing schools, the charter operator has also insisted on its financial transparency and compliance, describing its decision as an “extremely painful” choice.

Regarding the impacted Aspira families, Lopez said he’s awaiting a meeting with CPS next week.

A district spokesperson said in an emailed statement Friday that a consortium of CPS offices “will support affected families as they transition to other CPS schools.” Along with North River and CPS’ Haugan Elementary, displaced families’ options will include three additional district-managed schools in a one-mile radius, according to the district spokesperson who added that nine of the ten teachers at Aspira’s Haugan location are eligible to transition to another CPS school.

Meanwhile, the district remains embroiled in negotiations over Acero’s planned closures, announced in October. Tense debate on how and whether CPS could keep the seven schools open rather than transitioning the approximately 2,000 impacted students to district-managed schools, has coursed through Board of Education meetings since.

Amid protests and impassioned pleas from students and parents to keep the schools open, Board members questioned the legitimacy of the deficits which Acero cited as necessitating its planned closures.

Acero also said, like Aspira, that the closures were necessitated by a combination of declining enrollment and increased salary costs . And, with its aging schools physically unable to meet the needs of its students, the charter operator also said that it faced rising maintenance costs.

In an early December presentation on CPS’ potential response, district officials warned that bailing out the charter operator could set an unsustainable precedent. Twenty charter schools have closed in the last decade, without CPS providing financial assistance in response, officials said.

But, weeks later, the seven-member Board appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson unanimously passed a resolution ordering CPS to cover Acero’s shortfalls so that all seven schools remain open next school year, which the district has estimated will cost $3.2 million. The new policy also directs CPS to subsequently reopen five Acero locations as district-run schools in the fall of 2026.

The terms must be jointly agreed by CPS and the charter operator, according to the resolution. CPS said Friday that it had no updates available, as the district remains in the initial stages of negotiating the agreement.