Dear AJLA Community,  

I am writing to you today about a subject I know many of our students, staff, and community members care deeply about. As you may know, our school community has had conversations over the years about changing our school name to better represent our community’s values.  In our school community, our mission has always been to create a safe environment that embraces individuality and celebrates diversity and many of you have expressed the need to rename our school to represent our mission.   I am pleased to share that we will be moving forward as a community with selecting a new name for our school in a student-led process. The timeline for this process over the next several months is outlined below. 

November 2020

• Our students and staff will engage in community-building activities in their homerooms that focus on identifying and defining our school values. Administration will reach out to teachers to sign up for a class visit to share the information.
• Community meeting on November 30, 2020 at 5:00 PM

December 2020

• Eighth-grade Merit Club students will give a community presentation on the renaming process and next steps.
• In their homerooms, students will begin identifying potential school names, outline why the name was selected, and what values the name represents.
• Community meeting on December 14, 2020 at 5:00 PM.

January 2021

• Homerooms narrow down name ideas to three choices. Classes submit one name and explain why the name was selected and what values the name represents.
• Presentations of selected names at the LSC meeting and community meeting.
• Community meeting on January 19, 2021 at 5:00 PM.
• Students and staff will vote on the name submissions from each homeroom.

February 2021

• Community meeting on February 1, 2021 at 5:00 PM 
• The 8th grade Merit Club students will give a full presentation on the final three name choices to our Local School Council (LSC) on February 8, 2021 at 5:30 PM.
• Our LSC will vote to rank the final three names and submit the choices to the CPS Board of Education by February 16, 2021.

The passion our community has shown toward choosing a name for our school that best symbolizes our values is energizing, and I am particularly excited to hear our students’ ideas as we move forward in this process together so please make sure to share this exciting news with them.

I will be in touch with any updates and new details as they are available. In the meantime, if you have any  questions or feedback, please feel free to reach out by email msrebolledo@cps.edu or by phone at 773-534-7000. 

Sincerely, 

Dr. Rebolledo

Principal