The Next Point for ACE

Dear ACE Family,

A new school year is underway, and I'm especially excited about the work ahead. This year, we're building on what we've learned through years of working alongside our school partners and, importantly, through research demonstrating the impact of the ACE model on students' social-emotional learning, school attendance, and classroom behavior.

These findings give us a strong foundation. Now, we're asking what more we can learn.

Our new Data & Evaluation Task Force brings together fresh perspectives and expertise to examine how we measure success across our sites. The group will help us assess which elements of the ACE model are delivering the strongest results, where our current measures may not tell the whole story, and how we can use that information to make decisions about our approach. This is an opportunity to bring greater precision to how we evaluate our impact and ensure that our decisions are grounded in a clear understanding of what students are experiencing and achieving.

We're also starting the year with a few practical challenges. The consolidation of schools in Illinois School District 148 has reduced the amount of gym space available to us, which means our team has had to get creative about where and how we meet. Fortunately, we've never needed a perfect setup to get things done. We've held activities in hallways, reworked lessons to fit smaller spaces, and found ways to keep our ACErs active. A little less gym space isn't going to keep us from excelling!

As the year unfolds, I'll share what we're learning through the task force, how our team continues to adapt, and the accomplishments of our ACErs. There's plenty of work ahead, but we're ready to take it one point at a time and make this year count!

Thank you for making a major difference,
Coach Susan Klumpner, Ph.D., LCSW
Executive Director & Co-Founder