My name is Lila Reyes, and I have been a proud parent of Rowe Elementary for the past nine years. My son, Dominic Martinez, is now an 8th grade scholar at Rowe. He has autism and has struggled in the past. But, at Rowe Elementary, he has thrived beyond our wildest dreams.

The staff, educators, and parents at Rowe have always shown an abundance of acceptance and support as we entered our journey in understanding his disability. Rowe has done more than a typical school could ever do in accommodating and supporting my child’s needs. My son began Rowe with an IEP with maximum provisional services. We worked with a team of speech pathologists, special education teachers, developmental therapists and social workers over the course of our years with Rowe. They ALL have gone above and beyond in their ability to educate and support my child, my family, and myself. Rowe has high expectations for their students and families, and these expectations help us to support our children.

Since the pandemic came to Chicago, I was highly concerned about my son’s ability to transition to homeschooling, but as always, Rowe has made this transition as stress-free as possible. I have an abundance of emails and phone calls from ALL of Dominic’s teachers to offer support with at-home learning. The amazing educators at Rowe recognized the hardships of losing the socialization school offers, so his teachers took it upon themselves to set up zoom meetings for Dom and his peers with similar disabilities. My son continues to receive online IEP support and the flow of communication is amazing. Never once have I had to question if my son requires assistance navigating Google Classroom. Not only was Rowe on  top of providing virtual support but they provided my family with two loaner laptops to provide my children with internet access for school work. All this took place within the first weeks of the stay at home order. I could not be happier to be a part of the Charter school system community.

My son will be starting high school this fall with minimal supportive services needed because he now has independent skills that are far beyond what we’ve ever expected. That is because of the incredible educators that work at Rowe. Our school really walks the walk and stands by its values of pride, success, and honor.