CEO Note: End of the 2020-2021 School Year

Dear Noble Family,

We did it. We’ve come through a full year of unprecedented change and we did it together. I am so proud of the work we’ve done to make this a monumental year.

• We started the year with a call to get in good trouble. More than 4,000 parents, staff, students, and community partners answered the call by completing our community survey, by engaging in Anti-racism Commitment (ARC) design and refine spaces, and more – all contributing to reimagining Noble from an antiracist lens.
• We distributed more than 15,000 Chromebooks and 6,000 MiFi hotspots since March 2020 to ensure all Noble students had access to learning, and we distributed more than 1,100,000 meals to the Chicago community in the same time period.
• Noble staff and students hosted 384,777 Zoom meetings, for a total of 217,355,754 virtual minutes in the last year (and I, for one, am looking forward to a smaller number next year!)
• Noble campuses hosted Covid testing sites and administered more than 5,000 free Covid tests to our community.
• We announced 14 more Distinguished Teachers
• The latest Diverse Leaders Fellowship cohort completed a year of reflection and leadership growth.
• We ensured 100% of Noble staff had access to Covid vaccination opportunities and nearly 900 Noble staff were vaccinated through Noble partnerships with health care providers.
• Together, we executed a return to in-person learning through our three-step plan, including robust health and safety measures. As a result, on average, more than 3,500  students participated in some form of in-person programming each week during the 4th quarter.
• Thousands of community members were vaccinated in the Mansueto High School gym, in partnership with Esperanza Health Centers from February through June. And, even more Chicagoans were vaccinated at “pop-up” clinics at various Noble campuses these past few weeks.
• We held prom at Soldier Field!
• And, in just these last few weeks, our class of 2021 walked across the stage at graduation after earning more than 12,200 college acceptances and $330 million in scholarship awards.

There are a million stories large and small not captured in my bullet points above – moments of breakthroughs with students, lessons that landed perfectly or provided us a chance to grow, stories of sports championships and art competitions, and so much more. Together they represent a year unlike any other because your efforts were unlike any other.  This year was possible because we were in it together – teachers, students, administrators, families, support team – through it all, we worked as a team.

I have so much gratitude for the way Noble is able to make flexible decisions centered around the voices of our collective community, and I credit so many of our accomplishments this year to that flexibility. Free from the politics that influenced other schools and districts, at Noble, we’ve worked hard to solicit the voices of our students, families, teachers, and staff at every turn. Thank you for the surveys you took, the refine committees you joined, the one-off emails you sent, and all the ways that you helped us listen and pivot. My hope is you’ve felt heard, communicated with in advance, and, like me, are proud of the way we’ve handled the pandemic, supported families and staff financially, and continued to make student-first decisions.