Every offer of help was met with a “yes!” A former mentor became a volunteer bookkeeper. Parents painted classrooms and assembled furniture. Acera’s foundation was built on community investment and shared vision. Diane Rich, a Wharton MBA, helped navigate an attempt to get Innovation Schools legislation applied to open a public school program with this philosophy in a public school district. Always top of mind for Courtney was that the kind of education that Acera would offer should be available to all students.

By year two, Acera moved to a new space in the Melrose Methodist Church Annex, again requiring parent-led renovations. Rapid growth led to a search for a permanent home. In 2013, thanks to a few key gifts totaling $400,000 and a $1.2M loan from Winchester Cooperative Bank, Acera purchased our current building at 5 Lowell Avenue in Winchester. That moment shifted everything—families stopped wondering if Acera was viable and started believing in its long-term future.

A family loan note program funded essential renovations. By year four, Acera had over 85 students (K-8), growing to nearly 150 soon after. A new family catalyzed our efforts to build out the Innovation Lab in 2014—a maker space, science lab, and woodshop.

In Acera’s first year, the school opened with the Creativity Stations program, which created options for kids to explore while full time core teachers had a chance to connect, collaborate, plan and learn together; a key reason teachers leave the field is isolation, so planning to mitigate that risk was in the school’s design. Part of Acera’s model includes longer time blocks for learning, enabling kids to engage, learn, apply concepts, iterate their work, and go deep.  Offering “specials” in the Creativity Stations Wednesday model meant that kids could have an incredibly wide array of arts programming (theatre, film, music, fine art, woodshop, culinary, and much more) without chopping up the rest of the week into shorter time sections so all kids could “get” to their specials.

The second year was the launch of our woodshop zone because even very young kids can benefit from sharp, real tools to make things that matter. Early collaborations with MIT scientists brought strong  STEM projects into our school even in our first years. MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Angela Belcher led students in building solar cells. Microbiologist Eric Alm introduced experiments that made the unseeable world visible. Meanwhile, student-led theater productions, music, and woodworking flourished.

Defining moments shape Acera’s legacy: A once-anxious fourth grader found confidence on stage. An 8th-grade graduate declared, “Acera made me brave.” Parents worried about college admissions only to see alumni accepted at Yale, Caltech, Stanford, and Dartmouth. More than prestige, Acera prepares students to be thinkers, innovators, and leaders.

In 2022, inspired by Acera’s impact, a family donated $3 million to purchase and renovate  1 Lowell Avenue into an Arts & Sciences building, enabling us to make space to convert the Inno Lab area at 5 Lowell into a Theatre and Movement space (hoped-for completion in fall 2026, as long as we have a successful captial campaign in fall 2025).  After a nationwide search, an exceptional Associate Head of School was hired, Dr. Heather Pinedo-Burns, who will become Acera’s new Head of School on July 1, 2025. Acera’s future is secure, as a permanent institution for gifted learners.

Beyond our walls, AceraEI, our public school outreach initiative, has impacted over 20,000 students, offering teacher training, curriculum toolkits, and leadership development.

Acera is more than a school—it’s a home for the curious, a launchpad for future innovators, and proof of what education can be when children’s potential is truly nurtured.