September 2026 Partner Update

Happy First Day!

Students in school uniforms walking past our after-school table on the first day of school

Dear Friends,

Another school year is underway! Chicago Public Schools started back on Monday, August 24 and we greeted kids after school with “Happy First Day!” and cookies. It was great to see some old friends returning for another year of after-school programming as well as a few new ones. One set of brothers came by that first day and have been consistent since, getting help with homework and learning about our loving and powerful God.

Pencil-shaped first-day-of-school cookies, bagged and ready for the kids

Our team seated along the fence outside the outreach house with a table of cookies as a student with a backpack walks up

Fall 2026 After School with Englewood Family Outreach is up and running.

347

days to go

until the first day of Archer Christian Academy

Monday, August 23, 2027

Carved wood and stained glass inside a church sanctuary, one of the possible locations for the school to start meeting in

One of the possible locations for our school to start meeting in.

Another school year being underway also means that this time next year there will be a new school on the block! We’ve started our “365 day countdown” to the first day of Archer Christian Academy. Please be in prayer with us for all that needs to be done between now and then. Most particularly as we continue our search for a school home. Please pray for good connections to be made with churches, for God to open hearts and doors to hosting us, and for clarity on what the Lord would have us do. Pray also for our future students, for God to be preparing families even now to catch the vision and make the choice to send their kids to a brand-new school. Our hope is to open with fourteen kids in each class—Kindergarten, first and second grade—and we can’t wait to see who God will bring and meet our school’s first students.

Please join us in praying that God will open the doors for a meeting location. We would like to have this nailed down in the next couple months.

Thank you for praying and being part of God’s work in Englewood. We couldn’t do this work without your support.

God Bless,

Michelle Kelley, Director of Operations

Daniel Bair, Executive Director

P.s. (from Daniel) Several of you have asked whether our regular ministry programming is still going now that the school is taking up so much of our time and attention. It is! Dana and Ray hit the ground running with our Fall 2026 After School program with Englewood Family Outreach, and Michelle and I stop in whenever we are able (which somehow tends to land right around snack time...). We really do see the two feeding each other. The after-school program is where the community buy-in for the school is being built, and the vision for the school is drawing new energy and new people into the after-school program. So even while we focus on the school, we are investing in the lives of our students right now. If you would like to come see for yourself some afternoon, let me know.

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Archer Christian Academy

daniel@archerchristian.org
312-539-0644

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Sagitta vera — the true arrow.

672 West Marquette Road · Chicago, Illinois 60621
Archer Christian Academy is a ministry of Englewood Family Outreach, a 501(c)(3) organization. Gifts are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
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