Burbank's New AERO Therapeutic Center A 'Center Of Hope' For Students

BURBANK, IL — There isn’t a day that goes by when Bill Roseland walks into a brand new 150,000 square-foot, two-story special education facility that is now home to 400 local students and stops to just take everything in.

In the three years that have passed since ground was broken on the new state-of-the-art AERO Therapeutic Center, Roseland — the executive director of the special education Co-op that serves 11 area districts — has dreamed of the day when all the students served by the program would be under one roof.

So, when the facility that was built on the 13-acre property that once housed Queen of Peace High School opened to students last week, Roseland watched as students entered the one-of-a-kind learning environment and just soaked in the excitement and awe that filled students’ faces as they took everything in for the first time.

On Wednesday, the new AERO Therapeutic Center hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony that put the finishing touches on the pomp and circumstances surrounding the center’s opening. Now, officially open to serve the educational needs of students who will attend classes at the facility each day, Wednesday’s ceremony allowed the public to witness what Roseland has been long awaiting since the new facility became a reality.

“We are still in amazement,” Roseland told Patch ahead of Wednesday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. “This is something that staff here at AERO have always dreamed of – that being that we are now only limited by our imagination and our heart work.”

The facility now houses all 400 AERO students who come from 11 districts representing Lyons, Stickney, and Worth townships. To make the new facility a reality, member districts contributed $25 million which was matched by a $25 million grant that came from Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s $45 million capital bill.

Until this year, the students had been spread out at individual schools around the region, all of which made the students a priority in their own way, Roseland said. But once the new facility that includes space to accommodate 200 more students in a school that not only includes classrooms, but state-of-the-art life and commercial life skills and home life skills training areas opened officially earlier this month, everything changed.

Now, the possibilities for teaching opportunities are endless in a setting that Roseland still finds himself looking at every time he walks through the center’s doors and through a campus that includes open courtyards and classrooms that are now basking in natural light. The facility also includes areas for art and music classes that have not been offered by the program until now, which only adds to the allure of the new facility.

The setting is one, Roseland said, that he doesn’t exist anywhere else across Illinois or perhaps, even the country.

“The wonder of it all has not lessened in the last week,” he said. “Our students and our staff and our families frankly are just thrilled to be here.”

He added: “It’s a mixture of wonder and disbelief, but more so than anything, it’s just an overriding sense of excitement and a sense of belonging …This is their home school, and it can, over time, be part of their identity.”

The new space, which is located at the corner of 77th Street and Linder Avenue in Burbank, will allow students and staff alike to flourish for years to come. Roseland said that the school provides students with the feeling that they are part of a community where they belong — something that all comes together now that all of the AERO students are learning in the same space.

Roseland credits officials from the 11 districts for stepping up to make the new therapeutic center a reality. With the space that the facility affords the program and the unique learning areas where students will be engaged in life and work skills to prepare them for life after their formal education begins, the new environment will help to set students apart with a “second-to-none” education and they go through the AERO program, the executive director said.

“Every day at AERO now is a very special day,” Roseland told Patch on Wednesday. “To see students entering the hallways, to see students hard at work in our classrooms, it is absolutely very, very special and absolutely amazing.

He added: “What this building really represents is a center for learning, but what it really is for students and families is a center of hope. For the students who attend here today, it is certainly that, but what it will be – and for many, many years and decades long after we’re all gone – it will still be here and it will still be that for all students.”