Alpha Chicago opened Sept. 8 at 350 E. South Water St. with classrooms and no teachers. Fifteen days later, Mayor Brandon Johnson proposed a yearlong pause on new data centers in the city. The two events share a question Chicago has not yet answered: what artificial intelligence costs, and who pays for it.
Alpha is the first Illinois campus of a private chain founded in Austin in 2014 by MacKenzie Price. Students from pre-K through eighth grade spend about two hours a day on what the school calls “personalized, mastery-based learning software,” then move on to public speaking, entrepreneurship, financial literacy and physical activity. The adults on staff are called “guides,” and the school describes their work as mentoring and motivation. Tuition is $55,000 a year.
Results for Chicago students have not been released. Alpha has not published enrollment numbers for the campus and did not respond to NBC Chicago’s request for comment when the school opened. Nationally, the company says its students learn faster than their peers, citing its own analyses of NWEA’s MAP tests. No independent review has examined those analyses, and no peer-reviewed study has evaluated the model. In 2025, Pennsylvania's Department of Education rejected a related cyber-charter application, calling the approach “untested.” The founders say the “AI” in their model refers to adaptive learning apps rather than the large language models behind chatbots.
The city’s own reckoning with AI is happening in the City Council. On Sept. 23, Johnson and Alds. Maria Hadden (49th), Lamont Robinson (4th) and Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth (48th) introduced an ordinance that would freeze permits for new data centers for 12 months and bar “material expansion” of existing ones. Chicago’s 39 operating data centers would keep running. A July report from the city’s Sustainable Data Centers Working Group found that Chicago's rules predate modern data centers and do not adequately address their effects on the electric grid, water supply, air quality and surrounding neighborhoods. “Chicago is open for business, but we are not for sale,” Johnson said. The ordinance is in committee, and a city task force is due to deliver draft rules by March 15, 2027.
For most Chicagoans, the debate arrives in the mail. ComEd’s capacity charge climbed from about 91 cents to about $8 a month in one year, an increase tied largely to data center demand in the regional PJM grid auction. Data centers in ComEd’s territory use about 400 megawatts today, and Exelon has said roughly 5 gigawatts of additional projects are under engineering study. Sarah Moskowitz of the Citizens Utility Board said residents are outraged that Big Tech “isn't paying its fair share of energy costs.”
Parents in the public system have pressed school board candidates to sign a pledge limiting AI in Chicago Public Schools. Alpha's families made the opposite choice and are paying $55,000 a year for it. ComEd customers were never asked, and their bills already carry part of the industry's growth.
Alpha’s first results and the moratorium’s first vote will tell Chicago more about what AI is worth here. The electric bills have already started that conversation.