ACE provides competitive start-up grants to new small autonomous schools to help them during the critical first 3 years of operation. These grants supplement—not supplant—district, state, and federal funds that are due the schools based on their enrollment. Because new schools will take several years to grow into their full enrollment (e.g. adding a grade or two each year), their budgets are particularly tight in the first years. These grants are designed to be flexible so schools can fund their priority areas of need including: professional development, after school programs, grant writers, special one-time materials costs (e.g. a new school with a music emphasis might buy musical instruments in the first year that otherwise would not have been affordable until the third year).

ACE is also in the early stages of creating a network of charter schools in the Valley, operated by the CMO branch of the ACE Public School Network. A network of this kind is a critical piece of the school choice movement, as it provides significant public school options outside of traditional school district control, and thus adds healthy competition to the vital work of educating children.