Names selected for two Gurnee schools

Two names selected from a contest will go on a new school and an existing building at Gurnee Elementary District 56.

District 56 officials in July began soliciting names for the new structure rising in Wadsworth and for O'Plaine Elementary School in Gurnee, which will be reconfigured for different grade levels.

Superintendent John Hutton announced Monday the new third-through-fifth-grade building in Wadsworth will be Prairie Trail School. It is scheduled to open in late 2012 near Wadsworth and Delany roads.

O'Plaine will be renamed River Trail School and will be changed to a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade facility. Officials said they wanted to new name because of confusion with Warren Township High School's O'Plaine Road campus a few blocks away in Gurnee.

About 75 entries to name the new school and 50 to rename O'Plaine were received, officials said, but no prizes were offered. O'Plaine School teacher Stacy Rowen's suggestion of River Trail was selected, while an anonymous submission provided Prairie Trail.

Members of a name-the-schools committee reduced the entries and recommended the winners to the District 56 board. Committee members included board member Brian Weir, parent Laura Main and teacher Paul Triff.

Voters in November 2010 gave District 56 an overwhelming ballot-box victory by allowing $28.5 million to be borrowed for construction, mostly for the Wadsworth building that'll replace flood-prone Gurnee Grade School on Kilbourne Road.