Charter school forum shuts down

I received a message earlier this month informing me the Coyote Forum, a Web site that fostered discussion of the Cambridge Lakes Charter School, was being shut down.

Except this time, the decision was voluntary.

Kevin Thull, a Pingree Grove father who has a child at the school, said he was shutting down the forum because of a lack of activity.

The forum, he said, didn't suffer the same fate of previous Web sites that were shut down by the threat of legal action from the Northern Kane Educational Corp. and its director, Larry Fuhrer.

"That truly is the reason," Kevin Thull said when I spoke with him last week. "It's been pretty dead. I think people are either afraid to post or don't care anymore."

Thull founded the Web forum in June after three previous sites were shut down a la the People's Republic of China.

The Web site quickly took off as parents and other charter school observers used the forum to vent their frustrations, debate the school's merits and discuss the latest news.

The forum attracted 180 members who generated more than 1,500 posts.

Thull managed to avoid the fate of the other counter-revolutionaries by carefully monitoring posts and expunging any material that was potentially libelous.

"I was careful to make sure discussions strayed from being completely defamatory," Thull said.

One of the posters hinted he might try to shut down the forum and admitted forcing the other charter school forums to close, according to Thull.

But Thull said the poster stopped short of threatening legal action and that because the Coyote Forum was hosted on a paid Web host.

"I don't think he had a leg to stand on."

Thull expressed disappointment that in his view, the forum was never able to get past the animosity between the gung-ho types and the relentless critics.

Still, he said, "It served its purpose."

My mistake: In my last column, I incorrectly reported that ComEd had acquired about half the land the utility company needs for its transmission line route north of Interstate 90.

ComEd spokesman Jeff Burdick informed me the company only has about 10 percent of the land it needs for the overland route.

I regret the error.

District 300 dashboard online: Community Unit District 300 has launched a new Web site that allows parents and other interested parties to track the district's progress.

The district's "Quality Dashboard" records the district's performance in several areas, including school climate, finances and student achievement.

The data on the dashboard should reflect the district's most-recent testing and survey data.

You can access the Quality Dashboard at schooldashboard.org/d300 or in the Strategic Planning section at www.d300.org.