Prairie Crossing decision coming soon

Prairie Crossing Charter School in Grayslake should receive word from the Illinois State Board of Education in late February on whether it can continue operating.

Documents filed by the charter school had sought a 10-year renewal to operate, but that won't happen. State board of education spokesman Matt Vanover said the maximum renewal remains five years.

"I don't think they understood they could only ask for five years when they applied," Vanover said Friday.

State board of education members expect to vote on Prairie Crossing's request when they gather in Springfield on Feb. 18 and 19. Traditional public schools aren't required to seek approval to stay open in five-year increments.

Prairie Crossing is one of 35 charter schools in Illinois serving more than 25,000 pupils, according to the state board of education. It was the first suburban charter school and remains the only one in Lake County.

Open since 1999, Prairie Crossing is a public kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school offering an environmentally focused curriculum for 360 students. Children living within the borders of Fremont Elementary District 79 and Woodland Elementary District 50 may attend the much smaller Prairie Crossing without extra cost.

Prairie Crossing, according to its budget, projects receiving nearly $3.1 million in state money for the Woodland and Fremont children attending school there during the 2008-09 academic year.

In its charter renewal application submitted with the state, Prairie Crossing points to several reasons over hundreds of pages on why it deserves to remain in business. Those reasons include:

•Academic rigor and innovation.

•Maintaining small class sizes of roughly 21 children.

•Test scores showing more than 96 percent of students meet or exceed state standards.

•Having kept an environment characterized by teachers and students being guided by the cycles of growth, rainfall, migration and sunshine, while learning about the natural world.

Charter school Director Myron Dagley wrote a report for the state board of education titled "Footprints on the Pathway to Excellence" as part of the renewal application. He said while the school has much to boast about, its work is far from done.

"We are giving meaning to the concept of 'leaving no child inside,'" Dagley said, "as we are most fortunate to have a campus which includes nearby areas of prairie, ponds, nature trails and wooded conservation lands. ... Our faculty truly does have the ability to get to know their students and the parents because we have maintained the small-school environment."

Public comment on Prairie Crossing's effort to stay open another five years was taken earlier this week at a state board of education meeting in Chicago. Former Prairie Crossing board member Laura Elizabeth Fay, who's been critical of the operation, was one of those who spoke at the sparsely attended hearing.