Prairie Crossing school to discuss cuts at special meeting tonight

Proposed spending reductions to make it through the academic year will be the focus of a special Prairie Crossing Charter School meeting tonight.

Myron Dagley, the director of the Grayslake-based charter school, is expected to give a presentation on the budget and potential cuts at 7 p.m. at the University of Illinois Extension office. The building is at 100 S. Route 45 in Grayslake.

Prairie Crossing board President Dennis Munk said today that a lack of fund-raising and donations have hurt the school financially. Unlike other public schools, Prairie Crossing depends on a combination of state aid and private money.

"I think the goal will be to consider everything," Munk said.

Munk said board members plan to get feedback and suggestions from parents and others tonight in a question-and-answer format. He said the budget must be trimmed enough to make it through the school year.

In a report delivered last month, former board member and treasurer Laura Elizabeth Fay wrote that Prairie Crossing's liquidity and cash flow are at crisis levels.

"For the school to remain financially viable, it will be critical to make all efforts to maintain current enrollment, to actively pursue students to fill upper grade … vacancies, to maximize philanthropic and other revenue streams and aggressively contain costs," Fay said.

Prairie Crossing is a public school with an environmentally focused curriculum that receives students from Woodland Elementary District 50 and Fremont Elementary District 79. Illinois' per-pupil general state aid follows Prairie Crossing's children, who attend kindergarten through eighth grade.

State aid accounts for almost all of the 359-student school's roughly $4 million budget.