The cornerstone of the Prairie Crossing Charter School is excellence in education, grounded in experience of the local environment. The curriculum draws upon the students' hands-on experiences in the school's natural setting of prairies and wetlands and at the Prairie Crossing Farm.
The Illinois State Board of Education chartered PCCS in December 1998, and the school is currently in its sixth year, serving over 200 children from kindergarten through eighth grade. A new building was opened in January 2005 that enabled the school to expand to eighth grade.
The Prairie Crossing Charter School enjoys a growing reputation for academic excellence. In its first year of testing its third graders ranked among Illinois' 25 top performing districts in reading, writing and mathematics. Classes are small, which allows individual attention to each child.
Scores released in late 2002 by the Illinois State Board of Education showed that 96 percent of Prairie Crossing Charter School students met or exceeded state standards. As The Chicago Tribune reported in a front-page story, this achievement makes Prairie Crossing one of the top ten performing schools in the state.
The school is open to all students in the Woodland (#50) and Fremont (#79) Districts, the two districts that serve the Prairie Crossing community. All Prairie Crossing residents are eligible to apply, though living at Prairie Crossing does not guarantee admission. If there are more applications than openings in a class, admission is determined by a lottery held in March each year.
If one child in a family is admitted, his or her siblings are admitted ahead of the lottery whenever space becomes available. For more information about the Prairie Crossing Charter School, please go to: http://www.pccs.lake.k12.il.us or call (847) 543-9722.