D300 OKs Cambridge Lakes charter, expansion of program to high school

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

CARPENTERSVILLE — In contrast to a heated discussion on the topic last month, a unanimous Community Unit School District 300 Board of Education voted without comment Monday to renew the charter for its Cambridge Lakes Charter School.

That renewal is good through 2014. It includes lengthening the Pingree Grove school’s program from the current preschool to eighth grade up to grade 12, and expanding its virtual learning program to educate those high school students from within the Carpentersville-area school district.

The decision was a turnaround from a contentious discussion about the measure at a school board meeting in November.

During that Nov. 8 meeting, board members blamed Larry Fuhrer, CEO of the charter school’s parent company, Northern Kane Educational Corp. for slowing the renewal process, and Board President Joe Stevens said the CEO gave the impression he didn’t care to comply with authority.

Fuhrer, who was not at that meeting, said Thursday those discussions don’t reflect the relationship he feels he has had with the board since the charter first was approved and certified in 2006.

And the expanded virtual learning will open the school district to students who are visual learners, are homeschooled or whose health or economic positions prevent them from attending regular schools, Fuhrer added.

“It adds a lot of value to the district ... and provides a way the charter school can better meet the needs of the people in the district,” he said.

At the Nov. 8 school meeting, an attorney for District 300 had said the Cambridge Lakes Charter School was in a “time crunch” as a result of Northern Kane’s delay in answering requests for more information in the renewal from the Illinois State Board of Education. And board members had expressed discomfort signing off on an amended charter school agreement that included such significant changes.

Last year, the school board renewed the charter for Cambridge Lakes through 2014, but ISBE asked Northern Kane for more information in January before it certified the district’s action. Specifically, it asked the charter holder to more accurately reflect changes in its relationships with the school district and other partners over the past three years, according to Brian Crowley, an attorney for District 300.

But Northern Kane didn’t get that amended agreement to the district until August, Crowley said. And it not only amended it to include the high school and virtual learning programs, it also extended the charter another year, through 2015.

School board president Stevens said he, District 300 Superintendent Kenneth Arndt, Associate Superintendent Michael Bregy, attorneys for both the school district and charter school, and Fuhrer all met after that meeting.

At that time, Stevens said he explained to Fuhrer the whole package might not pass if he continued to push to add an extra year to the charter. And the CEO later provided more information about virtual learning to the entire school board, Stevens said.

“Most of the questions were from a lack of understanding than from being problematic, but the date was a problem,” he said.

Fuhrer said the amended agreement reflects not only the additional information requested by ISBE, but also the increased interest in virtual learning in the district. Cambridge Lakes’s pilot blended program, aimed at students performing two grades above or below their age level, has grown from two students last year to about 40 this year, he said.

Because of that interest, Fuhrer said a proposal for a second charter for an Illinois Online Charter School, open to students from across the state, is “virtually done.” Northern Kane already has hired a consultant it plans to bring on full-time to head the school in May and will present a proposal for the second charter to the District 300 board in January, he said.