The Examiner U-46 News FeedEMSA now acccepting enrollment applications By Seth Hancock
The Elgin Math and Science Academy (EMSA), a charter school in School District U-46, is now taking applications for its first school year which starts in August.
An online application for prospective EMSA students can be found at elginmathandscience.com and must be submitted by April 4, and a public lottery will be held on April 11 if more than 200 students apply. There will be 200 slots for kindergarten through third grade for the 2018-19 school year while the school expects to add a grade level each year through eighth grade for an eventual 450 total students.
Kerry Kelly, EMSA’s founding board president, said after the Illinois State Charter School Commission (ISCSC) voted 5-3 in favor of the charter proposal last October that “now it feels like all of our efforts are going to really go towards building a school. That’s exciting.”
Part of “building a school” was hiring EMSA’s first principal which the charter has announced will be Lezlie Fuhr who said in an EMSA press release that her reason for joining the school was in part the planned expeditionary learning model (EL Education) which is designed to have a more hands-on curriculum model for science.
“After reading the EMSA charter proposal, I was inspired to put what I have learned into practice, and bring EL Education to the local community,” Fuhr said. “This is an exciting endeavor, and I cannot wait to bring the Wow & Wonder of an engaging curriculum to our student body.”
According to the release, Fuhr has over two decades, 22 years, of education experience in both administrative and teaching roles. Since 2006, she has been the principal at North Jacksonville Elementary School in Illinois, which is a majority low-income school.
Fuhr holds a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Southern Illinois University and a master’s in educational administration from the University of Illinois-Springfield and was named the teacher of the year by the National Institute of Education in 1999 and awarded the Horace Mann Reaching Out and Building Bridges Award in 2014 and principal of the year in 2015 by the Two Rivers Region of the Illinois Principal’s Association.
“We are pleased to welcome Lezlie to the EMSA team,” said Dennis Verges, EMSA’s board vice chair. “Ms. Fuhr is a dedicated and compassionate leader who is committed to meeting the educational needs of all children. Ms. Fuhr believes in the transformative power of hands-on, active and meaningful learning.”
Fuhr has chosen Patricia Williams, coming from the Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, as EMSA’s outreach coordinator.
EMSA will be located at the former Fox River Day School (1600 Dundee Ave., Elgin) which the charter’s website states: “EMSA students will have daily access to an outdoor laboratory of rare ecosystems — forested fens and their endangered species — as well as typical food webs of the Midwest. It is not unusual to spy a grazing deer or a circling Cooper’s hawk from classroom windows.”
The process towards opening the school in the fall of 2018 has been a long one for EMSA which first had a charter denied in 2014 by both the U-46 Board of Education and the ISCSC.
Last April, the U-46 board conditionally approved EMSA’s charter by a 6-1 vote “pending a mutually agreed upon contract,” but it reversed its decision a few months later in June by voting 4-3 against the contract.
The reversal by the board will cost U-46 as the ISCSC, in its October approval, granted EMSA 100 percent of the Per Capita Tuition Charge funding from the district. EMSA was only seeking 92 percent in its negotiations with the U-46 administration.
U-46 board members Phil Costello, Veronica Noland and Jeanette Ward voted in favor of EMSA both in April and June while board members Traci Ellis and Sue Kerr voted against the contract after approving the charter in April. Donna Smith, the board’s president, opposed EMSA both times while board member Melissa Owens voted against the contract but was not on the board for the April vote.
EMSA has a few upcoming events listed on its website, the first that it will be distributing information during the Preschool Information Fair at Gail Borden Library in Elgin this coming Saturday, Jan. 20 starting at 10 a.m. It will also be holding a Mardi Gras-themed fundraiser on Saturday, Feb. 24 from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. at the Dream Hall Event Space (51 S. Grove Ave., Elgin).
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