GOOSE ISLAND — A new private school that focuses on 1-to-1 relationships between students and teachers plans to open in mid-April.
Fusion Academy will be located at 1440 N. Dayton Ave. From its origins 20 years ago in San Diego it has opened campuses on both U.S. coasts and in Texas. The new campus will be its fourth in the Chicago area.
Fusion, which tends to focus on about 80 percent high school and 20 percent middle school students, already has campuses in Lake Forest and Oak Brook and will open another in Evanston next month.
"The underlying foundation of Fusion is that education really should be based on relationships," said Dan Morgan, Fusion's regional vice president. "What makes Fusion unique is that all of our classes, every subject for every student is taught 1-to-1."
Fusion plans to start with 15-20 students and eight or nine teachers on the way to a full capacity of 65-70 students and 30 teachers in three to four years. While all teaching is done 1-to-1, individual teachers can of course instruct more than one student.
"We want to grow slow," Morgan said. "We want to make sure we provide a full school experience for all of our kids."
Because of the 1-to-1 teaching style, with a curriculum tailored to each individual student, Fusion boasts that it can accommodate brilliant students, troubled students and those in between who simply need an individual approach.
"It's really a broad spectrum of students that we see, but the underlying issue is that the traditional system doesn't work for them," said Morgan.
"The common thread that binds all Fusion kids together is that, for one reason or another — and there are many reasons why this could be true — the traditional system, the traditional structure of education doesn't work for them," Morgan said. "It doesn't fit who they are. They could be extremely gifted, they could be moving really fast and are frustrated with the pace of school and they're not getting what they need at that high level. They could be struggling with a learning challenge of some kind, so they need to have things move a little bit slower and have things customized at that level.
"They could be students who need flexibility in their life," he added. "They're an athlete or an actor or a model or something like that."
As a private school, not a charter, Fusion will be self-financed and not draw from Chicago Public School funding. According to Morgan, tuition is "right in line with the private schools in the Chicago area."
There's no set school day and no set school year.
"We are a year-round school," Morgan said. "A student can start any class and any semester at any time.
"If they're struggling in a public school in the second semester in Chicago, they might need to pull out in the middle of March and start their second semester with us and finish up there, carrying on into the next year," he added. "It really depends on the needs of the family.
"It's different, it's fun and it's truly amazing the results."
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