Patriot Preparatory Academy

CHARTER'S TIES TO CHRISTIAN SCHOOL DRAW STATE SCRUTINY; November 8, 2010; Columbus Dispatch (OH) 

Out went the private Liberty Christian Academy. In came the public Patriot Preparatory Academy, a charter school in the same location with many of the same students and teachers. The state says the new school has changed enough to receive tax money.

A new charter school has the same founder, is staffed by many of the same teachers and attended by many of the same students as a private Christian school that previously used its East Side building…

The state was worried that Patriot Preparatory Academy really was the private Liberty Christian Academy masquerading as a charter school. Was the school (initially to be called Liberty Preparatory) trying to collect taxpayer money illegally when it really should be collecting tuition?

No, says executive director David McIlrath: Patriot is an all-new public school, and any links to the private school are superficial…

(McIlrath's wife, LaVonne, is the administrator of Liberty Christian. The private school downsized to just its Pataskala campus.)

David McIlrath has high hopes for the new charter school. McIlrath, who wears cowboy boots, carries a yardstick as he walks the school hallways and has spent the past several years living part time on a Wyoming ranch, said he runs the school with an air of "old-time tradition."

"Everything about it is like the public school was in the 1940s," he said. "I think it's going to rock the charter-school world in terms of (test) scores. I've got the best dang staff in the world."

In its letter to Patriot before school started this year, the Education Department made a suggestion: Consider a motto that was more gender-neutral than its proposed "Because It's Easier to Build a Boy Than Mend a Man."

The school went with two: "No excuses" and "Git 'er done."

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“Two Ohio Teens Drown in Costa Rica, One Still Missing.” ABC News, 5/5/2011

Authorities searched for a missing Ohio student off the coast of Costa Rica today after two of his classmates drowned when they were caught in a violent riptide.

The three teens...are all high school students at Patriot Preparatory Academy, a Christian charter school [emphasis added] in Columbus, Ohio. They, along with other classmates, were on a school sponsored missionary trip and were swimming at a beach near the Pacific coast town of Parrita...