The school, 3914 N. Menard Ave., will include five classrooms serving about 80 students, its principal said. View Full Caption Midwestern Christian Academy

CHICAGO — The directors of Midwestern Christian Academy say they'll open a small high school in Portage Park this fall to supplement their 250-student elementary school that has served the area for more than 60 years.

The new school will eventually serve about 80 students in a building leased from the Liberty Christian Center at 3914 N. Menard Ave., according to Jeremy Riggs, a former CPS assistant principal who's been tapped to head the school.

The elementary school, about two miles away at 3465 N. Cicero Ave., has taught students from kindergarten to eighth grade since it was founded in 1956 as a ministry of the non-denominational Midwest Bible Church. Now, a combination of community pressure and swelling enrollment have led its directors to launch an expansion, Riggs said.

"For at least five or six years now, parents have been saying they'd like a Christian high school to bring their kids to, that isn't too expensive and won't make them go out to the suburbs," he said. "So the leadership felt the time was right."

And while it wasn't their goal at the outset, Riggs said administrators are hoping to pick up neighborhood teenagers displaced by the coming closure of Luther North College Prep, which was announced earlier this year.

"It's was a sad situation for us, especially since we had several graduates of our elementary school go on to Luther North," Riggs said. "So hopefully we can be an option for those kids who are going to be seniors and suddenly don't know where they're going to graduate."

The new school's home, a three-story brick building at Menard and Dakin avenues, will have five classrooms, a music room and a "really large" cafeteria, the principal said. The building doesn't have a gym, but administrators are hoping to lease an outside space for its athletic programs.

Riggs described a curriculum planned around at "teaching the whole child," mixing music and drama classes with core subjects and Bible study.

Midwestern Christian Academy High School will charge $5,800 in tuition for freshmen and sophomores and $6,300 for juniors and seniors, Riggs said. Families who send more than one child through the system will be offered discounted tuition.