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TROY — After years of hoping and pleading, Troy Preparatory Charter School families are getting a high school.

Uncommon Schools, the charter school network that runs Troy Prep, is expanding local operations beyond elementary and middle school this fall to serve ninth- to 12th-graders, starting with about 40 students in grade 9 and adding a grade each year. At full capacity, school leaders expect to have about 185 students in high school.

It's a significant step for the Capital Region educational landscape, which experienced turbulence from the rise and fall of the charter school movement over the past 18 years.

Troy Prep, however, has remained a bright spot on the local charter scene, and with its expansion into high school marks the first K-12 charter school for the region.

"I started thinking about high school probably from the moment they started kindergarten," said Tedi Kirker, of her twin fourth-grade boys, Jordan and Trenton, who attend Troy Prep. "I was worried about moving them from a structured program to a public school, where it's not as structured. So hearing this, I couldn't be more excited."

Uncommon Schools won a charter for Troy in 2007, and opened Troy Prep Middle School in a South Troy warehouse in 2009, serving students in grades 5 to 8. Two years later, it opened an elementary school at the site. Today, they serve about 515 Troy children whose parents apply for a spot through a lottery system.

Uncommon bought the old Ark site at 3055 6th Ave. last year, and plans to move its elementary school there this summer. The high school will join the middle school at the existing Troy Prep site on Polk Street.

"There has been an overwhelming request from parents over the years to explore the idea of a high school, so the board got behind it and worked with Uncommon Schools to make it a reality," said Jeff Buell, head of the board for Troy Prep.

The SUNY Board of Trustees, which along with the State Education Department approves and renews charters in New York, signed off on the expansion last month, citing Uncommon's strong academics, operations and financial health. Last year, Troy Prep elementary students outperformed the rest of the state by 30 percent in math and 33 percent in reading.

The expansion could wind up costing the Troy City School District another $640,000 a year, Superintendent John Carmello said. The district currently spends $10 million, or just under 10 percent of its total budget, to send students to Troy Prep at $15,986 a student.

It's been difficult for the district to plan long-term for enrollment and facility use given the "uncertainty surrounding charter expansion and closings," Carmello said. Enrollment had been declining in recent years, prompting the closure of PS 12 in 2013. In recent years, perhaps due to the closure of the Ark charter school, enrollment has ticked up again.

Susan Dunckel, owner of Sweet Sue's Restaurant in Troy, said she was compelled to get her daughter into Troy Prep after hearing good things about the school from restaurant patrons, neighbors and friends.

"I'd see these kids come in in their uniforms and they'd tell me all about the school," she said.

Her daughter, Millie, enjoys the school despite the strict atmosphere, Dunckel said. As a parent, she's also held to a higher standard, she said, citing a time her daughter's math homework scared her enough to ask around about it.

"Whether it was because of Common Core or because it had been so long since I was in school, I don't know," she recalled. "But it looked too hard. And the school said, come in, we'll teach it to you. And they explained it to me, how they do subtraction in this whole new way now, and how it allows students to understand more complex math as time goes on. I was impressed. We love it there."

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