Bureau Valley Elem and Jh, Manlius IL

Original Research by School Decision on Bureau Valley Elem and Jh

Bureau Valley Elementary and Junior High serves grades three through eight in Manlius, a very small rural village in Bureau County, Illinois. The school draws students from ten different communities across four counties in a consolidated district pattern typical of rural Illinois. Enrollment is about mid-sized for a combined elementary and junior high, distributed fairly evenly across the grade span.

The school's academic profile shows uneven performance across the grade span. In the youngest tested grades, third grade posts strong mathematics proficiency and respectable English results. Fourth grade, by contrast, shows a sharp drop in both subjects, with mathematics proficiency falling well below midpoint. Fifth through eighth grades recover somewhat and more consistently, with English language arts generally holding in a moderate-to-strong range and mathematics settling into the low-to-moderate range across the middle grades. Science proficiency in fifth and eighth grades falls below midpoint. Across the school overall, the proficiency index places this school in the top quartile relative to other districts in Bureau County, a meaningful strength in a rural county context.

Participation in assessments is near universal, suggesting consistent testing protocols and attendance during testing windows.

The student body is predominantly white, with a small Hispanic population and minimal diversity otherwise. Specific data on free and reduced price lunch eligibility and on special education and English learner enrollment are not available, limiting a full picture of socioeconomic composition and support needs.

The district is in a period of physical transition. The former Manlius Elementary building is being demolished, which affects campus layout and bus-stop locations. In parallel, the district's architect is drafting plans for new classrooms and a gymnasium on the Manlius campus, funded by recent bond proceeds. These capital projects signal intentional investment in facilities and may expand instructional space available to students. The district has carried long-term debt but has also continued lowering its property tax rate in recent years, a balance relevant to families weighing housing costs.

The wider locale is characterized by slow population decline and minimal commercial activity within the village itself. The school serves a fundamentally agricultural region, with students drawn from scattered small towns and farmland across a four-county area. Bureau Valley High School, the district's secondary campus, sits on a remote rural location outside the village core and is known for a student-led wind turbine project. This is a genuine rural consolidated district, not a suburban feeder pattern.

For families considering this school, the profile is that of a small-town rural institution with variable grade-level performance, solid standing among its county peers, active capital investment in facilities, and a deliberately multi-town service area. Parents may want to look into the fourth-grade mathematics performance further with the school to understand whether that drop reflects a cohort issue, an instructional shift, or an assessment factor. The demolition and reconstruction timeline is concrete and worth understanding in terms of campus flow during the transition.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 378%

School 78% · District 68% · ▲ 10 pts above district

▲ 32 pts above state median

Grade 425%

School 25% · District 32% · ▼ 7 pts below district

▼ 12 pts below state median

Grade 547%

School 47% · District 46% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 17 pts above state median

Grade 640%

School 40% · District 40%

▲ 16 pts above state median

Grade 750%

School 50% · District 50%

▲ 21 pts above state median

Grade 851%

School 51% · District 51%

▲ 28 pts above state median

English language arts

Grade 366%

School 66% · District 61% · ▲ 4 pts above district

▲ 22 pts above state median

Grade 450%

School 50% · District 57% · ▼ 7 pts below district

▲ 2 pts above state median

Grade 569%

School 69% · District 59% · ▲ 10 pts above district

▲ 17 pts above state median

Grade 678%

School 78% · District 78%

▲ 28 pts above state median

Grade 770%

School 70% · District 70%

▲ 19 pts above state median

Grade 873%

School 73% · District 73%

▲ 19 pts above state median

Science

Grade 553%

School 53% · District 51% · ▲ 2 pts above district

▲ 16 pts above state median

Grade 864%

School 64% · District 64%

▲ 24 pts above state median

This schoolBureau Valley CUSD 340, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.