The top reported proficiency rate is 72% in Math. The lowest is 69% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Tripp School
Tripp School serves kindergarten through third grade in Buffalo Grove, a quiet northwest-suburban village straddling Lake and Cook counties. The school is part of Aptakisic-Tripp Community Consolidated School District 102, a district that recently invested in substantial facility upgrades through a bond referendum that narrowly passed in 2023. That bond carries property tax implications worth understanding if you are considering a move to the area.
The school's enrollment is small, distributed across four grade bands from kindergarten through third grade. The student body is notably diverse by race and ethnicity, with a substantial majority of students identifying as Asian. The remaining enrollment reflects a mixed composition of white, multiracial, Hispanic, and other backgrounds. Data on free and reduced price lunch participation and English learner enrollment were not available, so a parent may want to reach out to the school directly to understand the full scope of student needs the school addresses and what supports are in place.
On the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, Tripp's third graders (the only grade level with available state test results) demonstrated proficiency on a majority of students in math and a slightly lower majority in English language arts. These results place the school above the midpoint for overall proficiency when compared to other districts in Lake County. The school's testing participation was complete, and all eligible students took the assessment.
Kindergarten through second grade state testing results are not available because Illinois does not assess those grades on state standardized tests. A parent should understand that the school's academic picture is therefore based only on third-grade performance; longer-term trends and performance across the full range of grades served cannot be judged from state data alone.
Tripp sits within a housing market showing modest appreciation and relatively stable rental costs. The median home value in the school's zip code is in the mid-four-hundreds, with year-over-year appreciation in the low single digits. Rents have also risen modestly. Housing supply in the broader Lake County market appears balanced, with active listings down somewhat from a year prior but still at a moderate level.
Buffalo Grove itself is in the midst of several significant redevelopment projects. The Clove, a major mixed-use district being built on the former Town Center site, is adding luxury apartments, retail anchors including Amazon Fresh and an expected Whole Foods, and a new public park. Bison Crossing is replacing a former auto dealership with a Tesla center, apartments, and commercial space. Link Crossing has added single-family cottages and townhome villas around a greenway. These projects are reshaping the village's center, though the population has been relatively flat since the early 2000s. The village's everyday character remains auto-oriented suburban, with shopping centers along McHenry Road, a Metra station with extensive surface parking, and schools situated on individual campuses within residential subdivisions rather than clustered downtown.
The district's 2023 bond funded safety and security upgrades, HVAC and roof replacements, new science classrooms, STEM labs, and a gymnasium at the junior high school. That bond carries an estimated annual tax impact of roughly mid-four-hundred dollars per year on the median home in the district. This represents a material commitment and a lasting property tax increase that families should weigh in their housing decision.
For families with children in early elementary grades, Tripp offers a small-school setting in a diverse, residential community with stable demographics and active civic institutions, including well-developed park and library systems. The available academic data shows solid proficiency on state assessments in the tested grade, and the school benefits from recent district-level infrastructure investment.
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