Original Research by School Decision on Highland School
Highland School is a pre-kindergarten program located in Chicago Heights, a mixed-use industrial suburb about thirty miles south of downtown Chicago. The school sits on the south side of the city, in an area dominated by vintage housing stock, manufacturing corridors, and retail clusters that residents access primarily by car. Chicago Heights itself was established in the eighteen-nineties as an outer-ring industrial suburb that recruited heavy industries like Inland Steel; its workforce today blends manufacturing, healthcare, and education, with a significant Hispanic population.
Highland School is operated by Chicago Heights School District 170, a district serving the city and nearby South Chicago Heights. The district has made deliberate investments in recent years that shape the educational pathway for families with young children. In the 2020-2021 school year, the district opened a new state-of-the-art middle school building in Bloom Plaza, consolidating sixth through eighth graders into a single facility. That building is where the district's current and incoming middle-school families will study. More directly relevant to families with preschoolers, the district has built out a district-wide Dual Language program using the Literacy Squared biliteracy model, with dedicated Spanish-English bilingual classrooms at schools including Washington-McKinley and Garfield. The district is actively hiring bilingual teachers and treating biliteracy as a central pedagogical commitment across the early grades. For a district where roughly half the student body identifies as Hispanic or Latino, this represents a lasting structural choice about how children learn to read and write in both languages from the start.
Enrollment and academic data for Highland School itself were not available. The school serves only pre-kindergarten, a grade level not subject to state assessment, so comparative academic performance is not reported. Information about the size of the pre-K enrollment, student demographics, special education and English learner populations, and free-or-reduced-price lunch participation was not provided in the school's reported data.
Housing in the Chicago Heights area is relatively affordable relative to broader Cook County benchmarks. The median home value is below the state and national benchmarks, and monthly rent is moderate. The housing market shows elevated supply relative to demand, meaning inventory is available for those looking to buy or rent. The neighborhoods surrounding Highland School are primarily established residential areas with long-settled home stock, and like many older suburbs, the city has seen modest population decline over time rather than new housing growth.
For families considering pre-K in Chicago Heights, the key context is the district's pedagogical direction toward bilingualism and its recent infrastructure investment in the middle school that eventually awaits these students. A parent may want to contact the school directly to learn about enrollment, programming details, class sizes, and how the pre-K curriculum aligns with the district's dual-language initiative.
See more original research from School Decision →