Original Research by School Decision on Gillespie High School
Gillespie High School is a regular public high school serving grades nine through twelve in Gillespie, a small former coal-mining city in the outer St. Louis Metro East region of Illinois. The school sits on a consolidated campus with the middle school and new elementary school on the edge of town, rather than embedded in the walkable downtown core where civic life centers on Macoupin Street.
The student body at Gillespie High is predominantly white, with very limited racial and ethnic diversity. The school enrolls students across all four high school grades, with slightly larger cohorts in grades nine and ten than in eleven and twelve. State testing data and graduation rates were not available for this school, so you cannot assess performance against state benchmarks or see how many students complete the program in four years. Academic proficiency and college and career pathway data were similarly absent from the available records. A parent would need to contact the school or district directly to understand course offerings, AP or dual-credit availability, post-secondary planning, and how recent graduates fare.
The school operates within Gillespie CUSD 7, a small rural district in a town working through significant structural challenges. The district's property tax levy has risen meaningfully year over year, a trend a family relocating to the area should weigh as part of the housing calculation. More urgently, the district faces ongoing mine subsidence risk. A subsidence event in early 2026 damaged homes within a block of the school campus and threatened a natural gas line. District maps show portions of Gillespie Middle School sit over undermined ground, and a major subsidence could damage the high school as well. The district previously lost Benld Elementary to subsidence and had to rebuild. This is a durable, location-specific hazard that distinguishes the area from most school communities and reflects the legacy of coal mining beneath the town. The school is developing evacuation plans in response.
Housing in the area remains affordable compared to state and national benchmarks, and the community has a rural, small-town feel with an active if modest civic life. The city has a revitalized downtown with parks, the Illinois Coal Museum, and a library, and work on a Macoupin Street streetscape redesign is underway. Employment is small-scale and dispersed, with retail, government, and education as the largest sectors; the coal mines that once drove the economy are closed. Population has been flat to slightly declining, and growth is focused on downtown revitalization rather than new housing development.
For a family considering a move to Gillespie, the school offers a small, locally rooted high school experience in a close-knit community with affordable housing. The absence of state performance data, graduation figures, and program specifics means you should contact the school and district to understand its academic pathways and student outcomes. The ongoing subsidence risk and rising property tax levies are material factors in the housing and long-term cost picture that merit direct conversation with current families and the administration.
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