Original Research by School Decision on Lincoln School
Lincoln School is a prekindergarten-only program serving a small group of students, housed within the Lincoln Early Learning Center in Mundelein. The school is part of Hawthorn Community Consolidated School District 73, which operates across a multi-town region in Lake County.
Because Lincoln School serves only prekindergarten, it does not have state assessment results, graduation rates, or other measures tied to tested grades. Those metrics do not apply to this level of schooling.
The student body is ethnically mixed. The enrollment includes students who identify as Hispanic, white, Asian, and other backgrounds, with no single group making up a majority. A small number of students are identified as American Indian or Alaska Native. Data on free or reduced-price lunch eligibility and on students with individualized education plans or English learners was not available for this school.
A significant recent change affects how Mundelein families access preschool. Beginning in 2024-25, all preschool programs for Hawthorn District 73 students consolidated into the Lincoln Early Learning Center, a facility jointly operated with Mundelein School District 75 and Fremont School District 79. This means preschool no longer takes place at a neighborhood school building but instead at this shared, off-campus site. The three districts also adopted a unified school calendar for the center, which simplifies planning for families with children across multiple districts but means that calendar decisions are now made collaboratively.
The broader district recently completed a substantial building program. A voter-approved capital initiative brought renovations and additions to several elementary and middle schools, finishing around 2022. Because favorable interest rates applied to some of the bonds, the final cost to homeowners came in below what was projected when the referendum passed, a modest benefit for the tax side of the equation.
Mundelein itself is in active growth. The village anchors around a downtown Metra station and is adding apartments near transit, townhomes on former commercial sites, and large single-family subdivisions on the periphery. Housing in the area reflects this suburban demand; home values have been appreciating modestly and rental costs have ticked up slightly. The local economy rests on a strong manufacturing and medical-products base, anchored by Medline Industries, alongside healthcare and retail employment. This is a mixed-character community, neither affluent nor economically distressed, that has evolved from a small industrial town into a suburban middle-class place.
For families considering preschool in this area, Lincoln School operates within a collaborative tri-district framework and serves a diverse group of young students. The consolidation into a single shared site is a structural reality to plan around. Beyond that, prekindergarten programs at this level do not carry the academic tracking or peer-composition dynamics that shape older grades, so the relevant questions for a family are often logistical: location, hours, calendar alignment with siblings in other schools, and instructional approach.
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