The top reported proficiency rate is 54% in English language arts. The lowest is 23% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on Home Elem School
Home Elem School serves prekindergarten through fifth grade in Stickney, a small residential village on Chicago's southwest edge. The school sits within Lyons School District 103, a district serving roughly the same area (Stickney, Lyons, and Brookfield) and currently navigating multi-year enrollment decline and a shift to ORIGO Stepping Stones as its K-5 math curriculum.
Home Elem's enrollment is small, with a little over 250 students spread across pre-K through fifth grade, making it an intimate setting where teachers and staff likely know individual children and families. The student body is predominantly Hispanic, with about nine in ten students identifying as Hispanic or Latino. A smaller share identifies as white, Black, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, or as two or more races. No data on free and reduced-price lunch or English learner populations was available; a parent wanting to understand the school's supports for low-income or multilingual learners should contact the school directly.
Academic performance shows uneven results. On Illinois state testing in reading and language arts, fifth graders performed strongly, with about four in five meeting or exceeding state proficiency standards. Fourth graders also performed above the midpoint, at roughly mid-range. Third graders, however, showed low performance in reading, with only about one in four meeting standards. In math, performance is lower across the board: in third, fourth, and fifth grades, between one in five and roughly one in three students reached proficiency. Science testing was available only for fifth grade, where about half the students met standards. When positioned against the roughly 170 other districts in Cook County, Home Elem's overall proficiency index sits below the midpoint, indicating below-average performance relative to the county's schools. No multi-year trend data was available, so whether these results reflect an improving or declining picture is unclear; a parent should ask the school how performance has moved over recent years.
Stickney itself is a built-out, quiet inner-ring suburb with dense housing, small lots, and connected sidewalks. The community has a mixed blue- and white-collar workforce and a growing foreign-born population. The village is home to the massive Stickney Water Reclamation Plant, one of the world's largest wastewater treatment facilities, which occasionally produces odors. Residents can walk to nearby parks, including Rench Park and Haley Park, and have access to bus transit (Pace routes) connecting to Cicero and Chicago, with the nearest Metra commuter rail and CTA stations just outside the village in Cicero. Housing values in the 60402 zip code are modest, and rentals are relatively affordable compared to the national benchmark, though mortgage rates and overall market conditions apply.
The district has recently adopted ORIGO Stepping Stones for K-5 math instruction, with parent support materials and newsletters available online to help families reinforce math learning at home. The district is also facing an ongoing federal discrimination lawsuit filed by a former superintendent and assistant superintendent, with a judge denying the district's motion to dismiss in January 2024, meaning the case is still active. These are matters of governance and potential budget impact worth understanding if the district's long-term stability concerns you.
Enrollment across Lyons SD 103 has declined noticeably over the past two years, a trend affecting per-pupil funding and staffing across the district. For a parent considering Home Elem, the combination of low math proficiency results and uneven reading performance in early grades warrants a direct conversation with school leadership about curriculum support, intervention strategies for struggling readers and math learners, and how the school tracks and addresses performance gaps. The school's small size, tight-knit community feel, and location in a walkable village may suit some families well, but academic performance should anchor the decision.
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