Original Research by School Decision on Manual High School
Manual High School serves students in grades 9 through 12 in Peoria, a mid-sized Illinois city anchored by healthcare and manufacturing. The school enrolls students representing substantial diversity, with a student body that is predominantly Black, followed by a meaningful share of Hispanic students and smaller populations of white, multiracial, Asian, and Native American students. Enrollment is small to mid-sized for a four-year public high school, with ninth graders making up the largest cohort and numbers declining somewhat through the senior class. The school sits in the city proper at 811 S Griswold Street.
Peoria itself is redeveloping rather than expanding, with modest new housing construction driven mainly by adaptive reuse of warehouses and former factories downtown and new affordable developments on the South Side. The housing market reflects this slowness: homes in the area are affordable relative to state and national benchmarks, with median home values and rents substantially below statewide figures, making the district accessible to families of varying means. The city's riverfront, parks, cultural institutions, and transit system (CityLink) provide civic anchors, though walkability is concentrated in downtown, the Warehouse District, and the West Bluff neighborhood rather than citywide.
State testing results and a graduation rate for Manual High School were not available in the data. The school is part of Peoria School District 150, which in April 2026 launched a major overhaul of its K-5 reading curriculum, moving to science-of-reading aligned programs after data showed a substantial share of elementary and middle students were not reading at grade level. While this shift does not directly affect high school instruction, it signals district-level attention to foundational academic gaps that may reach Manual in the form of students with lower literacy skills.
Specific information about Manual's course breadth, dual-credit or career pathway offerings, extracurricular programs, attendance patterns, discipline data, staff levels, and special-education or English-learner populations is not available in the provided data. A parent or resident evaluating Manual would want to contact the school directly or the district office to understand the school's academic program, student support services, and peer environment. The school's website or the district's website can provide more detail on curriculum offerings and school culture.
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