Original Research by School Decision on Staunton High School
Staunton High School is a four-year public school in a small town in southwestern Illinois, enrolling a modest number of students evenly distributed across grades nine through twelve. The school is situated on the north side of Staunton, close to the residential grid and well integrated into the town itself rather than on an outlying campus.
The town of Staunton has stable, slow-growth population that has held roughly steady for over a century. It was once a coal mining center, but the mines have closed and the local economy now centers on farming, metal fabrication, healthcare, retail, and food service. The workforce mixes blue-collar and white-collar employment. The housing stock is notably older, with an unusually large share of buildings from the pre-World War II era. Downtown sits along Main Street with historic brick buildings, shops, cafes, and restaurants in a walkable small-town setting. The housing market is characterized as tight, with steady appreciation and prices that sit below state and national medians, making homeownership accessible relative to income. The town has no local public transit for commuting, though a regional trail network connects it to nearby communities.
The student population at Staunton High School is predominantly white, with a small but present Hispanic enrollment and very small numbers of students from other racial and ethnic backgrounds. The school's enrollment data does not include the number or rate of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, nor does it report counts for students with individualized education plans or English learners, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about the socioeconomic and special-population composition of the student body.
State assessment results for the school are not available in the data provided, so there is no baseline for how students perform on standardized tests in specific subjects or grades. The school also lacks a reported four-year graduation rate. These gaps reflect the reality that such metrics either were not collected or reported by the state for this school, though a parent would benefit from requesting this information from the district or school directly when evaluating academic outcomes.
The district made a major facility-investment decision in November 2024 when voters approved a substantial bond referendum to fund district-wide building upgrades. At Staunton High School, the approved work includes safety and security improvements, ADA accessibility upgrades, classroom renovations, air conditioning installation in the main gymnasium, construction of an auxiliary gymnasium, and classroom additions. The district also plans to relocate the bus parking area and pursue upgrades across the buildings. This multi-year capital project will modernize the physical plant and signals a local commitment to the schools, though it also carries tax implications for district residents and will unfold over time.
No course catalog, program listings, or staffing information appear in the available data. A parent interested in understanding the breadth of academic offerings, whether the school offers dual-credit or career-pathway coursework, or the size and composition of the teaching staff should contact the school or district directly.
Staunton CUSD 6 is the parent district. The comparison fact-set for county districts could not be completed because academic proficiency, graduation rate, and chronic absenteeism data for this school were missing, so no positioning relative to other Macoupin County districts is possible from the available evidence. A parent weighing this school against others in the county should request comparable data from the district.
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