Original Research by School Decision on Hilltop Day Care and Preschool
Hilltop Day Care and Preschool is a regular public school in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, but it serves only pre-kindergarten students. With a small enrollment, it functions essentially as a public preschool within the Rice Lake Area School District. Because it serves just one early grade, the standard academic measures that parents often look for—state test scores, a graduation rate, chronic absenteeism data—do not apply. The school has no results to report in those areas, and this absence reflects its grade band, not a failing. A parent looking for kindergarten or beyond will want to look to the district’s elementary schools, such as Hilltop Elementary (a separate school) or Haugen and Tainter.
The student body is small, and the demographic picture is straightforward. A large majority of children are white, and a modest share identify as two or more races. Other racial groups are not represented in the enrollment data. About one in seven students qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure of household income that, at this level, is below what many public schools serving older grades report. No data was available on students with disabilities or English learners, which is common for pre-kindergarten programs where those designations are not consistently tracked.
Rice Lake, the city where the school is located, is a small regional hub in northwestern Wisconsin. It sits on the shore of Rice Lake and serves as a commercial, industrial, educational, and medical center for surrounding rural communities. The city has a mix of residential neighborhoods, a traditional downtown near the lake, and newer commercial development along highway corridors. Housing values in the area have risen in recent years, broadly in line with state trends, and rents are at a level that, for many families, makes buying a home cheaper than renting on a monthly basis—though that calculation depends on the mortgage rates that have climbed nationally. The local economy draws on employers such as Lakeview Medical, the school district, and higher education institutions including UW-Eau Claire – Barron County and Northwood Technical College.
The Rice Lake Area School District operates several schools across the city: a high school, a middle school, three elementary schools, and this preschool. No major recent changes to the district were publicly reported at the time of writing, so a parent evaluating Hilltop Day Care and Preschool would be looking at a stable, established district structure. The school itself is on Cameron Road, a short distance from the downtown area.
Because this is a pre-kindergarten program, the questions a parent would ask are different from those for a K-12 school. There is no academic proficiency data to compare against other schools or districts. The typical metrics used to position schools relative to districts in Barron County—proficiency rates, graduation rates, chronic absenteeism—are all inapplicable here. The school’s purpose is early childhood care and education, and the available data reflects that.
What a parent can see is a small setting, a modest share of families using the free-lunch program, and a location in a city that is the commercial heart of Barron County. The school district’s overall character is one of a comprehensive public system covering the full K-12 range, with Hilltop Day Care and Preschool as its entry point. If looking for a public preschool option in a community that acts as a regional hub, this school fits that profile. For any information beyond the basics—curriculum, daily schedule, staff qualifications, or how the program connects to kindergarten—a parent would need to contact the school or district directly, as those details are not captured in the available data.
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