It’s not quite a week later, but Riverside School District 96 director of teaching and learning Dr. Angela Dolezal is probably still beaming.

That’s what happens when two of your five district schools are awarded Exemplary status by the 2025 Illinois Report Card, issued Oct. 30 by the Illinois State Board of Education.

With a score of 83.85, Blythe Park Elementary School was thus honored, as was Hauser Junior High, with a score of 86.24. The Illinois Report Card awards schools that rank in the top 10% of the state as Exemplary, with the next 67% considered Commendable.

The remaining district schools – Ames Elementary (67.86), Central Elementary (75.49) and Hollywood Elementary (51.94) – were named Commendable.

“My initial blush is pretty much that we are doing great things in Riverside District 96,” Dolezal said. “We’re a high-performing district.

“To see our proficiency rates, I’m so pleased with our staff, our parents, our students … just our collaboration.”

That’s no boast, especially when you consider that district-wide, 82.6% of students were considered proficient in Illinois Assessment of Readiness (IAR) testing for English/language arts, and 72.4% were considered proficient in math.

District 96 enrolled 1,751 students in 2024-25, 25% of which were deemed low-income students. Fifty-four percent where white, while 34% were Hispanic. 

Two numbers that stood out in the dataset were Ames’ and Hollywood’s scores compared to 2023-24. Ames dropped from 83.32 a year ago to 67.86 this year, while Hollywood decreased from 75.72 in 2023-24 to 51.94 this year.

“That’s something I’m working individually with all the principals,” Dolezal said. “We all have areas for growth (and for) those particular schools, we continue to address what those things will be.”

Like almost every other area district, chronic absenteeism is still challenging post-Covid. For District 96, chronic absenteeism, or the percentage of students who miss 10% or more of school days per year either with or without a valid excuse, checked in at 12.4%, up a full point from 2023-24.

That continues to be a focal point for the district, Dolezal said.

“(When) we know students are becoming chronically absent, we’re working with families, just really trying to address the individual needs,” she said. “Everything is a case-by-case basis and you have to look at the individual family and what’s happening. If it’s school avoidance, we bring in social services.”

The question begs, however. How feasible is it to have all five schools honored as Exemplary?

“I honestly think anything is possible,” Dolezal said. “As we target the need of our students, we look at growth for all. I have high hopes we’ll get all five schools in the Exemplary range.”

District 95

Both of Brookfield-La Grange Park School District 95’s schools – Brook Park Elementary (76.86) and S.E. Gross Middle School (66.95) – were listed as Commendable by the Illinois Report Card.

“When I look at those two schools, year over year we see gains, which is in ELA and math,” said Ryan Evans, the new superintendent. “I think our ELA performance feels strong across the district, and we are starting to see investments in interventions in math pay off.”

IAR proficiency in English/language arts was 69.1%, which was broken between 63.3% for Brook Park and 75.2% for Gross.

Math proficiency, however, stood at 40.9%. Addressing that has already gotten underway, Evans said.

“The board brought on interventionists at Brook Park, they invested additional resources for this year,” he said. “It’s a focus of our improvement plan. (We’re) adopting new curriculum at Gross this year because this is something we want to see, advances like ELA in math.”

Like District 96, District 95 struggled with chronic absenteeism, which was at 14%. In this realm, Evans said there are dedicated subcommittees at both schools, including health professionals, social workers and principals, who review data related to students who may be reaching a higher level of absenteeism and reach out to families to find out how the district can help.

“It’s a big part of the report card, but being in school is the most important part of education,” Evans said. “We definitely take that seriously, and we want to make sure that is improving, just like our academics.”

District 95 enrolled 1,393 students in 2024-25, 20% of which were considered low-income. Fifty-seven percent were white, while 33% were Hispanic and 2% were Black.

Teacher retention was 87.3%, which was almost equal to the state percentage.

“We’ve had staff members who have left us to go to other schools and we’ve rehired them,” Evans said. “I think that’s a testament to what’s been built here.”