Sangamon Sun

The only school district in Hardin County had a rise in enrollment numbers in the 2021-22 school year, according to the Illinois State Board of Education report.

There were 500 students in the halls of Hardin County Community Unit School District 1 schools, 0.4% higher than the year before.

The enrollment numbers in Hardin County bucked the state’s trend, which shows an overall decrease in enrollment across the state.

Of all the students welcomed in the 2021-22 school year, 52.4% of them were boys, and 47.6% were girls.

Data also showed that the majority of students were white, making up 91.6% of the Hardin County Community Unit School District 1's total enrollment.

Hardin County Community Unit School District 1 has a main office in Elizabethtown and is the only school district within Hardin County.

In 2022, Illinois had 1,925,415 students enrolled in a total of almost 4,000 schools. There were 130,467 teachers in the public schools, or roughly one teacher for every 15 students, compared to the national average of 1:16.

K-12 enrollment has been declining in Illinois for several years, influenced by demographic changes. Between the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 school years, public and private K-12 enrollment fell by 3% (60,900 students), a significantly larger decline than the typical 0.5% to 1.5% annual decreases seen in the state over the last five years.

School	Total Enrollment in 2021-22	Total Enrollment in 2020-21	Total % Change
Hardin County Elementary School	221	219	0.9%
Hardin County High School	151	135	11.9%
Hardin County Junior High School	128	144	-11.1%