Macon Reporter

Decatur School District 61 had the highest enrollment among Macon County districts, welcoming 8,147 students during the 2021-22 school year, according to the Illinois State Board of Education report.

Of all the students welcomed in the 2021-22 school year, 51.5% of them were boys, and 48.5% were girls.

The most represented ethnicity among Decatur School District 61 students was Black, accounting for 49% of the student population.

Among the seven districts in Macon County, Mount Zion Community Unit School District 3 ranked second in enrollment numbers with 2,375 students, while Maroa Forsyth Community Unit School District 2 welcomed 1,154 students and ranked third in the 2021-22 school year.

Decatur School District 61 roughly covers schools within Macon County with its main office in Decatur.

In the previous school year, Decatur School District 61 also had the highest number of students among Macon County districts.

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.

District	City (main office)	Total Enrollment
Decatur School District 61	Decatur	8,147
Mount Zion Community Unit School District 3	Mount Zion	2,375
Maroa Forsyth Community Unit School District 2	Forsyth	1,154
Warrensburg-Latham Community Unit School District 11	Warrensburg	952
Meridian Community Unit School District 15	Macon	934
Argenta-Oreana Community Unit School District 1	Argenta	923
Sangamon Valley Community Unit School District 9	Niantic	644