5044 Michigan Ave
Schiller Park, IL 60176

My child started in district 81 in 4th grade after attending Chicago public schools. In Chicago she was labeled special ed, put into an all inclusive Special Ed class. When she started at Washington, she was at a first grade level in reading and math. The schools both Washington and Lincoln mainstreamed her into regular classrooms. By the time she was graduating 8th grade, she had been removed from special education, was invited into the IMSA Fusion program for Math and Science, had been on the honor roll for 4 years straight, received an Educational Academic Achievement award from the White House and tested and was placed into all AP and Honors classes in high school. Schools don't get any better then that, except when you add on all the arts and music programs and after school activities, they do!

This is one or the worst school to put your kids in. They don’t care if your kids passes or fails. They don’t care for kids here the principal is bad so are the teachers. I understand Covid just happened, so I was like maybe it’s just cause Covid was going on. She went the next year and same it’s just a bad school.

Teachers are excellent, great communicators and inspire kids. Upper management such as superintendent and such, have never worked in customer service obviously. They do need to add an element of service since they are serving kids and parents in a sense. Lack of communication skills was observed and problem solving is lacking also. You better don't face them if you have an opinion different from theirs on school matters.

I currently attend this school, and I must say, it is not going great. There are constant fights, and not enough security to help manage them. Last year, there were about 5 fights that broke out the whole week. We tried to inform people about this, but the school didn't let us say anything to anyone because they will get "Bad reviews." The teachers here dump a lot of tests and quizzes in one week each class, which lead kids to a lot of burnouts, especially me. Now, the transportation to the school. It is absolutely horrible, whenever I go to the bus in the morning, it's always crowded with kids, and there's not enough room for people to sit down at times, and they make us go "3 in a seat." Which I believe, isn't even allowed. One incident that happened last year is that the kids in the bus, were also very immature and weren't even told to stop after they kept screaming and putting on inappropriate audios. They also threw food at OTHER cars that were driving past us, and the bus driver was blamed because of it. This really shows how horrible the school is, and I do not recommend it whatsoever, as someone who is currently attending East Leyden.