Howard B Thomas Grade School

Howard B Thomas Grade School is a large K-5 school in Burlington, Illinois, one of the schools within Central CUSD 301. The school educates 678 students in grades pre-K through 5. By comparison, Illinois's public schools average about 381 students each, so Howard B Thomas Grade School sits 78% bigger than that benchmark.

Howard B Thomas Grade School is one of 7 schools operated by Central CUSD 301, a district that enrolls 5,082 students overall.

On demographics, Howard B Thomas Grade School reports that the most-represented group is White (48%), with the rest of the student body spread across multiple groups; the rest is composed of 25% Asian, 20% Hispanic, 4% multiracial, 2% Black. By comparison, Kane County as a whole is about 58% White, so the school skews visibly less White than its surroundings.

On the resource side, Staff filings list 44 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 15.3:1 students per teacher. That figure is higher than the state norm's 13.9:1 average. An estimated 19% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator. That share is noticeably below Kane County's rate of about 48%.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Howard B Thomas Grade School tracks the demographic baseline. The model predicts 60.4% given the school's FRL share; actual proficiency is 60.6%.

In the broader community, census data for Kane County shows median household earnings sit near $103,163, 38% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 6%. Across Kane County's 167 public schools (combined enrollment of about 87,252 students), Howard B Thomas Grade School is one campus in the mix.

Nearest neighbor: Central High School, around 0.2 miles off. 3 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Howard B Thomas Grade School comes 6th of 9 in the immediate cluster, higher than the nearby-schools average of 58.1%.

Geographically, the school is in a rural area.

Over the past 7-year window. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Howard B Thomas Grade School has ticked up 9%, going from 623 students in 2018 to 678 in 2025. The White share of enrollment declined from 64% to 48% over that span. Class-load math has tightened: from 16.6:1 in 2018 to 15.3:1 in 2025.

Inside the community feed, posts here usually surface around enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. The community welcomes input from current and former families.