J W Eater Jr High School

J W Eater Jr High School is one of the moderately sized middle schools in Rantoul, Illinois, overseen by Rantoul City SD 137, with 477 students on its rolls from grades 6 through 8.

Rantoul City SD 137 comprises 6 schools with combined enrollment of 1,656 students; J W Eater Jr High School is among them.

On the student-mix side, J W Eater Jr High School shows that the largest single group is Hispanic at 35%, but no single group is in the majority. Beyond that, the school reports 28% Black, 25% White, 12% multiracial. By comparison, Champaign County as a whole is about 8% Hispanic, so the school skews meaningfully more Hispanic than its surroundings.

In terms of school funding signals, Staff filings list 46 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 10.3:1 students per teacher. The state averages around 13.0:1, so this campus is tighter than the state norm typical. Roughly 87% of students at J W Eater Jr High School qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator. By comparison, Champaign County runs at roughly 53%, so the school's eligibility rate is somewhat above the surrounding baseline.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), J W Eater Jr High School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 21.1%, the actual is 22.7%, a residual of +1.6 points.

Zooming out to the county, the surrounding county (Champaign County) reports that the typical household earns roughly $63,683 per year, roughly 46% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and roughly 7% of residents live below the federal poverty line. J W Eater Jr High School is one of 66 public schools in Champaign County (combined enrollment of about 25,919 students).

Nearest neighbor: Early Childhood Center, around 0.2 miles off. 7 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, J W Eater Jr High School comes 2nd of 8 in the immediate cluster, higher than the nearby-schools average of 15.9%.

Geographically, the school is in a town-based area.

Looking at the recent track record. Over the past 7-year window, the student count contracted 4%: 495 students in 2018 compared to 477 in 2025. Over the same period, the Hispanic share edged up from 26% to 35%.

Within the allk12 community for this school, members of the J W Eater Jr High School community share and discuss science fair prep, picture-day reminders, and bus-route questions. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.