Zeigler-Royalton High School

Zeigler-Royalton High School is one of the minimally staffed senior highs in Mulkeytown, Illinois, run under Zeigler-Royalton CUSD 188, with 131 students on its rolls from grades 9 through 12. That puts it 84% leaner than the typical public school in Illinois, which averages around 834 students.

Zeigler-Royalton CUSD 188 runs 3 schools in total, collectively educating 489 students. Zeigler-Royalton High School is one of those campuses.

Demographically, Zeigler-Royalton High School logs that the student body is overwhelmingly White (92%); the rest reads as 4% Hispanic, 2% multiracial. That mix tracks the wider county fairly closely.

On the resource side, Zeigler-Royalton High School shows 18 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 7.5:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 13.8:1 average. An estimated 57% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal.

With demographic context factored in, Zeigler-Royalton High School sits in the middle band of the BeatsExpectations distribution. Schools with this campus's student mix typically land near 38.5%; this one delivers 25.6%.

Across the wider county, census data for Franklin County shows median household income runs about $56,740, about 16% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and the poverty rate sits near 13%. Across Franklin County's 25 public schools (combined enrollment of about 5,523 students), Zeigler-Royalton High School is one campus in the mix.

Nearest neighbor: Zeigler-Royalton Elem School, around 0.1 miles off. Within five miles, there are 4 other public schools. On composite proficiency, Zeigler-Royalton High School comes 7th of 8 in the immediate cluster, beneath the nearby-schools average of 31.8%.

The school occupies an outlying site.

Five-year trend. Zeigler-Royalton High School's enrollment has shrank 26% since 2018, when it stood at 178 (now 131). Class-load math has fell: from 9.9:1 in 2018 to 7.5:1 in 2025.

Within the allk12 community for this school, recent activity here tends to focus on open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.