Lake County Gazette

Woodland Community Consolidated School District 50 will host a Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration on October 4, 2025. The event is open to all families in the district and will take place at Woodland Middle School, located at 7000 Washington Street in Gurnee, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The celebration will include music, displays, performances, crafts, and artwork. Organizers invite members of the community to participate by creating informative decorative tables or offering tastings of typical dishes from Hispanic countries. Participants can share information about their country, traditional clothing, symbolic items, and small samples of typical dishes.

"You are an important part of our Woodland Learning Community and we can't wait to see you there," the district stated.

In addition to the celebration, Woodland is holding a Hispanic Heritage Month Art Contest for students from Pre-K through eighth grade. The contest encourages students to explore and showcase the richness of Hispanic and Latino cultures through visual arts. Submissions are due in school offices by Monday, September 29, 2025. There will be first, second, and third place winners at each school.

The Woodland Community Consolidated School District 50 serves Lake County and includes Woodland Elementary School, Woodland Intermediate School, Woodland Middle School, and Woodland Primary School (https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/). According to data from the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), the district employs 399 teachers with an average salary of $69,342; most teachers are women (84.6 percent), while men make up 15.4 percent of staff (https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/). No teacher has more than ten absences in a school year.

Demographically, the student body is composed of approximately 39.6 percent White students, 9 percent Black students, 33.4 percent Hispanic students, and 11.4 percent Asian students (https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/). In fiscal year 2020, spending per student was $23,682 for a total expenditure of $125 million (https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/).

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