Principal Becky Schneider

Wileman Elementary School was opened in 1952, but to us, it’s all brand new.

The school recently transitioned from a neighborhood elementary that served students through grade 5, to one that now only serves our Delavan-Darien community’s youngest learners. As part of our “Center School” concept, Wileman houses our Early Childhood, 4-year-old Kindergarten and 5-year-old Kindergarten programs.

The school is designed with the littlest learners in mind, and provides opportunities for before- and after-school childcare.

Also, any student who rides the bus to school only rides with his or her schoolmates. All the bus routes to and from Wileman Elementary are separate from the routes that serve our other elementary schools and our middle and high schools. That makes the transition to school that much easier and that much safer for our early learners.

Despite being young, our Wileman Elementary School students have all the perk’s of the “bigger kids” when it comes to technology. Our One-to-One technology program is district-wide and reaches down all the way into our pre-school classrooms. There, students use iPads and Chromebooks to enhance their learning through a wide variety of age-appropriate applications and websites.

The school also houses the beginning grades of the county’s only Dual Language Education program. In this model, students as young as 4-year-old kindergarten are immersed in bilingual classrooms where Spanish and English are the dominant languages. In fact, in 4-year-old kindergarten, Spanish is spoken about 90 percent of the school day. As the students progress, additional English is introduced until the instruction is split about 50/50 between the two languages. The choice program is open to all students — including native English speakers — and sets kids on a pathway to becoming bilingual, biliterate, bicultural and much more employable when they’re adults!