Superintendent

Superintendent's Message

Mr. Russell A. Ragon

As Superintendent of Schools, I want to personally welcome all parents, community members, and visitors to the Manhattan SD 114 website and to the Superintendent’s page. Our goal is to continually provide timely and accurate information to teachers, students, parents, staff, community members, and visitors on educational issues, extracurricular activities, student successes, and other important happenings within Manhattan SD 114 and the Manhattan community. We communicate in a variety of ways, utilizing our district website, our Manhattan 114 Facebook page, Manhattan 114 Twitter, School Messenger, PowerSchool, district email, and most importantly, making ourselves available to meet in person. Manhattan School District is a single school district that anticipates serving over 1600 preschool through eighth grade students. We have three buildings in our district, PreK - 2nd grade, 3rd grade - 5th grade, and 6th grade - 8th grade. We believe that Manhattan is a great place to live, raise a family, and send your children to school. The Manhattan School District is large enough to offer an excellent curriculum, taught by highly qualified staff, yet small enough to provide individual student attention. Instruction is differentiated to meet the needs of all students, including the more able that benefit from increased depth and complexity, and the more challenged that benefit from an excellent special education staff and a partnership with LWASE District #843. Our goal is for each of our students to become a self-confident thinker and problem solver, a good citizen, and a successful person. We are proud that the reputation of our school district is one of the important factors that leads new families to our community. We do not take this responsibility lightly, and we will continue to do everything we can to serve our students and their families.

Manhattan SD 114 is a high achieving school district that continually makes Adequate Yearly Performance (AYP) as measured by state and federal guidelines. Manhattan students demonstrate our excellent educational program yearly as they excel in state assessments, academics, co-curricular programs, and go on to be some of the very best students at Lincoln Way High School District 210. (See Superintendent State of the Schools Address)

Here in the Manhattan School District we keep focused on “the main thing” which, for us, is student learning. Manhattan SD 114 strives to provide all students with a quality educational experience that will provide them the necessary knowledge and tools that will benefit them in furthering their education. We have absolutely outstanding teachers, administrators, and support staff members who work in a thoughtful and dedicated manner to support and encourage students to be successful in all domains—academically, socially, and emotionally. Our staff provides a positive, nurturing environment for all children. We are committed to ensuring that each student has the opportunity to thrive in many areas and ways. Our long history of strong academic success is directly connected to our dedicated and talented staff, innovative school leadership, a devoted board of education, active and strong parental involvement, and a supportive and generous community. Our work together requires teamwork, collaboration and shared leadership toward a common mission, vision, values and goals. We stand ready to face the future growth and many other challenges that face our district.

At Manhattan, we stand ready, in a time of State Funding uncertainty, educational and legislative challenges, and in the face of numerous educational reforms. I have the utmost confidence in the administration, the teaching staff, the support staff, and the Board of Education, in preparing our students at Manhattan SD 114 to be successful. Please join all of us in our “Commitment to Excellence” at Manhattan SD 114.

Respectfully,

Mr. Russell A. Ragon
Manhattan School District 114 
25632 S. Gougar Road
Manhattan, IL 60442
Phone:815-478-0191
Fax: 815-478-7660