Our Story
Community Consolidated School District 62
CCSD62 operates 11 schools and one early learning center in the city of Des Plaines, Illinois. Locally known as Des Plaines, School District 62 serves the communities in Des Plaines and Rosemont.
Within a few years of Maine Township’s settlement in the mid-1830s, a school for local children began instruction. In 1838, Harriet Rand organized a school for local children and taught about twenty students in the milk and cheese house on her brother Socrates Rand’s farm.
Des Plaines built its first schoolhouse in 1840 at Perry Street and River Road. Rising enrollment led to the replacement of this school with a two-room schoolhouse at Pearson and River in 1852.
In early Des Plaines schools, a single teacher had charge of a one-room schoolhouse with a large number of students in all grades, of all abilities. Teachers who were not local to Des Plaines boarded during the week with school families.
During the school term, families rotated hosting the teacher for the week, which gave the Des Plaines community and the teacher a chance to get
to know one another very well.
to know one another very well.
This was the second school building to serve Des Plaines and was built in 1852 to replace the original 1840 one-room schoolhouse. This school stood on the east side of Pearson Street, near the intersection of River Road and Jefferson Street.
Des Plaines Junior High School
Building opened in 1902 on Thacker Street, between Pearson and River, as the original Maine Township High School. MTHS moved to a new building at Potter and Dempster (today’s Maine East) at the opening of the 1931-1932 school year.
After MTHS moved out of the building, it was converted to Des Plaines Junior High School and junior high classes began here in September 1931
Before Des Plaines Junior High opened in 1931, Des Plaines students attended the elementary schools through eighth grade.
In 1954, Des Plaines Junior High School was renamed Thacker Junior High School after the street on which the school stood.
Thacker Junior High School closed at the end of the school year in 1967. The aging building with small classrooms was replaced with the brand new Iroquois Junior High School in the fall of 1967.
The Thacker Junior High building was torn down in 1968. Today, Central Park stands on the former site of the school.
open since 1840
All of the historical information of the CCSD62 schools was generously provided by the Des Plaines History Center.
Go to their website below to learn more about Des Plaines history!
West School
West School opened in 1923 and closed in 1981. Today, the West School building is The Willows Academy.
Maple School
Maple School was built in 1959, one of several district 62 schools built in the 1950s and 1960s to accommodate the skyrocketing enrollment caused by Baby Boomers aging into elementary school and to ease the overcrowding in existing schools that this influx of students caused.
By 1977, the Baby Boomers had aged out of District 62 schools and enrollment at Maple School dropped to just 197 students, which was a drastic decrease from its mid-1960s enrollment of 559 students. School district officials announced that the school would close at the end of the 1977-1978 school year.
The Des Plaines Park District purchased the building and in 1979, a renovated Maple School opened as the park district’s Administrative and Leisure Center.
Our students will be prepared for and eager to accept the academic, occupational, personal and practical challenges of life in a dynamic global environment
Municipal Partners
We value and appreciate our municipal and community partners that support the work we are doing in the name of public education.