Aurora University has been an important partner with West Aurora School District for more than a quarter century, sharing classroom space and student teachers. In cooperation with Waubonsee Community College, West High students are able to take dual credit classes and obtain advanced certifications while still in high school. They make up the largest percentage of Waubonsee Community College enrollment in the region.

The U.S. Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps was established in 2014 and quickly achieved national honors in drill team competition.  

Because of its long industrial history and receptivity to other cultures, the city of Aurora had been, nationally, a standout for its ethnic diversity. Today one of West Aurora’ greatest strengths is educating young people whose native languages and familiar cultures are those of 45 countries from 6 continents.

At the beginning of the 20^thcentury,  a new educational idea was born in the nation.  It was that all children, no matter their income or abilities, should receive as much education as possible beyond the basics of elementary school. At the forefront of this movement was West Aurora, which built the city’s first stand-alone high school in 1906.  Located on Blackhawk Avenue (later Street) and Galena Street (later Boulevard) it was a graceful Edwardian structure in which, initially, seven teachers gave instruction in Science, Drawing, English, History, Mathematics, Latin and Commercial Studies.   It served at first as the high school and then later as the district’s first junior high school, then was sold in 1978 and became a private school. Subsequent new owners, unable to develop the building for other uses, virtually abandoned it and  it was demolished in 2015.

The economic downturn of 1929-1939 did not preclude the district from building a major addition to the high school in the early 1930s.   During that period the federal Works Progress Administration sponsored several murals in West schools, notably the 93-foot-long History of Writing and the Alphabet, by Paul Stoddard, at the high school, as well as 10 or more large and small works in various buildings. 

District 129 introduced innovations in education including one of the earliest high school PTAs (1910), the first building trades program in the state of Illinois (1924), and a dedicated football field (1926)  that, at more than a mile from the school, was deemed too far out in the country to be useful but in 1953 became the actual site of the high school.

Well ahead of federal legislation (1975) to mandate education for children with disabilities, in 1971 West Aurora established, in partnership with East Aurora School District 131, Hope D. Wall Child Development Center, a school dedicated to children classified as trainable mentally handicapped. The first principal was Hope D. Wall, a pioneering special needs teacher. 

Education for learning disabled, behaviorally disordered and autistic students has been offered at every school in the district for nearly 50 years. Services to these students extend to the age of 22 through the Blackhawk Academy transition program.

By the mid-20th century junior high schools emerged as a way to bridge the gap between the basic skills of elementary education and the more advanced programs of high school.  West Aurora developed a junior high in 1953, converting the old high school on Blackhawk Street to West Aurora Junior High.  Renamed Benjamin Franklin Junior High School in 1958, it was joined by Thomas Jefferson Junior High, also in 1958 and George Washington Junior High in 1964.  Other middle schools which followed were Gary D. Jewel Middle School (1998) and Robert L. Herget Middle School in 2005.  

In the 1950s, neighboring villages North Aurora and Montgomery joined School District 129, precipitating a sudden increase in student population.  New schools added were John P. Schneider Elementary (1964), Lucia Goodwin Elementary (1968) and Harold G. Fearn Elementary (2001).   The former Montgomery School was renamed Grace M. Nicholson Elementary in 1962.  

In 1970, West Aurora became one of the first schools in the state to create a Sports Boosters organization, as well as to support girls’ athletics. The  Foundation for West Aurora Schools (1994) combined with the Alumni Association (2003) to become the A+ Foundation for West Aurora Schools in 2008. Both the Sports Boosters and the A+ Foundation have made financial contributions totaling millions of dollars to the high school and annually honor outstanding alumni through the Sports Hall of Fame and the West Aurora Hall of Honor.

In addition, the Community Foundation of the Fox River Valley, channeling donations from alumni and community members, and private organizations such as the Dunham Fund, have provided hundreds of scholarships and grants to the District over decades.

What would eventually become the city of Aurora was founded in the early days of Manifest Destiny, the westward expansion of the young United States.   It was a time of great optimism and opportunity.  Beginning in 1834, New Englanders came to northern Illinois in a steady stream, attracted by the availability of newly-federalized lands. For these settlers, the education of their children was a top priority.  Within two years of their arrival in 1834, private schools had sprung up on both sides of the Fox River.   On the west side settlers hired Miss Angeline Atwater to teach 8-10 children in a one-room log cabin along the west bank of the river.  Just two years after that, in 1838, Roswell Wilder, who had acquired numerous plots of land in the vicinity, donated a plot for the school near what is now Cedar and Lake Streets.  Named Wilder School, it was built and operated with private funds from parents but would soon become the foundation of today’s School District 129.   Mural at Old Second Bank downtown Aurora – McCarty’s Mill

In 1845, with the passage of the Illinois Free School Act, when citizens were given the authority to tax themselves for educational purposes, public education in Aurora became a possibility. Later, in 1857, when the two communities merged to form Aurora, the school districts remained separate. The population was growing at a brisk pace and by the early 1850s there were 160 children on the west side needing a place to learn.  Although funding was tight, and the project needed both a private loan and help from a state emergency fund, an impressive two-story brick and stone building was erected at Oak Avenue and Walnut Street (now New York Street).  It was ravaged twice by fire, and rebuilt and enlarged on the same site.  The successor to Stone School stands today, more than a century and a half later, although it is no longer in use as a school building. 

TOP:  Old Stone School – c 1868,  with third floor addition that in 1868  housed the first  high school classes taught in the city. Note the picket fence meant to keep wandering livestock off the school grounds.   Bottom:  Oak Street School, c.1905.

The war, although fought far away from Aurora, brought some difficulties for education in the district.  One-third of Aurora’s men left to join the Union Army, including Stone School principal, Mr. Parrington.  On a brighter note, the postwar economic boom, beginning in 1865, was immediately felt in Aurora education.   The district’s second school, South Branch School, was built on Lake Street near Gale Street, to serve the children at the south end of town. At the same time, Old Stone School received an addition and was raised to three stories.  

West Aurora has never lacked for outstanding superintendents,  such as Frank Haven Hall, the inventor of the Braille typewriter who established the first high school curriculum (the first students graduated in 1870) and Joseph Hewitt Freeman whose career included leading East Aurora schools, the Illinois State School for the Blind and the department of education for the State of Illinois.  Left,  Joseph H. Freeman and right, Frank Haven Hall.

With flourishing industries like the Burlington Railroad and many manufacturing businesses drawing in immigrant laborers, and a city growing up quickly around them, population growth in the late Victorian period resulted in continual overcrowding in the schools. Between 1885 (when Old Stone School burned down and was replaced by Oak Street School) and 1891, three brand new schools were built (today known as Hill, Lincoln and Nicholson schools). Lake Street School (now Lincoln) in 1895. 

It was during this period, in 1902, that a statewide reordering of the school district system was put into effect to create more efficiency in tax collection.  At that time District 4 was renumbered to District 129.