Kewanee, IL: New "hub" planned for "students with disabilities, significant needs"
- The end of childhood
- Aug 31
- 1 min read
Aug 28, 2025, WQAD, Davenport, IA: Plans underway for new Kewanee special education building
Plans are underway to turn a former American Legion building in Kewanee into a new educational hub for students with disabilities and significant needs.
Right now, around two dozen special needs students throughout Illinois’s Henry and Stark Counties have to travel to either Peoria or the Quad Cities for their education.
But if all goes according to plan, they’ll all be under the same roof in Kewanee by this time next year.
We’ve known that there’s been a need for it for a very long time. I’d say for at least the last two or three years we’ve trying to find some place in Kewanee or in one of our communities where we can have our students come back and be educated . . .
Right now, between our eight districts, we spend roughly $1.5 million to send students to these private facilities. . . .about a half a million dollars in transportation cost to bus those students there. By bringing them back to us, we can just about cut that tuition in half. . . .
It’ll have very small class sizes: a teacher and two paras per room, probably no more than five or six kids per class. . . .We looking at hiring an additional probably forty to fifty people for this. . . .
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