John Consolino Takes Regional Schools Role as Southern Illinois Enrollment Shrinks

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Correction (October 1, 2026): An earlier version measured the regional cohort from a 2015-16 figure in one state count to a 2025-26 figure in another. On one count each, enrollment across the 45 districts fell 1,859 students (9.3%) from 2015-16 to 2024-25, not 2,145 (10.7%) through 2025-26, and fell 240 students (1.3%) in 2025-26, not 286 (1.6%). Eight districts grew over the decade, not six, and the county figures have changed. The direction of every finding is unchanged.

John Consolino took charge of Regional Office of Education 13^↗ this summer with a job that reaches across school systems rather than running one ordinary district.

Consolino confirmed the transition in writing to The ILEdTribune. He said he assumed the regional superintendent's responsibilities after Matt Renaud retired and the county boards appointed him to complete the term. He did not answer later questions about his priorities or how he will measure the work, so this profile is limited to his confirmation, public records and the state's published enrollment data.

The regional office's account of its work says it serves Clinton, Jefferson, Marion and Washington counties through school-recognition reviews, alternative education, professional learning, truancy enforcement, educator licensure and credential records. That is direct evidence of the office's formal scope. It is not evidence that Consolino personally selected every current program or that enrollment change caused any particular service decision.

A regional trend, not an ROE enrollment count

The first analytical distinction matters. The state's fall enrollment report carries a separate row for the regional office itself, which the state classifies as something other than a school district. That row does not represent every student across the counties the office serves, and this analysis does not treat it that way.

Instead, the regional context uses the current roster of 45 public school districts that the state assigns to Clinton, Jefferson, Marion and Washington counties, each tracked by its federal district identifier. Illinois publishes two enrollment counts that cannot be subtracted from each other: the Report Card count, available here from 2015-16 through 2024-25 (with no 2017-18 file), and a fall count that assigns each student to a home district and runs from 2020-21 through 2025-26. Every comparison below stays within one of them.

On the Report Card count, the cohort's enrollment fell from 20,055 students in 2015-16 to 18,196 in 2024-25. The decline of 1,859 students amounts to 9.3%. Of the 45 districts, 37 ended the period smaller and 8 ended it larger.

The fall count carries the trend into 2025-26. On that count, combined enrollment fell by 240 students, or 1.3%, from 2024-25 to 2025-26, to 17,910. It has fallen every year the fall count covers, from 19,015 in 2020-21, a decline of 1,105 students, or 5.8%, over five years.

Those facts establish a change in scale, not a cause. The enrollment file does not distinguish population change, family choices, private-school movement, homeschooling, student mobility or district policy. Nothing examined for this profile can assign the regional decline to any one of them.

The same direction, different magnitude

On the Report Card count, every county group in the cohort ended 2024-25 below its 2015-16 total, but the size of the decline varied.

Marion County's district total fell by 805 students, or 11.7%. Jefferson County fell by 649 students, or 10.7%. Washington County declined by 135 students, or 7.3%, while Clinton County declined by 270 students, or 5.1%.

Grouping by county prevents one large district from standing in for the entire service area. It also shows why a regional office cannot assume that every local system is moving at the same pace. The shared direction comes straight from the enrollment series. What it means for demand for licensure work, professional learning, alternative education or other regional services is a separate question, because the state data contain no measure of service demand.

The district-level distribution adds another caution. Most districts declined, but the cohort does not move as a single unit. Eight districts grew across the Report Card window, and the sizes of the losses among declining districts varied widely.

For Consolino, that variation makes listening across district lines more important than treating the regional total as a local diagnosis. The data identify where scale changed. They cannot identify which support a district needs or whether a regional program is effective.

A career built inside the service area

Consolino arrives with experience on both sides of the district-regional relationship. His official biography says he began as a special-education teacher at Selmaville, later became principal and superintendent at Iuka, served as an interim superintendent at Kell and then worked as assistant regional superintendent under Renaud.

That biography is direct evidence of the roles the office attributes to him. It supports a narrow conclusion: he has worked in schools and district administration within the area he now serves. It does not establish how he performed in those posts or what agenda he will pursue as regional superintendent.

The governance structure also differs from that of a local school district. The regional office's own account of the post describes it as the only elected educational professional office in Illinois, and says the county boards of all four counties appointed Consolino to it beginning July 1, 2026, after Renaud retired. He entered the office by appointment rather than by election, to serve out the remainder of his predecessor's term, which is what he told The ILEdTribune in July. Illinois administrative code designates the regional superintendent as chief administrator for the office's services and programs, with responsibility for personnel, fiscal accounts and information submitted to the state superintendent. That is direct evidence of the office Consolino now holds and the administrative obligations attached to it.

What remains unknown is how he intends to connect those obligations to a region where district enrollment has contracted unevenly. His initial reply settled the role transition, but the follow-up questions about priorities, challenges and measures of success remained unanswered before this profile was drafted.

The enrollment record offers a baseline for those questions. Consolino is not inheriting one school system with one trend line. He is taking a regional role across 45 districts whose combined enrollment fell 9.3% across the Report Card decade and has kept falling on the state's fall count, with declines in most districts and in every county group. The leadership task is to determine what that shared direction means for distinct local systems without claiming the data can answer that question by themselves.

Enrollment figures come from the Illinois State Board of Education public enrollment record. The cohort contains current public-district total rows assigned to Clinton, Jefferson, Marion and Washington counties and tracked at stable federal district identifiers. It is regional context, not enrollment of the regional office itself and not a resident-child count. Changes through 2024-25 use the Illinois Report Card count, which has no 2017-18 figure, so chart lines break at that gap. Changes ending in 2025-26 use the Fall Enrollment Report on both ends; the two counts are never subtracted from each other. Consolino confirmed the leadership transition in writing; the linked official pages support the public-role and biography claims.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Regional Office of Education 13 - EdTribune IL - Illinois Education Data

John Consolino Takes Regional Schools Role as Southern Illinois Enrollment Shrinks

A regional trend, not an ROE enrollment count

The same direction, different magnitude

A career built inside the service area