A K–12 unit district that draws Jacksonville and four surrounding villages onto one school map — one high school, two middle schools, six elementary attendance zones. If you’re buying, the address you pick is the school your kids walk to. Here’s every active listing inside the district, broken out by zone.
Live MLS data — refreshed daily. Every active listing inside the Jacksonville District #117 boundary, regardless of which brokerage holds the listing. No iframe chrome, no signup wall.
Each D#117 elementary serves the neighborhood it sits in — so the elementary boundary is, in practice, a buying decision. Here’s a short read on each zone plus a filtered listing search for the homes inside it.
East-side school just past the bypass on Vandalia. Walks a mix of mid-century ranches, post-war split-levels, and a handful of newer build lots near East Morton. The largest of the six elementaries by enrollment — and the one with the most listings turning over at any given time.
Homes in zone →West-side school near the old MacMurray College campus. Catchment includes some of the city’s prettiest historic streets — tall-ceiling Victorians, brick foursquares, mature canopy. Inventory is light most of the year. When a Lincoln-zone home hits the market, it tends to move.
Homes in zone →Sits on Washington Street downtown. Catches Duncan Park, a stretch of brick-bungalow streets, and the small grid east of the courthouse square. Walkable. A favorite of buyers who want the elementary three blocks away and dinner downtown on a Tuesday.
Homes in zone →Quiet northwest pocket above West State Street. A mix of post-war ranches and a slowly growing pocket of new construction. Smaller catchment than the central schools — expect lower listing counts but easier offers when the right one lists.
Homes in zone →The rural-district school in Murrayville, about eight miles south of Jacksonville. Pulls families who want acreage, a hobby barn, and a small-school feel — without leaving D#117 entirely. Homes here are larger, lots are bigger, and the school still feeds into Jacksonville High.
Homes in zone →Covers North Main, the Jefferson Street corridor, and several mid-century split-level streets. Often the entry-point zone for first-time buyers — the median price runs noticeably below the city average. Good fit for buyers prioritizing payment over square footage.
Homes in zone →Inside the incorporated village of South Jacksonville — its own municipal boundary with its own utility billing. Mostly ranches and ranch-with-basement layouts on flat, walkable streets. A favorite of buyers who want a village-feel but stay inside D#117.
Homes in zone →The district’s preschool. Pulls 3- and 4-year-olds from every elementary zone — enrollment-based, not address-based. Useful for buyers planning more than one year ahead.
Homes in district →D#117’s alternative learning center. Open to students who need a non-traditional path — address-agnostic enrollment, like Early Years.
Homes in district →Jacksonville School District #117 is a single K–12 unit district covering the city of Jacksonville plus the villages of Murrayville, Woodson, South Jacksonville, and a handful of rural addresses in between. One board. One superintendent. Nine buildings.
Enrollment hovers around 2,400 students. The district runs a single high school, two middle schools, six elementary attendance zones, an Early Years preschool, and the Crossroads alternative learning center. The high school sits in the Central State Eight athletic conference and has long-standing dual-credit partnerships with Lincoln Land Community College and MacMurray-era programs that survived MacMurray itself.
For buyers, the practical thing to know: D#117 is an address-based district for K–5. Where you buy is where your elementary-aged kids go — full stop, no inter-zone transfers without a hardship case. Middle school and high school consolidate the whole district, so by sixth grade the elementary lines stop mattering.
Open enrollment from outside the district boundary is reviewed case-by-case. The district publishes its boundary map in the back of every back-to-school packet; we keep a current copy at the office and are happy to walk a buyer through whether a specific address is inside, outside, or on the line.
Once you’re past fifth grade, every D#117 student lands in the same two buildings. Address stops driving the routing.
The district’s only high school — roughly 750 students, on West Walnut just past the Walnut Street corridor of historic homes. Known for a long-running ag program, a competitive marching band, robotics, and Central State Eight athletics. Dual-credit through Lincoln Land Community College lets motivated students graduate with up to a year of college credit already earned. Every address in D#117 feeds into JHS for grades 9–12.
View homes that feed JHS →The district’s middle school — one building serving every sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grader from all six elementary zones. By the time kids walk into Turner the elementary attendance lines have effectively dissolved. Strong band program, robotics club, and a feeder relationship with JHS athletics. Sits on West College Avenue.
View D#117 listings →Jacksonville families have a handful of non-district options — useful to know about before deciding which side of town to buy on.
Routt Catholic High School. K–12 Catholic school in central Jacksonville. Pulls students from across D#117, Cass, Scott, and Greene counties. Enrollment-based — address is irrelevant. Sits on the same block as Our Saviour, two minutes from the courthouse.
Our Saviour Lutheran School. Pre-K through 8. Small classes, single-section grades, also enrollment-based. Many Routt high-schoolers came up through Our Saviour first.
Illinois School for the Deaf. State-run residential school headquartered in Jacksonville since 1839. Day and residential options for qualifying students from across Illinois. The campus is a small city of its own on the east side of town.
Illinois School for the Visually Impaired. ISD’s sister institution — same model, smaller footprint, sits a few blocks east. Together the two state schools employ several hundred people who live across D#117.
District boundaries shift. Open-enrollment policies shift. If a specific elementary zone is load-bearing for your buying decision, confirm with the district office (217-243-9411) before you write an offer — or call us and we’ll do the legwork. We’ve done it dozens of times.
A district is more than a school. Here’s the neighborhood-level texture buyers usually want to know before they write an offer.
Jacksonville (population ~18,000) is the Morgan County seat and the largest community inside D#117. The downtown courthouse square anchors a walkable historic district — restaurants, the public library, the Jacksonville Symphony, and the small-but-real commercial strip that surrounds the courthouse. Several neighborhoods walk to school, which is increasingly rare in central Illinois.
Local economy is unusually deep for a town this size. Major employers include MacMurray-era institutions still operating, Passavant Area Hospital, the Illinois School for the Deaf and Illinois School for the Visually Impaired (combined several hundred employees), Jacksonville Correctional Center, the school district itself, Illinois College (a 200-year-old liberal arts institution downtown), and manufacturing employers including Reynolds Consumer Products and Nestlé Purina.
Recreation amenity is meaningfully deeper than other central-Illinois towns of similar size. Lake Jacksonville for fishing and boating. Nichols Park and several smaller park systems. Routt and Illinois College athletics. Community Park. The Pathway Trail. Quick access to the Illinois River, Springfield-metro amenity (35 min east), and the broader Morgan County rural recreation network.
Each elementary attendance zone carries its own neighborhood character. Eisenhower-zone walks the east-side mid-century streets. Lincoln-zone covers historic west-side blocks near old MacMurray. Washington-zone is centrally located near Duncan Park. Murrayville-Woodson is the rural-acreage option. The pricing range across the district’s zones spans the entire central-Illinois affordability spectrum — from sub-$100K starter homes to $400K+ historic estates.
The honest answer: they all post comparable state-report-card numbers, and the district has invested evenly across the six buildings. The bigger driver of fit is neighborhood — not the school. Eisenhower, Washington, and Lincoln have the largest enrollments; Murrayville-Woodson is the rural option; Franklin and the North/South Jacksonville schools tend to draw first-time buyers because of housing price. Pick the neighborhood you’d live in for the next ten years and the school usually follows.
Within the district, no — not without a hardship request reviewed by the superintendent’s office. Some families do successfully request a transfer if a sibling is already enrolled at a different building, or if there’s a documented medical or scheduling reason. Plan around the address you buy, not the assumption you can transfer.
For K–5, yes — the district uses the residential address on file. For middle and high school, it doesn’t matter because every D#117 student funnels into Turner Junior High and Jacksonville High School. We always recommend double-checking the boundary map for the exact address before closing if school district is your top priority.
The Jacksonville market sits well below state and Springfield-metro averages. As of mid-2026 the median sale price across D#117 hovers in the low-to-mid $100,000s — with North Jacksonville and Franklin running lower, and Murrayville/Lincoln-zone historic homes running higher. The browse above shows current asking prices — recent sold comps are available on request.
D#117 posts state-report-card numbers consistent with peer central-Illinois unit districts of similar size. Jacksonville High School maintains a long-running dual-credit partnership with Lincoln Land Community College, an active band and FFA program, and competitive Central State Eight athletics. The district’s biggest strength for many families is its scale — large enough to support program breadth (AP courses, band, multiple sports), small enough to retain a tight small-town community feel.
Effective property tax rates in Jacksonville and the surrounding Morgan County typically run between 2.0–2.6% of fair market value, with the school portion the largest single line item. Rates vary modestly by taxing district (city of Jacksonville, village of South Jacksonville, unincorporated Morgan County, etc.). We can pull the exact prior-year tax bill for any specific property you’re considering — including the parcel’s exact city, village, school-district, library, and fire-district levies — before you write an offer.
The district office publishes an official boundary map and can confirm any specific address by parcel ID at 217-243-9411. We always verify district and attendance-zone status before recommending an offer — especially on properties near a boundary line where one street can swing the elementary zone. If you give us an address, we’ll have an answer within the same business day.
Plain-English guides written by Apex agents — useful context as you weigh a buying or selling decision inside D#117 or Jacksonville more broadly.
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Read on the Apex blog →We live here. We know which streets feed which elementaries, which neighborhoods are on the upswing, and which listings are about to drop. Talk to us before you write an offer.
