Woodlands Academy honored for state and national Blue Ribbon excellence

Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart has been named an inaugural recipient of the newly established Illinois Governor’s Blue Ribbon Schools award. Gov. JB Pritzker, alongside state and education leaders, formally launched the program and celebrated this year’s designees at a ceremony on Oct. 10.

“At a moment when quality education is more important than ever, we will never abandon our pursuit of academic excellence or recognition of the teachers and students doing the hard work every day — that’s why we are proud to honor 28 Illinois schools as part of the new Governor’s Blue Ribbon Schools Program,” Pritzker said.

Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart is one of only 13 private schools in Illinois (and 28 schools in total) to be recognized as a 2025 Governor’s Blue Ribbon School for demonstrating exemplary academic performance. Woodlands will also be invited to a special recognition event at the Governor’s Mansion in Springfield this spring.

“Being designated a Governor’s Blue Ribbon School is an incredible distinction, and these schools deserve to be celebrated,” State Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders said. “I congratulate this year’s honorees for their tremendous accomplishments and thank them for serving as models of excellence for schools across the state.”

This most recent honor follows Woodlands’ earlier recognition as a National Blue Ribbon School in 2025 and 2020. National Blue Ribbon awards were based on a school’s overall academic performance. For both years, Woodlands was recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School in the category of Exemplary High-Performing Schools.

At the end of August, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it was discontinuing its Blue Ribbon Schools program. This means the department will not be honoring those who qualified for a 2025 designation or holding the traditional awards-presentation celebration in Washington, D.C., as it has in the past. Woodlands was notified by DOE that it had met all of the requirements for a 2025 Blue Ribbon award in the weeks before the program’s sunset.

Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart is a Catholic, independent, day-and-boarding, college-preparatory school for young women of all faiths in grades nine through 12. Founded in Chicago in 1858 and located in Lake Forest since 1904, Woodlands is part of a worldwide network of Sacred Heart Schools that spans the United States and 40 other countries on six continents. To learn more, visit woodlandsacademy.org.