Granite City Community Unit School District 9 highlighted Joe Valencia, a high school social studies teacher at Lake Educational Support Services Center, as its staff spotlight for the week of May 29. The recognition is part of a series throughout the 2025-26 school year to honor staff members who contribute positively to students’ experiences.
Valencia has worked with the district since the Alternative Education program moved to Lake in 2020. He said he enjoys working with students in smaller classroom settings and values the strong relationships formed between staff and students. “Our Lake staff is one big family and I wouldn’t trade them for anything!” Valencia said.
Reflecting on his career, Valencia described his favorite memory as helping produce the first Lake ESSC Career Fair last year. “It was incredible to see so many people from our community come together to show the many different options available to our students after they graduate,” he said.
Valencia credits his parents as role models, saying, “I watched my dad work with teenagers my whole life as a youth pastor and that laid the foundations for my teaching and relationship building styles. My mom instilled in me the importance of honesty and patience, two traits that I emphasize with my students.” He also shared that he enjoys spending time with his son Beaux, watching sports, and working soccer games at Energizer Park.
The Granite City Community Unit School District 9 serves Madison County schools including Coolidge Junior High School, Frohardt Elementary School, Granite City High School, Grigsby Intermediate School, Maryville Elementary School, Mitchell Elementary School, Prather Elementary School, and Wilson Elementary School; it enrolled 5,990 students during the 2019-2020 school year across pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade levels, according to the Illinois State Board of Education. The district’s teachers number 320 with an average salary of $67,898 before pension contributions; women comprise 77.1 percent of faculty while men make up 22.9 percent; there are no teachers reported with more than ten absences per year, according to Illinois Report Card data.
The district spent $17,739 per student in 2020 for a total expenditure of $106 million; its student body is composed of approximately 65 percent White students alongside Black (15.9 percent), Hispanic (11.7 percent), and Asian (0.6 percent) populations, according to Illinois Report Card statistics. In addition, Granite City Community Unit had a chronic truancy rate of about twelve percent during that period, according to state education officials.
