158 Chicago schools have more empty desks than students

Chicago needs a plan for nearly 44,000 students who attend mostly empty buildings.

Chicagoans are about to make history.

Mail-in ballots start hitting mailboxes this week for the city’s first-ever fully elected school board. Voters will select local school board members across 20 districts, plus a citywide board president.

Frederick Douglass High School, which Chicago Policy Center analysis found is the emptiest big-city school in the nation, has become a flash point in the campaign.

But Douglass is only the most extreme example of the district’s challenge with empty schools. It’s not alone. Chicago Public Schools operates 158 schools that are at least half empty, according to Chicago Policy Center research.

Among these 158 schools where enrollment is 50% or less of capacity:

• Median math proficiency is 13% and median reading proficiency is 24%.

• There is an average of one full-time employee for every five students.

• More than 43,700 students attend these schools, 14% of total CPS enrollment.

Research has long shown under-enrolled schools struggle to provide the breadth of academic courses and extracurricular opportunities available at larger schools, which was echoed in a recent CPS analysis from ProPublica and Chalkbeat.

Dollars spent on empty desks are dollars that aren’t available for student enrichment. And with CPS enrollment down 122,000 students since its 2002-03 peak, the district needs to ensure its facilities are operating in students’ best interests.

But how?

California has a framework for school consolidation

Consolidating schools is far from simple. But CPS doesn’t need to start from scratch. And it doesn’t need to repeat the same model pushed by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel to close 50 schools in 2013.

For more than a decade, the California Department of Education has maintained a Best Practices Guide for Potential School Closure. The framework includes six chapters with detailed guidance on community engagement, measurement, decision-making, implementation, transitioning surplus property, and special considerations for districts under financial distress.

The Chicago Policy Center’s CPS Excellence Agenda calls for Chicago’s new board to convene a Blue Ribbon Commission to run such a process. Most importantly, this commission would establish an ongoing framework for optimizing school facilities for student success, including core principles of school utilization, neighborhood coverage, and model school staffing.

And the state could help. Illinois in 2025 passed a new law allowing the State Board of Education to award grants to school districts that embark on reorganization feasibility studies. Districts can receive up to $16,000 for studies examining factors like school capacity and building closures.

Today, CPS has no real framework for addressing the problem of under-utilized schools.

But with the school board election approaching, where do the candidates stand?

Where do candidates for school board president stand on school closures?

WTTW asked candidates for school board president whether the district’s drop from 430,000 students in 2000 to 316,000 students in 2026 could necessitate consolidating schools.

Chicago Teachers Union political director Hilario Dominguez said he would not close any schools as president. Indeed, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the CTU have argued the solution to schools like Douglass is simple: adopt the Sustainable Community Schools model. But this model doesn’t inspire confidence. Eight CPS high schools joined the first cohort of Sustainable Community Schools in 2018. And the results are in. Unfortunately, proficiency and enrollment have continued to decline at those schools, while spending and absenteeism are up.

The remaining three candidates—former CPS principal and current board member Jessica Biggs, attorney and Urban Prep Academies board member Victor Henderson, and former board member Sendhil Revuluri—did not take school closures off the table. But each stressed community involvement was paramount.

Other cities are tackling this challenge head-on

As Stateline reported last week, CPS is far from alone when it comes to declining enrollment.

Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, calls it “the big shrink.”

“When there are fewer young people, obviously it’s going to change the shape of public education,” she told Stateline. “As more and more schools are existing that are half empty, some downsizing needs to take place for them to live in their current financial structure, and districts are really loath to do that.”

But districts across many big cities are still taking action:

• The Minneapolis school board is considering closing as many as 16 schools.

• The Philadelphia school board approved the closure of 17 schools after experiencing a 12% drop in enrollment over the last decade, and launched a Facilities Data Dashboard to help “develop recommendations on which buildings to maintain, modernize, co-locate, repurpose, or close.”

• San Antonio schools commissioned a study on building capacity in 2023 and have since voted to close 15 campuses, repurposing four.

• New York City closed two schools and merged 16 schools in recent years, while opening 28 new schools.

• In Columbus, a Community Facilities Task Force made recommendations to the school board, leading to board approval of five school closures or consolidations beginning in the 2026-27 school year. The board recently voted to close four more — including two elementary schools running under half full.

Every child in Chicago’s 158 half-empty buildings is a child whose school cannot offer what a full school offers.¹ That’s because the district has never built a process for matching buildings to the students it actually has. But other cities have.

The 21 people voters choose this fall will decide whether the next decade looks like a plan, or another decade of drift.

In the news

CPS board member runs political ad featuring school facilities, students: I filed an ethics complaint with CPS following what appeared to be improper use of school facilities and students in paid political advertising by CPS Board Member Michilla Blaise. You can see the ad here.

Pritzker says Chicago election timing is voter suppression: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker told WGN’s Tahman Bradley that Chicago’s February election timing suppresses voter turnout. Pritzker is correct. Chicago Policy Center research shows municipal election timing reduces Chicago voter turnout by 40% in local elections. Here’s why Chicago holds elections in February.

1. This is not due simply to lack of funding. Douglass spent $93,000 per student in the 2023-24 school year and employs 28 full-time staff for 27 students. The city’s half-empty schools currently staff one adult for every five children, on average.