Chicago Public Schools hasn’t yet officially provided its enrollment for the 2025-26 school year, but Chalkbeat reported (preliminarily) that there are about 12,000 fewer students at CPS schools this year than last, with enrollment now standing at about 313,000. That’s a 4% decrease from 325,000 last year and the lowest CPS student total in decades.
It’s clear now that a modest two-year increase in CPS enrollment was a mirage, as we and many others believed.
There’s always the possibility that more students will have enrolled by the time CPS reports its figures in the next few weeks, but it doesn’t seem likely the narrative will change appreciably. What CPS had touted over the past two years as a reversal of what seemed like an inexorable decadelong slide was mainly due to a wave of migrants, some of whom came to Chicago voluntarily but many others who were bused here by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
This year so far, Latino and Black students account for most of the decline, with the number of white and Asian American students actually increasing a bit, Chalkbeat reported. Some principals told the outlet some of their schools’ migrant families had moved to the suburbs.
There’s little reason to believe the downward trend will change any time in the near term. CPS projects that within three years enrollment could dip to as low as 300,000, remarkable given that more than 400,000 students attended CPS schools as recently as 2013-14.
So it’s time. Past time, really. CPS must begin the process of rightsizing a school district built to serve at least a third more students than it currently does.
We’ve heard some Chicago school board members begin to tiptoe into these politically hazardous waters. With a mayor who talks repeatedly of his 2016 hunger strike to reopen Dyett High School on the South Side and a Chicago Teachers Union that considers Rahm Emanuel’s closures to be an act of pure evil, CPS and too many state and local policymakers have become paralyzed. They’re petrified even to discuss what any other school district in the state or the nation would be doing under similar circumstances — close near-empty schools.
Rather than participate in thoughtful consolidation, CTU “demands” that the state plow $1.6 billion more into this shrinking district based on state law that defines what “adequate” school funding should be based on an “evidence-based” analysis. That law, however, doesn’t require the state to furnish money it doesn’t have, and it’s been clear for years now that that sort of cash isn’t coming. Gov. JB Pritzker said as much a few weeks ago, which led to a round of name-calling by CTU, the mayor and school board members backed by CTU.
Furthermore, the longer Mayor Brandon Johnson and CTU insist on absurdities like preserving Douglass High School in the Austin neighborhood on the city’s West Side when it has a total of less than 30 students, the easier it is for those unsympathetic to CPS to dismiss that there are some needs going unaddressed.
Douglass, of course, isn’t alone in being severely under-enrolled. About a third of CPS schools are serving less than half the students they were built to educate. But Douglass has become the poster child for a militant teachers union that clearly places a higher priority on preserving and growing its membership than it does on the welfare of Chicago’s public school students. Not to mention taxpayers.
The saga of the Emanuel-era closings can be instructive, at least once city leaders acknowledge the inevitable and get real. The shuttering of the 50 schools in 2013 was by most accounts a chaotic process. There was a need back then to close schools, but the method left something to be desired.
Even with a smoother process than occurred back then, it’s never easy — whether in Chicago or in suburban areas — to consolidate schools. There are emotions involved, loyalties tested and the unavoidable disruption to families’ lives and routines.
That’s why community involvement is critical so that at the very least parents feel like they’ve had their say and have been heard. In that way, Chicago is more likely to get a consolidated system in which every neighborhood is served by a public school that is reasonably resourced and has a decent chance of appealing to families in close proximity.
When — and it will be when, not if – Chicago finally gets serious about rationalizing its school system, it could well be a blessing that the process will be overseen by school board members who are elected rather than mayoral appointees.
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It will be harder — not impossible, unfortunately — for CTU to attempt to demonize school board members who are trying to make difficult but responsible decisions. Fortunately, those decision-makers ultimately will be answerable directly to voters rather than to a mayor, and that will help shield them from CTU’s proven ability to put mayors under intense pressure.
In a city of 2.7 million, and with a teachers union that has morphed into a political machine, the process surely will be messy, given that meaningful consolidation likely will lead to a reduction in the CPS workforce.
But an elected board gives Chicago a far better chance once the dust has settled at achieving a modicum of consensus. And more importantly, Chicago’s public schools may at long last achieve financial stability.
But first things first. With or without Mayor Johnson and CTU, interim CPS CEO Macquline King and school board members who aren’t in thrall to CTU must begin the process of giving the public options and ideas on how to forge a stable, functional Chicago Public Schools.
Let’s get the conversation started.
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