{"id":173,"date":"2026-05-23T09:37:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T09:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingservicesamerica.com\/?p=173"},"modified":"2026-05-23T09:37:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T09:37:29","slug":"100-students-in-a-school-meant-for-1000-inside-chicagos-refusal-to-deal-with-its-nearly-empty-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingservicesamerica.com\/?p=173","title":{"rendered":"100 Students in a School Meant for 1,000: Inside Chicago\u2019s Refusal to Deal With Its Nearly Empty Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More than 4,000 students once crowded DuSable High School, then an all-Black academic powerhouse on Chicago\u2019s South Side. Its three-story Art Deco building drew students with a full lineup of honors classes, a nationally known music program and standout sports teams.<\/p>\n

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Nat King Cole played the piano in his classroom as a DuSable student. Harold Washington, Chicago\u2019s first Black mayor, studied there. On Friday nights, teenagers zipped through its hallways on roller skates and danced in the gymnasium.<\/p>\n

But at the turn of the millennium, enrollment plunged as Chicago closed a massive public housing complex nearby and a growing number of Black families left the city. Amid a national infatuation with smaller high schools 20 years ago, Chicago Public Schools conducted a grant-funded experiment to chop DuSable into three separate schools sharing a campus. What remains today, after that grant money ran out, is an enormous building and, inside, two tiny schools clinging to life.<\/p>\n

One has about 115 students and claims the north corridors. The other, with only 70 students, takes the south wings. The inoperable pool is off-limits.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of unneeded hallway lockers hide behind decorative paper and student posters of Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and former first lady Michelle Obama, whose father attended in the 1950s.<\/p>\n

The two little high schools in Bronzeville share the same entrance and sports teams, but other things are doubled: two main offices, two principals, two assistant principals, two school counselors. Even though there\u2019s a teacher for roughly every five students, the course offerings are limited.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Chicago Public Schools operates more than 500 schools and spends about $18,700 per student to run buildings that it considers well-utilized. At the DuSable schools, the cost is closer to $50,000 a student.<\/p>\n

The DuSable schools are emblematic of an unyielding predicament facing the district. Enrollment has shrunk. Three of every 10 of its schools sit at least half-empty, and they are costly to run.<\/p>\n

More critically, there are 47 schools, including those inside DuSable, operating at less than one-third capacity, by the district\u2019s measure. That\u2019s almost twice as many severely underenrolled buildings as Chicago had in 2013, when it carried out the largest mass school closings in the country\u2019s history, Chalkbeat and ProPublica found. The most extreme example is Frederick Douglass Academy High School, which has 28 students this year and a per-student cost of $93,000.<\/p>\n

Many of those schools are in historic buildings that need millions of dollars in repairs.<\/p>\n

The costs are not only financial. Students in the city\u2019s smallest schools have fewer courses to choose from and often miss out on clubs, extracurricular activities and sports. Chicago\u2019s underenrolled high schools are more likely to have lower graduation and college enrollment rates. They tend to struggle with chronic truancy and higher dropout rates, a ProPublica and Chalkbeat analysis found.<\/p>\n

But officials in Chicago have chosen not to confront the problem of the city\u2019s tiny schools. The teachers union and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who used to be an organizer and legislative liaison for the union, are quick to shut down discussion of downsizing. Widespread anger over the 2013 closures helped fuel the union\u2019s rise to political power over the past decade; the union has also wielded the radioactive closure issue to undermine opponents, notably outgoing district CEO Pedro Martinez.<\/p>\n

Union leaders, many community activists and some researchers say closures disrupt displaced students\u2019 learning and harm the city\u2019s predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods, which were disproportionately affected by that earlier wave of closures. They argue the district needs to do much more to try revitalizing these campuses before it considers shuttering or merging them.<\/p>\n

Helping to delay a reckoning: Since 2013, the district has operated under a series of moratoriums on closing schools, including one state lawmakers enacted with strong support from the teachers union. And a statewide school finance overhaul under former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner increases or at least holds funding steady for districts even if enrollment declines.<\/p>\n

Chicago has too many schools for the number of students it serves today, Martinez said in an interview with ProPublica and Chalkbeat. The district is spending too much on aging buildings, and it\u2019s not providing a rich experience for students in many of its tiny schools, he said, adding: \u201cThey\u2019re not having joy in that environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he said he inherited a closure moratorium and worked with school boards that had no appetite for closing or merging schools. \u201cOur footprint is too large,\u201d said Martinez, who leaves the district this month. \u201cEvery time somebody wants to address this issue, you see at all levels of politics, nobody wants to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he hopes a fully elected school board that will take over in 2027 will tackle the issue head-on, working closely with the communities it serves.<\/p>\n

In a statement, the district noted its building utilization formula is \u201cjust one measure,\u201d and it could overestimate available space.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

The mayor\u2019s office did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n

With public school enrollment declining across the country, a growing number of cities \u2014 Milwaukee; Denver; Flint, Michigan; Boston; San Francisco; Philadelphia \u2014 are grappling with the issue of underenrollment. Some plan to close schools.<\/p>\n

But Chicago, the country\u2019s fourth-largest district, operates on a larger scale: It has more students and more buildings than most other cities. The city\u2019s school-age population, meanwhile, is on a downward trajectory, federal COVID-19 aid ran out this year and the district faces a budget deficit of more than $500 million.<\/p>\n

And yet, Chicago \u201cdoesn\u2019t seem to be having an honest conversation about the challenges it\u2019s facing,\u201d said Carrie Hahnel, a school finance researcher with the nonprofit Bellwether.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Lack of Political Courage\u201d<\/h3>\n

The 2013 closings of 49 Chicago elementary schools and one small high school were more than controversial. Families there felt that their communities were being torn apart as the city moved to shutter schools with long and rich histories. After protests and angry meetings, students were displaced to schools that were farther away from home. Neighborhood hubs were mothballed.<\/p>\n

Deep distrust of Chicago Public Schools after the mass closures lingers, especially in Black neighborhoods like DuSable\u2019s Bronzeville. University of Chicago research showed those closures set students back academically, though a small number who moved to high-performing campuses fared better. Some community groups and the teachers union in Chicago see schools as a public good; shuttering them is another mark of disinvestment.<\/p>\n

That was the backdrop when a group of DuSable High School alumni grew concerned about dwindling enrollment at their beloved school and worried the district might target the building for closure. They approached CPS just before the pandemic with an alternative idea: Consolidate the two tiny schools at DuSable and focus classes on STEM careers.<\/p>\n

The Bronzeville Scholastic Institute and the Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine would unite and revert to the name DuSable.<\/p>\n

The alumni had no illusions that they could fully restore DuSable to what it once was. Compared to the school\u2019s heyday, a much smaller number of school-age children live in Bronzeville today. But the alumni wanted more for the school.<\/p>\n

The group met repeatedly with school and district leaders in DuSable\u2019s wood-paneled social room, where trophies mark decades of athletic and musical excellence.<\/p>\n

Officials told the group to get more input from current families at both schools \u2014 a daunting task given that the district would not provide their names or contact information. The plan fizzled out.<\/p>\n

Hal Woods, now a policy director with the parent advocacy nonprofit Kids First Chicago, worked as the district\u2019s school development director at the time and sat in on those meetings. He said the bottom line was that the plan smacked too much of a closure.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t want to be seen with our fingerprints on this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Former school board President Jianan Shi, a Johnson appointee who served from 2023 to 2024, said rebuilding trust and planning for schools\u2019 future with local communities at the helm takes time; it must begin now.<\/p>\n

But, he said, \u201cThere\u2019s a lack of political courage to have this conversation, and yet it\u2019s often weaponized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amid the uproar over the 2013 closings, Chicago\u2019s then-mayor, Rahm Emanuel, vowed that his appointed school board would not close schools for five years. The state legislature then imposed a 2021 moratorium on closing Chicago schools until January of this year, part of a bill that changed the Chicago Board of Education to an elected, rather than mayor-appointed, body.<\/p>\n

Today, Chicago has 634 schools, including 119 charter and contract schools run by outside entities, and a teachers union ally holds the mayor\u2019s office. Last September, amid a power struggle between Johnson and Martinez, the Chicago Teachers Union publicized a facilities analysis that the district had done in late 2023, which included hypothetical scenarios for consolidating 75 schools, including Williams and Bronzeville. The union argued that even entertaining that idea was cause to fire Martinez immediately.<\/p>\n

As the CTU pounced, Martinez pushed back, saying the district had concluded that no school would be closed while he was in charge \u2014 which he now says was really the school board\u2019s decision. At the next school board meeting, he presented a new resolution that got unanimous support: CPS would not close any schools until 2027.<\/p>\n

But the city\u2019s demographic realities are not on hold. About 325,000 students enrolled this year, a drop of more than 70,000 from a decade ago. District officials project that three school years from now, there could be as few as 300,000 or, in a best-case scenario, as many as 334,000 students. Those estimates are based in part on the city\u2019s sharply falling birth rates. Citywide, from 2011 to 2021, the number of births dropped by more than 43%.<\/p>\n

Still, CTU leaders insist that the city is actually poised for a population turnaround. During President Donald Trump\u2019s second administration, Chicago under Johnson can bill itself as a progressive refuge \u2014 a place that protects immigrants, abortion care, LGBTQ+ rights and access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth and adults, said Jackson Potter, vice president of the CTU.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to need to be a citadel of protection,\u201d he said, adding that the last thing the city wants is to shutter some of its schools, then see families arriving in these neighborhoods en masse only to find limited classroom seats.<\/p>\n

The union\u2019s real issue with school closures, Potter said, is that Chicago has done them without enough educator and community input and has rushed them, destabilizing other nearby schools.<\/p>\n

An influx of immigrant families allowed CPS to stabilize its enrollment and the city to notch modest population increases in the past two years after a lengthy decline. But some demographers think the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown might mean these gains are short-lived.<\/p>\n

Jim Lewis, a senior researcher at the Great Cities Institute, a research hub at the University of Illinois Chicago, is skeptical about the possibility of an influx of school-age children in areas with shrinking schools. Some gentrifying Chicago neighborhoods have drawn new residents, but they tend to be higher earners who generally have fewer kids.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/div>\n

Lewis cautions that people tend to overestimate the power of schools to attract residents. Studies have shown that crumbling schools can deter families, he said. But research also suggests new programs and attractive campuses can only do so much to draw them \u2014 unless those schools come with a complete package of job opportunities, safe neighborhoods, affordable housing and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m all for beautiful new schools,\u201d Lewis said. \u201cDo I think by itself it changes the demography of a place? I don\u2019t think so.\u201d<\/p>\n

What to do about underenrolled schools and Chicago\u2019s diminished school-age population is a decision for Chicago\u2019s school board. Currently, 10 members are elected and 11 are appointed by the mayor. Next year, all will be up for election.<\/p>\n

Some members, who said they could only speak candidly if they aren\u2019t named, said the board must discuss solutions for tiny schools, including consolidation. But being branded \u201cschool closers\u201d is a concern ahead of elections. Others said they\u2019re open to discussing alternatives to school closings, including bringing health clinics or other family services into vacant parts of underenrolled schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we have to talk about small schools as a result of historic racism, underfunding, neglect and inequity,\u201d said member Debby Pope, a former CTU employee. A conversation is going to be essential, she said, but with a moratorium on closings in place and the possibility that the board could extend it, \u201cI don\u2019t think this is the moment for that conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Small Enrollment, Limited Opportunities<\/h3>\n

About 5 miles southeast of DuSable is Hirsch High School, which was one of the district\u2019s largest school building projects when it opened in the 1920s and once dealt with severe overcrowding. It\u2019s gotten so small now that M\u2019Kya Craig had taken all the electives the school offered by her junior year.<\/p>\n

She was one of roughly 100 students at Hirsch, which could enroll 1,000. She browsed the school\u2019s limited courses and decided to take yearbook for a second time. She was bracing to take the course a third time her senior year, but Hirsch added an African American literature class.<\/p>\n

Craig appreciated that staff at the small school got to know her well, including a counselor who helped her get into Chicago State University. But she often felt frustrated by the school\u2019s slim course offerings and scarce extracurriculars over the years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lost a lot over the years due to being a small school,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Most of the district\u2019s underenrolled schools serve students who do not participate in Chicago\u2019s expansive system of school choice, where high-performing students test into selective schools ranked the best in the state, and other students find their way to magnets, charters or strong neighborhood schools, often in wealthier parts of Chicago.<\/p>\n

Many of the district\u2019s small schools serve Chicago\u2019s highest-needs students.<\/p>\n

At the Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine, one of the schools inside DuSable, junior Georgia Deaye was drawn to the school\u2019s medical career program and loves the close-knit feel.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThe connection with teachers is way deeper than if I was at another school,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She participated in a summer internship program that Williams accesses through one of the larger district high schools and recently got her CPR certification. The most recent graduation rate at Williams was 93%, among the highest in the district. The graduating class was 14 students. There are a total of 70 students enrolled there, at a cost of $54,000 per student.<\/p>\n

\u201cSmall schools are not always painted in a positive light,\u201d said Williams Principal Leonetta Sanders, but the smaller environment is ideal for some students. In part because of its size, the campus hasn\u2019t had to deal with gang problems or violence, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSafety,\u201d she said, \u201cis always money well spent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some research has suggested that students tend to do better in smaller schools, notes Bruce Fuller, an expert at the University of California, Berkeley. But those findings apply to small-by-design campuses with healthy enrollments, not schools that have shrunk dramatically as families have moved away.<\/p>\n

Fuller doesn\u2019t think that student outcomes at those underenrolled schools have been studied rigorously because it would be too hard to control for factors such as the high needs of the students they tend to serve. \u201cThere\u2019s consistent evidence that smaller can be better,\u201d Fuller said. \u201cBut small in this lifecycle of decline is a totally different story.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Chicago\u2019s tiny schools, the limitations, even at a high per-student cost, are substantial. Bronzeville Scholastic Institute, the other school inside DuSable, used to be able to teach Spanish and French but now offers Spanish only. The school once offered Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses but realized it could not continue to offer both; it kept the IB program.<\/p>\n

The schools have tried to make up for the limited course offerings by encouraging students to take online courses and dual-enrollment classes that local community colleges offer to high school students.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got 12 kids in a class. The board is not going to pay for a calculus teacher,\u201d Grace Dawson, who leads DuSable\u2019s robust alumni group, said of the school district. Students are being \u201crobbed\u201d of opportunity, said Dawson, a former Chicago school principal.<\/p>\n

Flush with federal COVID aid, the district added more than 7,500 new positions over the past four years even as enrollment kept declining. It also recently started guaranteeing a certain number of staff, including 10 teachers, at each school regardless of enrollment. Williams and Bronzeville, which used to share an assistant principal and a gym teacher, each hired their own. Douglass High School on the city\u2019s West Side now has 27 employees for 28 students.<\/p>\n

That includes six regular education teachers, six special education teachers, a school counselor, a college and career coach, a conflict resolution specialist, a restorative justice coordinator, and an assistant principal and principal. The cost to run the school is $93,000 per student.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs a Douglass student getting a $93,000-a-year experience? No,\u201d said Woods of Kids First Chicago. \u201cWe can confidently say that. CPS pumps extra dollars into these schools so they can offer the bare minimum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

The district, which handles requests for comment about individual schools, did not dispute the high per-pupil price tag at Douglass. It has said its new budgeting approach gives all schools a fiscal boost regardless of size.<\/p>\n

David Narain, who was principal at Hirsch until 2023, said the school\u2019s smaller size allowed his staff to focus intensely on a highly mobile student body, where many students came in reading at the third or fourth grade level. But it was challenging to build a school culture on a campus with so few students.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou try to have a homecoming, but there\u2019s no football team,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to come home to.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Narain understands the financial tension the district faces. \u201cThe writing is on the wall,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t continue to run these schools and give them all of these resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

Old Buildings, Big Expenses<\/h3>\n

In a district with a $10 billion budget, the overall spending on staff and programs at small schools can seem negligible. But keeping aging campuses running is costly no matter how many students are there. The average Chicago school building is 85 years old; dozens of them were built before 1900.<\/p>\n

Analysis of capital spending data by ProPublica and Chalkbeat found that since 2017, the district\u2019s 47 severely underenrolled schools \u2014 ones that sit more than two-thirds empty \u2014 have cost more than $213 million to maintain and renovate.<\/p>\n

The emptiest buildings account for $400 million of the district\u2019s estimated $3.1 billion in needed critical repairs. The DuSable building alone needs $21 million in urgent repairs.<\/p>\n

Adding to the financial uncertainty at CPS is the Trump administration\u2019s threat to withhold federal funding from districts such as Chicago that have maintained their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.<\/p>\n

Education policy researcher Chad Aldeman, the former policy director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, said some closures or consolidations seem inevitable on the heels of Chicago\u2019s massive enrollment losses. If the district doesn\u2019t make a plan now \u2014 with community input and help to ease the transition for students \u2014 it could find itself scrambling later to reorganize in crisis mode.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of places that are closing schools are in financial distress,\u201d Aldeman said. \u201cThey are trying to save money rather than thinking holistically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Closing schools can also carry steep costs. In 2013, the district spent big to add staff at schools that took in students, spruce up those schools and move furniture out of the closed buildings.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s what to do with vacant buildings. The district is still trying to sell 20 vacant schools from the 2013 closures, which it pays to maintain.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

CTU leaders, who pushed to add thousands of new school staff positions in recent contract talks, have long advocated spending more to breathe new life into underenrolled schools \u2014 an invest-and-they\u2019ll-come theory.<\/p>\n

Potter, the CTU vice president, holds up Dyett High School \u2014 which the district closed but later reopened after a CTU-supported hunger strike in protest \u2014 as an example of a \u201cphoenix rising from the ashes.\u201d Its basketball team won a state title this year. Though the school is still at 58% capacity, enrollment has stabilized at roughly 500 students, a benchmark CPS has used to weigh whether a high school is big enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy would you start with a question about consolidations when you can start with a question about support?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But recent years have tested the power of added investments to boost enrollment.<\/p>\n

In 2018, the district and teachers union jointly launched an initiative to target 20 high-poverty campuses, including Dyett, with an additional $500,000 a year. They\u2019ve used the money to partner with a local nonprofit to offer more services for students and families.<\/p>\n

Some of these schools have since reported parent and student engagement gains. But with a few exceptions, they have steadily lost enrollment since then, in some cases dramatically.<\/p>\n

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Declining school enrollment has left 30% of Chicago public schools at least half-empty. 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