March 04, 2025
By Lucas Freitag and Daniel Vesecky
The recent Civic Federation Financial Landscape Analysis of the Chicago Public School District highlights a long-term issue for the Chicago Public School District (CPS or the “District”): declining enrollment has led to significant building underutilization. Today, a significant mismatch exists between the number of students enrolled in the District and the amount of space available in schools throughout the City. Based on FY2025 CPS data, 56% of District school buildings are underutilized. CPS defines underutilization as enrollment below 70% of a school’s capacity. In 2024, 154 out of 498 CPS schools were at less than half of their capacity. Only approximately 36% of schools are classified as efficiently utilized and 5% as overcrowded.
Operational spending data provides a useful measure to compare schools and identify facilities with particularly high spending per student – in other words, schools that are not efficiently utilized. The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) defines Operational Spending Per Student (OSPS) as the average amount spent on a school’s operating costs, including instructional costs, per student in a given fiscal year. Out of the 498 CPS facilities for which operational spending and space utilization data are available, 185, or 37%, are efficiently utilized, and 287, or 58%, are underutilized. The following chart compares the average OSPS, as reported by ISBE’s 2024 Report Card dataset for efficiently utilized versus underutilized schools.
The following table lists the utilization status of CPS schools based on FY2025 Space Utilization Data. Based on CPS’ definition, underutilized schools are those at 70% or less of capacity. Severely underutilized schools are classified here as those at 33% or less capacity. See CPS’ interactive map of schools by utilization here to see these schools’ geographic distribution.
A total of 50 schools are operating at 33% capacity or less. The lowest enrolled school in the District, Douglass High School, has only 28 students enrolled compared to its capacity of 912 students (this is based on FY2025 adjusted 20th-day enrollment numbers). For a complete list of those schools, see the Civic Federation’s Financial Landscape Analysis of the Chicago Public School District report. The cost of operation per student at those schools substantially exceeds the costs at better-enrolled counterparts. The average operating cost per student per year among severely underutilized elementary schools is about $28,000 annually, $4,700 more than is spent on average at efficiently utilized elementary schools. The average operating cost among severely underutilized high schools is nearly $36,000 annually, $12,338 more than is spent on average at efficient schools.
Past Efforts to Address Underutilization
The last major effort to address the underutilization issue occurred in 2013 during Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Administration when the District closed 50 schools (46 buildings). By 2015, only 11 of these facilities had been sold or repurposed. As of 2023,20 buildings, or 43%, of the 46 closed facilities have been repurposed for other uses, such as housing, administrative staff offices, a CHA Call Center, a Chicago Park District Fieldhouse, private schools, and neighborhood community spaces. However, the remaining 26 buildings remain vacant, including both those that were sold but show no signs of redevelopment and those that would require substantial rehabilitation investment. Repurposing efforts continue under District program criteria.
The 2013 school closures followed an extensive facilities analysis that considered utilization percentages and other factors, such as building condition and the associated costs of modernizing them to code. While there was a sound rationale for the closures, they were undertaken without meaningful notice and engagement with the affected communities. As a result, the move was highly controversial, making mergers, consolidations, and closures a sensitive and politically fraught issue.
The Path Forward
Today, CPS’s under-enrollment problem is even more severe than in 2013. Prior to the school closures in 2013, the district had a capacity of approximately 511,000 students and an enrollment of 403,000, meaning that about 100,000 seats, or 20% of total capacity, were unused. This year, the district has a capacity of just over 450,000 total seats and an enrollment of about 306,000 students. That means that 144,000 seats, or about 32% of total capacity, are unused.
Demographic and population loss forces at play are outside the District’s control but still must be addressed by the new Board of Education sworn in on January 15, 2025. Working from a student-oriented, outcome-based model, the new Board should hold the Administration to account for the best use of underutilized facilities. The Board should lead a thoughtful assessment involving all stakeholders to align resource allocation with actual enrollment distribution. Where it is found that under-enrollment is counter to educational and developmental objectives, the school closure experience of 2013 and state-defined best practices suggest that an extensive, collaborative community engagement process is necessary. This process should involve identifying and debating options, such as consolidation of schools and repurposing excess space to serve both curricular and community purposes.