CPS Small Schools: 126 Of 523 Under 250 Students In 2026

In fall 2026, 126 of the 523 schools Chicago Public Schools runs directly enrolled fewer than 250 students on the district’s 20th-day count, the most in the eleven files since fall 2016, when 56 of 527 did. Five of the 126 are new to the district-run list this fall and carry the names of Acero charter campuses that last fall’s file listed under charter governance; without them the count is 121, still up from 115 a year earlier. The median district-run school enrolled 378 students, against 498 in fall 2016. The 250 and 500 lines are size bands this page chose to describe the files. CPS’s own judgments about school buildings rest on capacity figures these files do not carry, so they cannot say whether any school is under-used.

CPS 20th-day membership files, falls 2016–2026 · fall 2026 file retrieved October 1, 2026, earlier files August 8, 2026 · district-run schools counted separately from charters throughout

Updated October 1, 2026: this page first read ten files, through fall 2025, on August 8, 2026. It now adds the fall 2026 file. Every count from the earlier ten came out the same on rereading.

What counts as small here

Each fall’s 20th-day membership file lists every school with its enrollment on the 20th day of classes. The recent files label each school’s governance as district-run, charter or contract, plus a handful of alternative-learning and safe-schools programs this page reports in neither series. This page follows those labels and reads the older files’ network column the same way, so every school in all eleven falls carries a label. The headline series counts every school labeled District, of every type, because the older files do not say which schools carry CPS’s alternative and specialty type labels; the five most recent files do say, and a cut of traditional schools only appears below. The 250 and 500 lines are round thresholds chosen here to make eleven falls comparable, so this page makes no claim about crowding, efficiency or any school’s future.

The count, fall by fall

District-run schools under 250 studentsunder 250under 500

Fall 201656 of 527265
Fall 201761 of 523276
Fall 201878 of 522283
Fall 201982 of 518293
Fall 202098 of 518300
Fall 2021102 of 517317
Fall 2022114 of 517331
Fall 2023104 of 517321
Fall 202499 of 517312
Fall 2025115 of 517325
Fall 2026126 of 523343

The under-250 count climbed from 56 to a first peak of 114 in fall 2022, eased for two falls, to 104 and then 99, the same two falls the district’s total enrollment rose, and has risen since: 115 in fall 2025 and 126 in fall 2026, the highest in the eleven files. The seats inside those schools moved the same way: 9,892 students attended a district school under 250 in fall 2016, and 22,724 in fall 2026. The number of district-run schools held at 517 for five straight files and reached 523 this fall only because six schools joined the list, so the rise in the under-250 count reflects schools enrolling fewer students while the list of schools held nearly steady. In fall 2026, 24 percent of district-run schools sat under 250 students and 66 percent under 500.

Which schools crossed the line this fall?

Traditional schools newly under 250 in fall 2026students

Orr Academy High School276 → 197
Rueben Salazar Elementary Bilingual Center265 → 204
Benjamin E Mays Elementary Academy254 → 219
Wells Community Academy High School278 → 222
Wendell E Green Elementary School250 → 231
Fernwood Elementary School272 → 237
Alice L Barnard Computer Math & Science Ctr ES250 → 243
Ninos Heroes Elementary Academic Center290 → 245
Dewey Elementary Academy of Fine Arts291 → 246
William Bishop Owen Scholastic Academy ES252 → 249

Ten traditional district-run schools counted 250 or more students in fall 2025 and fewer than 250 in fall 2026, among them Orr Academy High School, from 276 to 197, and Wells Community Academy High School, from 278 to 222. The line is crossed in both directions. Five district schools that were under 250 in fall 2025 were over it in fall 2026, and three of them, the Perkins Bass, Burnside and Hearst elementary schools, were among the nineteen that had crossed under a year earlier. The five schools with Acero campus names enrolled between 143 and 248 students each. At the bottom of the distribution, the smallest traditional schools in the fall 2026 file were Frederick A. Douglass Academy High School at 29 students, Spry Community Links High School at 37 and Al Raby High School at 64. These are the file’s numbers for one September day, printed without prediction: a 20th-day count says nothing about what CPS will do with any building.

The five falls with type labels

Starting with the 2022–23 file, CPS labels each school’s type, so its nontraditional categories, the alternative schools it calls options, specialty schools and early-childhood centers, can be set aside. Among traditional district-run schools only, the count under 250 ran 101, 94, 89, 105 and then 115 across the last five falls, the same dip and rise as the full series. The fall 2026 figure includes the five schools with Acero campus names, and the number of traditional district-run schools grew from 501 to 507 with the six that joined. Small district schools are overwhelmingly ones CPS labels traditional: of the 126 district-run schools under 250 in fall 2026, 115 carry the traditional label.

Charter and contract schools, counted apart

Charter and contract schools are counted apart from the district-run series everywhere on this page. Their number went from 129 in fall 2016 to 115 in fall 2025 and 105 in fall 2026, when ten charter and contract schools left the files; six of them, by our reading, continue as the district-run schools described above. The number under 250 students went from 24 in fall 2016 to 33 in fall 2025 and 30 in fall 2026. In each of the eleven files, a larger share of charter and contract schools than of district-run schools sat under 250.

Known limits

Every figure is one day’s membership, the 20th day of classes, from the district’s own file, pre-kindergarten included; a school’s October enrollment can differ. School type labels exist only from the 2022–23 file onward, so the eleven-fall series includes district-run schools of every type, and the traditional-only figures cover five falls. Governance labels resolved for every school in all eleven files, and no school ID changed its label from one file to another; the six schools that joined the district-run list in fall 2026 did so under new IDs, so earlier falls are counted as they were filed. Nothing here measures building capacity, staffing, program quality or cost, and nothing here says why any count moved.

Sources CPS 20th-day membership files, school years 2016–17 through 2026–27, from the district’s demographics page; the 2026–27 file was retrieved October 1, 2026, the rest August 8, 2026. Falls are named by calendar year: “fall 2026” is school year 2026–27.
Counting One row per school per fall, keyed on the district’s School ID; enrollment is each file’s own Total column. Governance: the Governance column in the 2022–23 and later files (District, Charter, Contract, plus the district’s alternative-learning and safe-schools programs, labeled ALOP and Safe, grouped with neither and reported in neither series); for schools absent from those files, the 2016–17 and 2017–18 files’ Network column, reading Charter and Contract as themselves, the ISP label as contract, and network-managed schools, including AUSL, as district-run. Type: the School Type column, 2022–23 onward (Traditional, Options, Specialty, Early Childhood).
The bands 250 and 500 are descriptive thresholds chosen for this page. They are not CPS standards, and no claim about utilization, crowding or capacity is made or implied anywhere above.

Computed by KCM Desk from records retrieved August 8 and October 1, 2026. Human-guided and edited — about this desk. If you spot an error, corrections come first.