Last fall, 115 of the 517 schools Chicago Public Schools runs directly enrolled fewer than 250 students on the district’s own 20th-day count — more than double the 56 in the first of these ten fall files, from fall 2016, out of a school count that barely moved. The median district-run school shrank from 498 students to 396 across those ten files. Two numbers to hold before the tables: 250 and 500 are size bands this page chose for description — they are not a CPS standard, and these files, which record enrollment but not building capacity, cannot say whether any school is under-used. They can say, precisely, how many students each school enrolled on one day each fall.
CPS 20th-day membership files, falls 2016–2025 · retrieved August 8, 2026 · district-run schools counted separately from charters throughoutWhat 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 — district-run, charter, contract, plus a handful of alternative-learning and safe-schools programs this page reports in neither series — and this page follows those labels, reading the older files’ network column the same way, so every school in all ten 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 four most recent files do say, and a traditional-schools-only cut from them appears below. The 250 and 500 lines are round descriptive thresholds, chosen here to make ten falls comparable — CPS’s own judgments about school buildings rest on capacity figures these files do not carry, so this page makes no claim about crowding, efficiency, or any school’s future.
The count, fall by fall
- 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
The under-250 count climbed from 56 to a first peak of 114 in fall 2022, eased for two falls — 104, then 99, the same two falls the district’s total enrollment rose — and jumped to 115 in fall 2025, the highest in the ten files. The seats inside those schools moved the same way: 9,892 students attended a sub-250 district school in fall 2016, 21,772 last fall. The district’s school count stayed almost still while all of this moved — 517 district-run schools in each of the last five files — so the growth in the under-250 count reflects the size distribution shifting downward, not a shrinking school list; which schools appear in the file also changes a little each year. By last fall, 22 percent of district-run schools sat under 250 students and 63 percent under 500.
The four falls with type labels
Starting with the 2022–23 file, CPS labels each school’s type, so the nontraditional categories — the alternative schools it calls options, specialty schools, early-childhood centers — can be set aside. Among traditional district-run schools only, the count under 250 ran 101, 94, 89, then 105 of 501 across the last four falls — the same dip-and-jump as the full series. Small district schools are, overwhelmingly, schools CPS itself labels traditional rather than its specialty programs: of the 115 district-run schools under 250 last fall, 105 carry the traditional label.
Nineteen schools crossed the line last fall
- Greater Lawndale High School For Social Justice253 → 216
- Charles G Hammond Elementary School254 → 226
- Jensen Elementary Scholastic Academy254 → 228
- Phillip D Armour Elementary School256 → 229
- Christopher Columbus Elementary School261 → 230
- Ira F Aldridge Elementary School256 → 231
Nineteen traditional district-run schools counted 250 or more students in fall 2024 and fewer than 250 in fall 2025 — among them Greater Lawndale High School for Social Justice, at 216 students, and Perkins Bass Elementary, which went from 316 to 248. At the bottom of the distribution, the file’s smallest traditional schools last fall were Frederick A. Douglass Academy High School at 27 students, Spry Community Links High School at 72, and Emil G. Hirsch Metropolitan High School at 77. These are the file’s numbers for one September day, printed here without prediction: a 20th-day count says nothing about what CPS will or should do with any building.
Charter and contract schools, counted apart
Charter and contract schools are counted apart from the district-run series everywhere on this page. Their school count went from 129 in fall 2016 to 115 last fall, and the number under 250 students went from 24 to 33 — a larger share of them under 250 than on the district-run side in each of these ten files. The two sets answer different questions, which is why they never share a row here.
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 ten-fall series includes district-run schools of every type, and the traditional-only figures cover four falls. Governance labels resolved for every school in all ten files — none were left unlabeled. 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 2025–26, from the district’s demographics page, retrieved August 8, 2026. Falls are named by calendar year: “fall 2025” is school year 2025–26.
- 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, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.