Preliminary data shows the school district is down to 321,000 students this year. Chicago has lost about 82,000 students over the past decade.
And the reason:
But low birth rates, a decrease in immigration and families leaving the city have prevented enrollment from bouncing back, experts say. Indicative of the decline, many schools are seeing kindergarten classes that are much smaller than their upper grades — in some cases eighth-grade cohorts of 130-plus students share a building with 80-student kindergarten cohorts.
Source: Chicago Public Schools enrollment continues to slide | WBEZ Chicago
The Fertility Rate in Illinois is 1.59. Duh.
Predictably, the teachers’ union blames everything except the population decline:
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates said the decline in enrollment, particularly through the exodus of Black families, comes down to city policies that don’t invest in housing, public transportation and safety in Black communities.
Reminder – there are some U.S. states that are continuing to expand as people migrate from less desirable states to more desirable locations. But the overall U.S. trend is a substantial drop in the younger cohorts.
