🏫😳 13 CPS HIGH SCHOOLS ARE AT LEAST 80% EMPTY?! CHICAGO... WHERE THE HELL DID ALL THE KIDS GO?

Baby, when I first saw 13 Chicago public high schools are operating at 20% capacity or LESS, I had to read that thing twice.

Because 80% EMPTY?!

At that point, you don't need a hall monitor. You need somebody walking through the building yelling:

“HELLOOOOO?! ANYBODY GOT THIRD PERIOD?!” 😭

But underneath the shocking numbers is a serious problem that Chicago has been building toward for YEARS.

CPS simply doesn't have as many students as it used to.

Chicago Public Schools started the 2025-26 school year with roughly 316,000 students, and over the years enrollment has dropped dramatically. Some neighborhoods have lost families and children, birth rates have declined, and Chicago's population patterns have changed.

But that's only PART of it.

🎒 THE KIDS DIDN'T ALL LEAVE CHICAGO. SOME LEFT THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS.

Chicago gives families plenty of choices outside their assigned neighborhood high school: selective enrollment, magnet programs, charter schools and other CPS options.

So you can have teenagers living right down the street from a neighborhood high school...

WHO DON'T GO TO THAT HIGH SCHOOL.

Everybody starts choosing other schools, enrollment at the neighborhood school keeps falling, and eventually you've got a building designed for hundreds of teenagers serving a fraction of that number.

And some of these numbers are WILD.

Frederick Douglass Academy reportedly had only 27 students last school year in a building designed for roughly 900.

TWENTY-SEVEN?!

Baby, that's not a student body. That's a GROUP CHAT. 😭😂

You could take attendance by looking out the window.

🏫 BUT HERE'S THE PART THAT AIN'T FUNNY.

That giant building still costs money.

You still have to heat it in January.

Turn the lights on.

Clean it.

Maintain it.

Secure it.

Repair it.

Staff it.

And educate the students who ARE there.

That's especially important because those 27 or 50 or 100 students still deserve a real education. They shouldn't lose opportunities simply because their school happens to be under-enrolled.

Meanwhile, CPS can have another school somewhere else struggling with OVERCROWDING.

So Chicago has somehow managed to have schools with too many children AND schools with almost no children at the same damn time.

Make THAT make sense.

👀 AND NOW COMES THE QUESTION NOBODY IN CHICAGO WANTS TO TOUCH.

What do you do with the nearly empty schools?

Because the obvious answer might sound like: consolidate schools and close buildings.

Except Chicago has been down THAT ROAD before.

The massive 2013 CPS school closings overwhelmingly affected Black communities, and people have not forgotten what happened when neighborhood schools disappeared.

Closing a school isn't the same thing as closing a Walgreens.

A neighborhood can lose sports, after-school programs, jobs, gathering spaces and an institution generation of families attended.

So simply saying “close the empty schools” doesn't solve everything.

But keeping enormous buildings operating at 10%, 15% or 20% capacity forever isn't much of a plan either.

And THAT'S the conversation Chicago needs to have.

Not just:

“Why are these schools empty?”

Ask:

Why did families leave these schools?

Where did the students go?

Why are some CPS schools overcrowded while others are nearly vacant?

And most importantly:

WHAT IS CPS GOING TO DO ABOUT IT WITHOUT MAKING THE SAME MISTAKES CHICAGO MADE BEFORE?

Because when you've got a building made for 900 kids and only a few dozen are showing up...

Baby, eventually somebody has to explain the math AND the plan.

QUESTION: Would you consolidate a CPS high school that's more than 80% empty, or should neighborhood schools remain open regardless of enrollment?

730 BOOM RADIO

IT HITS DIFFERENT. EVERY TIME. BOOM! 💥