By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
The Chicago Teachers Union continues its nasty fight for a new multi-billion, four-year contract, never mind the district’s disastrous student outcomes and its already more-than-$30,000 per student costs. Or the district’s junk rating. Or the massive property tax hikes that will come with the new contract.
But ask the CTU for a bit of efficiency, like shuttering the district’s nearly empty, failing schools, and all hell breaks loose. Overall, one-third of schools at CPS are half empty or worse, according to the latest 2025 district space utilization report. CPS has lost about 110,000 students, or 25% of its enrollment, since 2000, so keeping many of these schools open makes no sense. Closing many of those schools could save taxpayers hundreds of millions a year and give kids a chance to attend more functional schools.
The extreme of the emptiness can be found in the 20 schools with the lowest utilization rates. On average they’re just 15% occupied. Combined, they have space for nearly 22,000 students but enroll only 3,200.
Take Douglass High School in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. It has space for 912 kids, but only 28 students are enrolled in the school. That’s an occupation rate of just 3.1%. And it’s not just that the school is practically empty. It’s also that at Douglass not a single kid is proficient in reading.
That failure happens despite the fact that the school has a one-to-one ratio of staff to students; that spending is a whopping $94,000 per student; and that the principal gets a $171,000 salary.
It’s a similar story at schools like Manley and Hirsch and Marshall, once big schools that are now former shells of themselves. And in all 10 of the emptiest schools in Chicago, the percentage of kids that can read proficiently is in the single digits. In Austin, Raby, Harlan and Marshall, not a single student can read proficiently.
Three big questions come to mind: Why are these schools still open? How much would be saved if they were closed? And, wouldn’t these kids be better off at fully operating schools with more resources?
The first question is easy to answer. Nobody wants to upset the apple cart. Neither the unions, nor the district administrators will dismantle the mess. Nor will lawmakers, who aid and abet the entire system. At stake are tens of thousands of staff and admin jobs, six-figure salaries, overly-generous pensions and political connections. We wrote about all that in Poor student achievement and near-zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois’ public education system, and in detail about the CTU’s extreme powers in a WSJ Op Ed: Why the Chicago Teachers Union Always Gets What It Wants.
Savings? Based on their average operational cost of $33,652 per student, closing just those 20 schools down would save the district over $100 million a year – and that’s not even including the savings on capital, maintenance, pensions and more (CPS has a wish-list of $1 billion in planned maintenance and upgrades for just those 20 schools).
There could be more savings beyond that. Close 100 of Chicago’s emptiest schools – all of them less than half-full – and the district could save around $500 million on operating costs.
And better off students? With so few students attending these schools, they aren’t “community centers” anymore. And they’re certainly not centers of learning.
Chicago students should be taught in well-attended, dynamic buildings, not near-empty shells. The fact that shuttering empty schools would save Chicago taxpayers hundreds of millions makes it all the better.
Appendix
Read more from Wirepoints:
- One big example of why Illinois badly needs a DOGE of its own
- Chicago Public Schools should reject union demands for 9% yearly raises and implement a salary freeze instead.
- Number of half-empty Chicago public schools doubles, yet lawmakers want to extend school closing moratorium
- The next absurd bill from Illinois’ legislature: Removing student test scores from teacher evaluations
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Thank you for exposing the waste and corruption of taxpayer dollars. When will Chicago have a DOGE reckoning!
Tuition at most catholic schools are around $15k a year. Need an ok GPA to transfer but you got a heckuva better chance to succeed there than these public school hellholes. Vouchers now please.
My 2 grandchildren go to private catholic school and I’m telling you they are getting a good education and it reflects when they interact with everyone.
Astoundingly, for CPS, CTU, Brando & crew if Douglas HS spends $93,787 per student or South Shore spends $33,912 per student those schools are still not meeting the state EBF, they’re still underfunded!!! What more stark proof does one need that the absurd spending has nothing to do with the kids and everything to do with the employees.
CTU will never agree to close underutilized schools. Principals, assistant principals would have to go back into the classroom. When will the school board grow a spine?
Vouchers for 15K per kid to attend the private school of his parents choice.
If there wasn’t a state law preventing the closure of these schools, a buyout of the parents for say $10,000 per student might make sense. It would save money in the short and long run. The parents would certainly go for it, and it would eliminate the army of disgruntled parents that CTU would rally to the picket line. Unfortunately it would likely start a trend where parents would demand closure of their school for the buyout.
$500 million in savings possible. Five hundred million. Who in leadership is going to be the first to recognize what needs to be done? It would really improve the CTU’s image if they were brave enough to state the obvious.
The unions interest in protecting jobs is understandable but a union truly interested in the students would also be collaborating with CPS to rationalize precious resources to improve results. Ok, ok, precious resources to the taxpayers, ample salary and pension resources to CTU.
Pathetically humorous! Pick a CPS school listed, any one of them. I chose Dunbar because at 325 students it had the highest enrollment. With 61 staff members and a 5.3 per employee ratio, CTU is still negotiating class size as a contract issue. If as many as 30 of the employees are support staff, engineers, janitors, secretaries and such; that raises the student/“teacher” ratio to as high as 12. Really,is this still considered overcrowded? Time to call it quits and completely reorganize.
CTU will consider no options to save money only preserve and grow the quantity of members.
Good Grief–as Charlie would say. Give the families $40,000 to hire a tutor. Get rid of faculty and administration—Great savings! There has to be criminality of child abuseinvolved. Where is the out cry from all elected officials? SHAME!!!