Since well before the COVID-19 pandemic, public school districts in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Boston have experienced student enrollment declines. For instance, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has lost more than 100,000 students in the last 20 years due to factors such as declining birth rates, declining in-migration from Mexico, and the departure of Black families from the city. About one-third of schools in CPS now enroll fewer than half the number of students they were built to serve.
These declines have financial and educational consequences. School funding typically follows student enrollment, so as budgets shrink, fixed staffing and maintenance costs consume an increasing share of funds that could otherwise be allocated to improve student learning. Schools with fewer students might also have difficulty offering tutoring, summer and after-school programs, electives, and extracurricular activities that often require a minimum number of students to launch. Shifting from student-based to school-based funding—as CPS plans to do in the coming year—could mitigate some of these challenges. Inevitably, though, city and district leaders will soon face difficult choices.
In principle, the problem of under-enrolled schools seems amenable to a straightforward solution: close some school buildings. Doing so saves money, allowing these districts to invest more resources more efficiently. In practice, it’s not nearly so easy. Plans to close schools consistently meet heavy resistance from residents of the affected neighborhoods, frequently resulting in backtracking by district leaders. The under-enrollment problem is as much a political problem as it is a fiscal one. Maybe, therefore, it requires a political solution in the form of better democratic practices.
Limited public awareness of under-enrollment in Chicago
What many leaders see as a systemic problem may be invisible (or perhaps acceptable) to parents and other community members. We at Public Agenda recently conducted a survey to obtain Chicagoans’ perspectives on their public schools. We found that only 4% of city residents—including 3% of parents—identify under-enrolled schools as one of the three most pressing issues facing education in the city. In contrast, 18% of Chicago residents—including 27% of parents—identify overcrowded schools as one of the three most pressing issues. Overcrowding was actually the third-most pressing issue to Chicago parents.
Of course, districts can have under-enrolled schools in some neighborhoods and overcrowded schools in others. Chicago’s very small number of overcrowded schools may be more visible and salient to members of the public than its far greater number of under-enrolled schools.
What to do about under-enrollment?
In May 2013, the Chicago Board of Education voted to close 50 under-enrolled public schools, marking the largest public school closure in US history. These closures, which disproportionately affected Black students, had negative effects, at least in the short term, on student achievement. While more difficult to measure, the closures also may have affected the social fabric of communities and trust in public institutions, along with the city’s politics.
A moratorium on school closures in Chicago is set to expire in 2025. In 2013, Brandon Johnson, then a Chicago Teachers Union organizer, protested closures. Now, as mayor of Chicago, he sought to stop the Illinois State Senate from extending the closure moratorium by another two years. School closings might soon be back on the table as a policy option in Chicago.
Public Agenda’s survey explained to Chicagoans that one-third of public schools in the city serve less than half of the number of students that the school was built to serve and that some people are concerned that money is being spent to keep these partially empty schools open. Chicagoans were then asked to think about the district’s budget as they considered options to address public schools with low enrollment. Given this context, we found that about one-third (35%) of city residents support closures, about one-third (34%) oppose, and about one-third (31%) neither favor nor oppose.
Public opinion on how to tackle under-enrollment varies, but many Chicagoans agree on a few solutions. The survey found the strongest support for addressing under-enrollment by attracting students from crowded schools to under-enrolled schools (60%) and investing in neighborhoods with declining populations so that more families with children move there (56%). Closing schools was the third-least popular approach to under-enrollment. School closings were especially unpopular among respondents from the Far North Side, South Side, and West Side.
Kids First Chicago, which engaged CPS parents in workshops about addressing under-enrollment, similarly concluded that addressing under-enrollment requires that families have “safe neighborhoods, stellar education, quality jobs, affordable housing, and robust healthcare options.” Of course, these are difficult challenges for any city to solve, and they require work from more than just a school district.
The financial costs of maintaining under-enrolled schools can make it difficult for city leaders to invest in the educational improvements that are most important to residents, which makes understanding public support of alternatives crucial. If leaders attempt to address under-enrollment challenges that residents are unaware of and/or unconcerned about, they may face incomprehension, bewilderment, and anger from constituents. These responses are amplified by the widespread feeling among residents that wealthy and white students are more likely to reap the benefits of education policy, while lower income students and students of color bear the cost. Our survey found that substantial majorities of respondents from every ethnic and racial group, including whites, agree that white students in Chicago have better educational opportunities than students of color.
Redesigning decision-making processes to ensure community approval
On the surface, challenges with facilities planning and “right-sizing” district-wide footprints might seem best left to the technocrats. But the process as it typically unfolds—plans are made behind closed doors, plans are announced, anger ensues, and plans are withdrawn—is hardly ideal. District and city leaders should engage residents and community leaders early on. Where changes like school closings or consolidations are proposed, city leaders should ensure that residents from all communities understand the need for action and see tangible benefits, such as new, high-quality buildings, better teacher-student ratios, or additional academic offerings.
Elected officials can play a positive role in connecting district leaders to community residents. In the case of elected school board members, they serve as the connective tissue between residents and district central offices, and they can use this connection to create the fora in which clear financial information is presented, residents’ views are heard, and realistic options are developed and evaluated. Chicago is moving to an elected school board beginning this year. The new members have an opportunity to foster solutions to the challenging political problem of under-enrollment.
Acknowledgements
David Schleifer, PhD also contributed to this piece. The Joyce Foundation provided support to Public Agenda to conduct the survey described above.
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