Education
CPS Sees Enrollment Growth For Second Straight Year
(WTTW News)
After a decade of decline, Chicago Public Schools announced that its student enrollment total has increased for the second year in a row.
The school district on Wednesday released its 20th-day enrollment figures — which serve as the office CPS tally for the academic year — showing there are currently 325,305 students enrolled.
That marks an increase of .64%, or more than 2,000 students compared to the previous year.
“The increase in school-based staff across the District reflects our commitment to providing Chicago’s young people with a world-class learning environment,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said in a statement.
CPS last year saw its first enrollment increase in 12 years last year, when enrollment jumped up to 323,291 students.
Despite those moderate gains, overall district enrollment remains significantly below where it stood a decade ago. For the 2014-15 school year, CPS had more than 396,000 students. The year before that, district enrollment topped 400,000.
According to the district, this year’s increase was driven largely by Latino students and kids in first through fifth grades. Enrollment also increased for almost all racial and ethnic groups except for Black students, where there was a decline of nearly a full percentage point from 35% of the student body down to 34.2%.
Latino students continue to make up the largest portion of the CPS student enrollment at 47.3%. White students make up 11.3%.
In-person attendance rates have also increased slightly through the first month of the school year, according to CPS. The district said its average 20th day PreK-12 student attendance rate is 92.3 percent, which is up from 92 percent last year and 91.7 percent the year before.
“This data reflects our District’s success over the past couple years to transform our approach to education and ensure our students have the support they need as our enrollment and attendance rates rise,” Martinez said.