The Examiner U-46 News Feed

Lower enrollment trend continues for Dist. U-46

By Seth Hancock
  For the ninth straight year, enrollment dropped in School District U-46 with a 1.3 percent decline of 474 students (35,338 to 34,864) this year.
  The numbers were presented to the Board of Education on Oct. 23.
  Brian Lindholm, chief of staff, said the numbers are as of Sept. 30 and includes “students who were enrolled but never reported to school as well as students who enrolled some time after the first day of school.”
  Of the historic data provided, enrollment has dropped 13.9 percent from 40,487 students in 2014-2015.
  Current forecasts based on the trends, the district expects to “bottom out somewhere around 30,000 students within the next several years,” Lindholm said. The district expects to lose “several hundred” students annually through 2026.
  Lindholm said the decline is “primarily due to declining birth rates in our attendance area.” Birth rate data, 2006 to 2021, showed a decline from 2,925 in 2020 to 2,773 in 2021, and the rates are down from around 4,500 in 2006.
  The district has received questions, Lindholm said, from residents concerned with the “border crisis and the bus loads of migrants… arriving in Chicago.”
  “This is something that we will continue to closely monitor to determine how it may impact U-46,” Lindholm said. “I can tell you, we have seen an uptick in the last two years in new U-46 students from outside of the U.S. including places that we have not typically received students like Ukraine, Columbia and Venezuela.”
  Those students “represents a small 1 or 2 percent portion,” Lindholm said. He added: “So, it hasn’t made a significant difference in the overall enrollment, but it has helped to slow the declines that we have been experiencing.”
  The only increase in students this year was with early childhood, 1,108 to 1,166 for an increase of 58.
  Elementary school (16,808 to 16,634, a drop of 174), middle school (5,109 to 4,900, drop of 209) and high school (11,954 to 11,849, drop of 105) enrollment all declined. Half of 40 elementary schools, six of eight middle schools and four of five comprehensive high schools saw a decline.