stand as a monument to bureaucratic inertia and misplaced priorities, where vast sums of taxpayer money vanish into underutilized buildings while student outcomes plummet. Frederick Douglass Academy High School exemplifies the dysfunction. Built to accommodate 1,008 students, the school now enrolls just 27, yet it remains open with 28 full-time employees â more staff than children. A one-to-one staff-to-student ratio is a luxury that even private schools cant offer, but here it yields zero academic progress.
In 2024, operational spending at Douglass exceeded $93,000 per student, and that figure excludes capital outlay and debt service, pushing total expenditures even higher. Despite this lavish funding, the latest state data from 2024 reveal not a single 11th-grade student proficient in math or reading.
Poor attendance compounds the failure: 65.6% of enrolled students are chronically absent, missing more than 10% of school days. Fewer than a dozen children show up with any regularity, turning the building into little more than an expensive daycare for a handful of kids â and even that description overstates its educational value.
Douglass is no outlier in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). At least 255 school buildings are underutilized, representing more than half of the district’s standalone public schools. Among those, 145 are more than half empty, and 24 operate at over 75% vacancy. These ghost schools drain resources that could transform education elsewhere.
Since 2019, CPS has lost 10% of its student enrollment, yet staffing has ballooned by 20%, inflating costs without improving results. In 2024 alone, 80 public schools in Chicago reported zero students proficient in math, and 24 had zero proficiency in reading. The pattern is clear: pouring more money into failing structures does nothing to elevate student achievement.
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) bears much of the blame for perpetuating this inefficiency. The union fights tooth and nail against closing any public school, no matter how empty or ineffective. Union leaders argue that closures disrupt communities, but the real disruption comes from propping up zombie institutions that trap families in mediocrity.
In 2023, the CTU successfully lobbied to kill , which had provided school choice options to over 9,000 children from low-income families. That program allowed parents to escape failing districts, but the union prioritized monopoly control over student opportunity.
The union also successfully capped the number of charter schools in the city, stifling competition and innovation â a policy that must be reversed to allow more high-performing options to flourish.
This stance has pushed the CTU to a record-low favorability in a new poll, showing a net favorability of negative 26.1%, with most Chicago voters reporting a negative opinion.
Hypocrisy runs deep in the CTU’s leadership. President Stacy Davis Gates once labeled school choice “racist,” yet she enrolls her own son in a private school, affording him the options she denies to others. Such double standards expose the union’s true agenda: protecting jobs and dues revenue, not serving children. By blocking closures and choice, the CTU ensures that dollars flow to empty hallways rather than effective classrooms.
Advocates for the status quo claim that more funding solves all ills, but Chicago’s empty schools shatter that myth. If money alone were the answer, Douglass High School â with its exorbitant per-pupil spending and personalized staffing â would produce scholars, not dropouts.
Instead, the district’s failures stem from a lack of accountability and competition. Public schools operate as monopolies, insulated from the pressures that drive improvement in other sectors. Families cannot easily vote with their feet, and unions wield veto power over reforms.
Closing these underutilized schools would not harm educators or students. It would b
