Chicago’s empty 'ghost schools' teach us about how the system is failing |
Opinion
Chicago’s empty 'ghost schools' teach us about how the system is failing
Frederick Douglass Academy enrolls just 27 students but employs 28 full-time staff
By Corey DeAngelis Fox News
Published March 30, 2026 9:00am EDT
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Chicago's public schools 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 – more staff than children. A one-to-one staff-to-student ratio is a luxury that even private schools can’t 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 – 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.
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