Ariel Elem Community Academy

Ariel Elem Community Academy is a mid-sized K-5 school in Chicago, Illinois, operated by Chicago Public Schools Dist 299. The school teaches 364 students in grades pre-K through 8.

Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 runs 622 schools in total, collectively educating 324,396 students. Ariel Elem Community Academy is one of those campuses.

Demographically, Ariel Elem Community Academy shows that the student body is overwhelmingly Black (96%). The remainder looks like 3% Hispanic. That is meaningfully more Black than the county at large, where the share is closer to 22%.

In terms of school funding signals, Staff filings list 35 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 10.5:1 students per teacher. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 13.9:1 average. Around 71% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator.

After controlling for student poverty, Ariel Elem Community Academy performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 30.4%, the actual is 19.6%, a residual of -10.8 points.

In the surrounding community, Cook County reports that median household income runs about $83,498, 43% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 10%. Ariel Elem Community Academy is one of 1406 public schools in Cook County (combined enrollment of about 697,934 students).

Nearest neighbor: Univ of Chicago Chtr-Nth Kenwood, around 0.0 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Ariel Elem Community Academy. On composite proficiency, Ariel Elem Community Academy comes 5th of 8 in the immediate cluster, behind the nearby-schools average of 27.0%.

Geographically, the school is in an inner-city area.

Over the past 7-year window. Ariel Elem Community Academy's enrollment has contracted 30% since 2018, when it stood at 519 (now 364). Class-load math has pulled in: from 19.0:1 in 2018 to 10.5:1 in 2025.

In the discussion threads here, members of the Ariel Elem Community Academy community share and discuss enrollment questions, classroom assignments, and PTA news. The community welcomes input from current and former families.