Burroughs Elem School

Burroughs Elem School is a tight-knit K-5 school in Chicago, Illinois, run under Chicago Public Schools Dist 299. The school educates 303 students in grades pre-K through 8. That puts it 20% smaller than the typical public school in Illinois, which averages around 381 students.

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

Demographically, Burroughs Elem School records that the student body is overwhelmingly Hispanic (91%). The remainder comes out to 4% Black, 3% White. That is meaningfully more Hispanic than the county at large, where the share is closer to 27%.

Looking at the economic backdrop, The school reports having 29 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 10.4:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 13.9:1 average. Roughly 92% of students at Burroughs Elem School qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. By comparison, Cook County runs at roughly 66%, so the school's eligibility rate is higher than the surrounding baseline.

On a demographically-adjusted basis, Burroughs Elem School sits in the top 10% of Illinois schools after the BeatsExpectations adjustment. Predicted proficiency for the school's FRL share is roughly 18.1%; actual is 44.9%, +26.8 points clear of the demographic baseline.

In the broader community, the surrounding county (Cook County) reports that the typical household earns roughly $83,498 per year, 43% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 10%. Burroughs Elem School is one of 1406 public schools in Cook County (combined enrollment of about 697,934 students).

Nearest neighbor: Brighton Park Elem School, around 0.3 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Burroughs Elem School. On composite proficiency, Burroughs Elem School comes 3rd of 8 in the immediate cluster, higher than the nearby-schools average of 27.6%.

The school occupies an urban site.

Over the past 7-year window. Over the past 7-year window, the student count ticked down 36%: 473 students in 2018 compared to 303 in 2025. The student-to-teacher ratio narrowed from 19.0:1 in 2018 to 10.4:1 today.

On this page, the page collects discussion, questions, and updates around open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Contributors range from current parents to recent graduates and teachers.