Camras Elem School

Camras Elem School, a heavily attended K-5 school in Chicago, Illinois, run under Chicago Public Schools Dist 299, hosts 702 students, covering grades pre-K through 8. By comparison, Illinois's public schools average about 381 students each, so Camras Elem School sits 84% bigger than that benchmark.

Camras Elem School is one of 622 schools operated by Chicago Public Schools Dist 299, a district that caters to 324,396 students overall.

On the student-mix side, Camras Elem School lists that 91% of students identify as Hispanic, making the school strongly Hispanic-majority. Other groups include 5% White. That is considerably more Hispanic than the county at large, where the share is closer to 27%.

On the resource side, On paper, Camras Elem School has 53 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 13.3:1. The state averages about 13.9:1, putting this campus right in line with peers. Around 83% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, often used as a Title I proxy. That share is north of Cook County's rate of about 66%.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Camras Elem School sits in the middle band of the BeatsExpectations distribution. Schools with this campus's student mix typically land near 23.8%; this one delivers 25.4%.

In the broader community, the surrounding county (Cook County) logs that median household income runs about $83,498, roughly 43% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 10%. Across Cook County's 1406 public schools (combined enrollment of about 697,934 students), Camras Elem School is one campus in the mix.

Nearest neighbor: Lyon Elem School, around 0.3 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Camras Elem School. On composite proficiency, Camras Elem School comes 5th of 9 in the immediate cluster, beneath the nearby-schools average of 27.3%.

The school occupies an urban site.

Looking at the recent track record. Over the past 7-year window, the student count declined 25%: 936 students in 2018 compared to 702 in 2025. Class-load math has tightened: from 17.2:1 in 2018 to 13.3:1 in 2025.

On this page, the page collects discussion, questions, and updates around open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.