CICS - Prairie Campus

CICS - Prairie Campus operates as a middle-of-the-pack elementary school in Chicago, Illinois, overseen by Chicago Public Schools Dist 299. Current enrollment sits at 412 students spanning grades K through 8.

Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 comprises 622 schools with combined enrollment of 324,396 students; CICS - Prairie Campus is among them.

Looking at the student body, CICS - Prairie Campus logs that 67% of the student body identifies as Black. The remainder looks like 33% Hispanic. By comparison, Cook County as a whole is about 22% Black, so the school skews noticeably more Black than its surroundings.

In terms of school funding signals, The school currently runs with 17 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 24.2:1. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 13.9:1, putting CICS - Prairie Campus higher than the state norm the norm. An estimated 94% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy. By comparison, Cook County runs at roughly 66%, so the school's eligibility rate is higher than the surrounding baseline.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, CICS - Prairie Campus sits in the middle band of the BeatsExpectations distribution. Schools with this campus's student mix typically land near 17.0%; this one delivers 18.4%.

In the broader community, community-level numbers for Cook County indicate the typical household earns roughly $83,498 per year, 43% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 10%. CICS - Prairie Campus is one of 1406 public schools in Cook County (combined enrollment of about 697,934 students).

Curtis Elem School is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.3 miles from this campus. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, CICS - Prairie Campus comes 6th of 9 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 24.5%.

Geographically, the school is in a metropolitan area. CICS - Prairie Campus operates as a public charter school, meaning it is publicly funded but governed independently of the surrounding district's traditional schools.

Looking at the recent track record. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at CICS - Prairie Campus has stayed largely flat, going from 418 students in 2018 to 412 in 2025. Black enrollment moved from 52% to 67% across the same window.

On this page, members of the CICS - Prairie Campus community share and discuss science fair prep, picture-day reminders, and bus-route questions. Posting is open to anyone connected to the school.