Hay Elem Community Academy

As a modestly sized primary school in Chicago, Illinois, Hay Elem Community Academy teaches 247 students from grades pre-K through 8, overseen by Chicago Public Schools Dist 299. Enrollment runs roughly 35% smaller than the state mean of about 381.

Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 comprises 622 schools with combined enrollment of 324,396 students; Hay Elem Community Academy is among them.

In terms of who attends, Hay Elem Community Academy lists that 64% of the student body identifies as Black. The remainder breaks down as 33% Hispanic, 2% White. The wider county runs roughly 22% Black, putting the school's mix meaningfully more Black than the area baseline.

In terms of school funding signals, Hay Elem Community Academy reports 23 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 11.0:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 13.9:1 average. About 98% of enrolled students meet the income threshold for free or reduced-price lunch, a number frequently used as a low-income enrollment indicator. Set against Cook County (around 66%), the school's rate is meaningfully above typical.

Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Hay Elem Community Academy performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 15.2%, the actual is 21.3%, a residual of +6.2 points.

In the area at large, Cook County reports that median household earnings sit near $83,498, roughly 43% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 10%. In all, Cook County runs 1406 public schools (combined enrollment of about 697,934 students), of which Hay Elem Community Academy is one.

YCCS West is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.4 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Hay Elem Community Academy. Among the 9 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Hay Elem Community Academy ranks 1st on composite proficiency, above the local average of 11.7%.

Hay Elem Community Academy operates from a city-core location.

Trend over the last 7 years. Over the past 7-year window, the student count declined 35%: 380 students in 2018 compared to 247 in 2025. The Black share of enrollment shrank from 86% to 64% over that span. Class-load math has fell: from 17.6:1 in 2018 to 11.0:1 in 2025.

In the discussion threads here, members of the Hay Elem Community Academy community share and discuss fundraisers, lost-and-found posts, and report-card season. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.