Melody Elem School

Melody Elem School, a middle-of-the-pack elementary-level community in Chicago, Illinois, overseen by Chicago Public Schools Dist 299, enrolls 341 students, covering grades pre-K through 8.

Melody Elem School is one of 622 schools operated by Chicago Public Schools Dist 299, a district that works with 324,396 students overall.

Demographically, Melody Elem School lists that 80% of students identify as Black, making the school strongly Black-majority. The remainder comes out to 15% Hispanic, 5% White. 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, Staff filings list 23 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 15.2:1 students per teacher. Statewide, the average ratio sits near 13.9:1, putting Melody Elem School higher than the state norm the norm. An estimated 99% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy. That share is north of Cook County's rate of about 66%.

With demographic context factored in, Melody Elem School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 14.1%, the actual is 12.5%, a residual of -1.6 points.

In the broader community, community-level numbers for Cook County indicate median household income runs about $83,498, roughly 43% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and roughly 10% of residents live below the federal poverty line. Across Cook County's 1406 public schools (combined enrollment of about 697,934 students), Melody Elem School is one campus in the mix.

Ericson Elem Scholastic Academy is the nearest neighboring public school, about 0.5 miles from this campus. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Melody Elem School. On composite proficiency, Melody Elem School comes 5th of 9 in the immediate cluster, behind the nearby-schools average of 17.3%.

The campus sits in an inner-city setting.

Over the past 7-year window. Over the past 7-year window, the student count decreased 29%: 477 students in 2018 compared to 341 in 2025. Black enrollment moved from 99% to 80% across the same window. Class-load math has tightened: from 18.5:1 in 2018 to 15.2:1 in 2025.

Within the allk12 community for this school, members of the Melody Elem School community share and discuss sports schedules, lunch menu changes, and school spirit week. Posting is open to anyone connected to the school.