OToole Elem School

OToole Elem School is one of the small primary schools in Chicago, Illinois, part of Chicago Public Schools Dist 299, with 309 students on its rolls from grades pre-K through 8.

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

On demographics, OToole Elem School lists that Black students make up the majority at 56%; the rest consists of 40% Hispanic, 4% White. By comparison, Cook County as a whole is about 22% Black, so the school skews meaningfully more Black than its surroundings.

On the resource side, Staff filings list 23 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 13.7:1 students per teacher. The state averages about 13.9:1, putting this campus right in line with peers. Roughly 94% of students at OToole Elem School qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal. Set against Cook County (around 66%), the school's rate is somewhat above typical.

After controlling for student poverty, OToole Elem School sits in the middle band of the BeatsExpectations distribution. Schools with this campus's student mix typically land near 17.3%; this one delivers 15.7%.

Across the wider county, community-level numbers for Cook County indicate median household earnings sit near $83,498, about 43% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, 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 OToole Elem School is one.

The closest other public school is Claremont Magnet Elem School, roughly 0.4 miles away. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, OToole Elem School comes 6th of 9 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 24.4%.

The campus sits in a high-density setting.

Trend over the last 7 years. OToole Elem School's enrollment has edged down 14% since 2018, when it stood at 358 (now 309). The Black share of enrollment decreased from 88% to 56% over that span. Class-load math has narrowed: from 18.1:1 in 2018 to 13.7:1 in 2025.

Within the allk12 community for this school, members of the OToole Elem School community share and discuss open house dates, ride-share offers, and field-trip permission slips. Posting is open to anyone connected to the school.