Owens Community Academy ES

Set in Chicago, Illinois, Owens Community Academy ES is a moderately sized elementary school, run under Chicago Public Schools Dist 299. It serves 340 students across grades pre-K through 8.

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

On demographics, Owens Community Academy ES shows that the student body is overwhelmingly Black (93%); the rest reads as 5% Hispanic. That is meaningfully more Black than the county at large, where the share is closer to 22%.

On the resource side, Staff filings list 26 full-time-equivalent teachers, which works out to roughly 13.3:1 students per teacher. The state averages about 13.9:1, putting this campus right in line with peers. An estimated 95% of students are eligible 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 noticeably above typical.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Owens Community Academy ES tracks the demographic baseline. The model predicts 16.5% given the school's FRL share; actual proficiency is 24.9%.

In the broader community, the surrounding county (Cook County) logs that the typical household earns roughly $83,498 per year, about 43% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 10%. Owens Community Academy ES is one of 1406 public schools in Cook County (combined enrollment of about 697,934 students).

Nearest neighbor: Metcalfe Elem Community Academy, around 0.6 miles off. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Owens Community Academy ES comes 1st of 9 in the immediate cluster, higher than the nearby-schools average of 16.9%.

Geographically, the school is in a metropolitan area.

Five-year trend. Owens Community Academy ES's enrollment has edged down 14% since 2018, when it stood at 397 (now 340). The Black share of enrollment decreased from 97% to 93% over that span. Class-load math has tightened: from 18.2:1 in 2018 to 13.3:1 in 2025.

On the community side, recent activity here tends to focus on fundraisers, lost-and-found posts, and report-card season. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.