Pickard Elem School

Pickard Elem School is one of the intimate primary schools in Chicago, Illinois, operated by Chicago Public Schools Dist 299, with 319 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; Pickard Elem School is among them.

Looking at the student body, Pickard Elem School shows that 90% of students identify as Hispanic, making the school strongly Hispanic-majority. Beyond that, the school lists 6% Black, 4% White. By comparison, Cook County as a whole is about 27% Hispanic, so the school skews visibly more Hispanic than its surroundings.

On the income-and-resources front, The school lists 30 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 10.6:1. The state averages around 13.9:1, so this campus is tighter than the state norm typical. An estimated 91% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a commonly cited indicator of low-income enrollment. Set against Cook County (around 66%), the school's rate is noticeably above typical.

With demographic context factored in, Pickard Elem School ranks in the top 10% of Illinois public schools. The BeatsExpectations model, a per-state regression of composite proficiency on FRL share, predicts schools with this student profile to land around 19.2%; Pickard Elem School posts 39.8%, +20.6 points above that line.

In the broader community, Cook County reports 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%. Across Cook County's 1406 public schools (combined enrollment of about 697,934 students), Pickard Elem School is one campus in the mix.

Nearest neighbor: Finkl Elem School, around 0.3 miles off. Counting just inside five miles, 8 other public schools cluster around Pickard Elem School. Among the 9 schools in that immediate cluster with test data (this one included), Pickard Elem School ranks 2nd on composite proficiency, above the local average of 18.1%.

The school occupies a city-core site.

Five-year trend. Over the past 7-year window, the student count contracted 28%: 443 students in 2018 compared to 319 in 2025. Hispanic enrollment moved from 96% to 90% across the same window. The student-to-teacher ratio fell from 19.7:1 in 2018 to 10.6:1 today.

In the discussion threads here, the feed for Pickard Elem School typically covers classroom updates, athletics, and weather closures. Members of the school community can share what they know.