Portage Park Elem School

Portage Park Elem School is one of the high-enrollment K-5 schools in Chicago, Illinois, one of the schools within Chicago Public Schools Dist 299, with 933 students on its rolls from grades pre-K through 8. That puts it 145% larger than the typical public school in Illinois, which averages around 381 students.

Portage Park Elem School is one of 622 schools operated by Chicago Public Schools Dist 299, a district that serves 324,396 students overall.

In terms of who attends, Portage Park Elem School lists that 59% of the student body identifies as Hispanic. Beyond that, the school records 29% White, 4% Black, 3% multiracial, 3% Asian. That is visibly more Hispanic than the county at large, where the share is closer to 27%.

Looking at the economic backdrop, On paper, Portage Park Elem School has 64 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 14.6:1. The state averages about 13.9:1, putting this campus right in line with peers. An estimated 67% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy.

On a residual basis (actual vs predicted given the student mix), Portage Park Elem School tracks the demographic baseline. The model predicts 32.9% given the school's FRL share; actual proficiency is 34.9%.

Around the school, community-level numbers for Cook County indicate median household earnings sit near $83,498, 43% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 10%. Portage Park Elem School is one of 1406 public schools in Cook County (combined enrollment of about 697,934 students).

Nearest neighbor: Rickover Naval Academy High Schl, around 0.5 miles off. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Portage Park Elem School comes 5th of 9 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 35.0%.

Geographically, the school is in a downtown area.

Five-year trend. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Portage Park Elem School has changed only slightly, going from 950 students in 2018 to 933 in 2025. Class-load math has tightened: from 20.3:1 in 2018 to 14.6:1 in 2025.

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