Southwood Middle School

Southwood Middle School is one of the intimate middle schools in Country Club Hills, Illinois, run under Country Club Hills SD 160, with 283 students on its rolls from grades 6 through 8. By comparison, Illinois's public schools average about 462 students each, so Southwood Middle School sits 39% below that benchmark.

Within Country Club Hills SD 160, which oversees 3 schools and 849 students, Southwood Middle School is one campus in the system.

On the student-mix side, Southwood Middle School logs that 84% of students identify as Black, making the school strongly Black-majority. Beyond that, the school reports 7% Hispanic, 6% multiracial. By comparison, Cook County as a whole is about 22% Black, so the school skews meaningfully more Black than its surroundings.

Looking at the economic backdrop, Southwood Middle School shows 18 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 15.7:1. That figure is higher than the state norm's 13.0:1 average. Around 70% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, often used as a Title I proxy.

After controlling for student poverty, Southwood Middle School performs roughly as the BeatsExpectations model predicts for a school with this FRL share. The predicted value is around 30.9%, the actual is 19.2%, a residual of -11.8 points.

Zooming out to the county, community-level numbers for Cook County indicate the typical household earns roughly $83,498 per year, about 43% of the adult population holds a bachelor's degree or above, and the poverty rate sits near 10%. Across Cook County's 1406 public schools (combined enrollment of about 697,934 students), Southwood Middle School is one campus in the mix.

Zenon J Sykuta School is the nearest neighboring public school, about 1.0 miles from this campus. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Southwood Middle School comes 4th of 6 in the immediate cluster, below the nearby-schools average of 27.1%.

Southwood Middle School operates from a suburban location.

Over the past 7-year window. Over the past 7-year window, the student count ticked down 37%: 451 students in 2018 compared to 283 in 2025. Over the same period, the Black share declined from 93% to 84%. The student-to-teacher ratio rose from 14.6:1 in 2018 to 15.7:1 today.

In the discussion threads here, recent activity here tends to focus on pickup logistics, teacher feedback, and after-school programs. The community welcomes input from current and former families.