Woodson South Elem School

Woodson South Elem School is a K-5 school of small scale in Chicago, Illinois, one of the schools within Chicago Public Schools Dist 299, teacheing 298 students in grades pre-K through 8. Compared to the state average of about 381 students per school, that is 22% below typical.

Chicago Public Schools Dist 299 runs 622 schools in total, collectively educating 324,396 students. Woodson South Elem School is one of those campuses.

On the student-mix side, Woodson South Elem School logs that 91% of students identify as Black, making the school strongly Black-majority. Beyond that, the school records 6% Hispanic. By comparison, Cook County as a whole is about 22% Black, so the school skews visibly more Black than its surroundings.

In terms of school funding signals, On paper, Woodson South Elem School has 22 full-time-equivalent teachers, translating to a class-load average of around 13.6:1. That tracks the state average closely. Around 71% of the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price meals, which schools and policymakers use as a rough income-mix signal.

After controlling for student poverty, Woodson South Elem School is in the bottom 10% of Illinois public schools. The BeatsExpectations model predicts schools with this FRL share to land around 30.6%; Woodson South Elem School posts 13.9%, -16.7 points below that line.

In the area at large, the surrounding county (Cook County) shows that median household income runs about $83,498, roughly 43% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and the poverty rate sits near 10%. In all, Cook County runs 1406 public schools (combined enrollment of about 697,934 students), of which Woodson South Elem School is one.

The closest other public school is King College Prep High School, roughly 0.3 miles away. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. On composite proficiency, Woodson South Elem School comes 6th of 8 in the immediate cluster, behind the nearby-schools average of 19.5%.

Geographically, the school is in an inner-city area.

Looking at the recent track record. Over the past 7-year window, the student count decreased 10%: 330 students in 2018 compared to 298 in 2025. The student-to-teacher ratio narrowed from 15.0:1 in 2018 to 13.6:1 today.

Within the allk12 community for this school, posts here usually surface around science fair prep, picture-day reminders, and bus-route questions. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.