YCCS-Youth Connection Leadership

As a tiny high school in Chicago, Illinois, YCCS-Youth Connection Leadership instructs 100 students from grades 9 through 12, part of Chicago Public Schools Dist 299. Enrollment runs roughly 88% below the state mean of about 834.

Within Chicago Public Schools Dist 299, which oversees 622 schools and 324,396 students, YCCS-Youth Connection Leadership is one campus in the system.

On demographics, YCCS-Youth Connection Leadership lists that 75% of the student body identifies as Black. Beyond that, the school reports 24% Hispanic. That is meaningfully more Black than the county at large, where the share is closer to 22%.

On the income-and-resources front, YCCS-Youth Connection Leadership reports 4 full-time-equivalent teachers, putting the student-to-teacher ratio at about 25.0:1. That figure is higher than the state norm's 13.8:1 average. Roughly 85% of students at YCCS-Youth Connection Leadership qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy. Set against Cook County (around 66%), the school's rate is noticeably above typical.

After controlling for student poverty, YCCS-Youth Connection Leadership is in the bottom 10% of Illinois public schools. The BeatsExpectations model predicts schools with this FRL share to land around 22.4%; YCCS-Youth Connection Leadership posts 2.5%, -19.9 points below that line.

In the broader community, the surrounding county (Cook County) records that median household income runs about $83,498, roughly 43% of adults have completed at least a four-year degree, and census figures put the poverty rate at about 10%. In all, Cook County runs 1406 public schools (combined enrollment of about 697,934 students), of which YCCS-Youth Connection Leadership is one.

The closest other public school is Curie Metropolitan High School, roughly 0.3 miles away. Within five miles, there are 8 other public schools. On composite proficiency, YCCS-Youth Connection Leadership comes 9th of 9 in the immediate cluster, beneath the nearby-schools average of 26.2%.

YCCS-Youth Connection Leadership operates from a downtown location. YCCS-Youth Connection Leadership is a charter school, which puts it inside the public-school system but outside the standard district-managed model.

Looking at the recent track record. Over the past 7-year window, the student count declined 57%: 231 students in 2018 compared to 100 in 2025. Hispanic enrollment moved from 6% to 24% across the same window.

On the community side, posts here usually surface around pickup logistics, teacher feedback, and after-school programs. Members of the school community can share what they know.