Which Level 1 & Level 2 CPS Elementary Schools have seats?**

**According to CPS Utilization Formula.

The results may surprise you.

I’ve discussed before how schools that use a “once a year” enrollment period have a bit of an unfair advantage over neighborhood “take all” schools in that they can:

1) Restrict enrollment per grade to maintain reasonable class sizes

2) Restrict enrollment to once a year in order to limit disruption to on-going classrooms during the year.

3) Have better ability to predict budget allocations and use of resources because of this.

Breaking: principals got an email from BBB last night that stdnts from closing scls can attend any school w/ capacity as deter by gr level.

— Raise Your Hand (@ILRaiseYourHand) May 18, 2013

In light of the memo sent out to CPS principals yesterday by Barbara Byrd-Bennett requiring any school to admit students from closing schools in grades where they have space, I quickly ran some numbers in the Apples2Apples database to see which schools would have seats available, according to CPS own utilization formula.

Two things:

1. You can see the list of Level 1 & Level 2 schools with seats here, including the number of seats CPS says each school should have.
2. Some schools have been given extra ancillary rooms by CPS with no explanation offered, which artificially reduces the number of students that they can accept at 100% capacity.  However, this could be due an abnormally high number of rooms in the school that are “1/2” rooms in that particular building.  A review of the school facility would tell us more. I’ve created an additional column for those schools that adjust the 100% capacity of the school based upon an assumption that the extra ancillary room is a regular classroom. But this isn’t a guarantee that it is.

There are a number of Selective Enrollment, Magnet and Charter Schools on this list. It is unknown at this time if principals at these schools also received this memo and will be required to take more students to move their enrollments closer to 100% capacity.

Since past research shows that the groups of students from closing schools who altered their academic trajectory for the better moved to a school in the top quartile of schools, I would recommend that parents of students at closing schools focus on the schools on this list with Performance Level % of Points that are 75% or above as a rough gauge.

There are also a number of schools with special education programs and higher ELL populations that require reduced class sizes. However, since CPS is not including these in their calculations for closing school utilization, I have not included those populations here either.  This is not the Apples 2 Apples Utilization formula, just the CPS formula un-adjusted.

(Working on map to be posted soon.)

• Data reflects numbers released by CPS in February 2013 on school utilization
• CPS Current Utilization Formula is as follows:
  • (# of classrooms * 76.9%) * 30 = 100% School Capacity
• Seats available does not mean that every grade has seats available. Availability per grade will be specific to each school.