Kenndell Smith Inherits a CCSD 180 Whose Rebound Has Slipped Two Years Running

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Correction (September 30, 2026): An earlier version of this article, including its headline, said CCSD 180 had been recovering for five years, adding 33 students from its 2020-21 low to reach 465 in 2025-26. That comparison mixed two differently defined state counts. Measured on the same state count, enrollment rose through 2023-24 and then fell in each of the next two years, including a drop of 18 students, from 483 to 465, in 2025-26. This version also restates the long-term decline through 2024-25 on a single count.

Kenndell Smith became superintendent of CCSD 180^↗ on July 1, arriving at a district that is still well below the size it was before the sharpest enrollment loss in its published record.

The Burr Ridge and Willowbrook district enrolled 465 students in 2025-26, on the state's fall count. The longer record comes from a separately defined state series, the report card count, which runs through 2024-25. On it, CCSD 180 enrolled 688 students in 2014-15 and 454 in 2024-25. That is 234 fewer students, a decline of 34.0 percent, over a period in which enrollment across Illinois fell 10.0 percent.

The more useful number is when it happened. CCSD 180 enrolled 634 students in 2018-19 and 432 in 2020-21, a loss of 202 students, or 31.9 percent, across two years. That two-year stretch accounts for about 86 percent of everything the district lost from 2014-15 to 2024-25.

Those years coincide with the pandemic. The enrollment record shows the timing and nothing more; it cannot separate school closures from families moving, from choices about where to enroll a child, or from anything else that might have been happening in the same two years.

What has happened since

The district climbed back for a while, then slipped. On the report card count it rose from its 2020-21 low of 432 students to 477 in 2023-24, then fell to 454 in 2024-25, 180 students below where it stood in 2018-19. The state's fall count, which records each student under the home district responsible for them and begins with 2020-21, shows the same turn: up from 463 in 2020-21 to 501 in 2023-24, then down to 483 in 2024-25 and 465 in 2025-26. The two counts do not agree even for the same year, so the chart above draws them separately and this article never subtracts one from the other.

That is the position Smith walks into: a district roughly two thirds its former size, whose rebound after 2020-21 has given back ground two years running.

The grades give him one more thing to plan around. CCSD 180 serves prekindergarten through eighth grade across two schools, Anne M. Jeans Elementary and Burr Ridge Middle. In 2025-26 its kindergarten class numbered 40 students and its eighth-grade class numbered 57. The class leaving was larger than the class arriving.

That is a snapshot rather than a forecast. A small kindergarten cohort can be followed by a larger one, and the district's own recent history shows how quickly the number can move in both directions.

What the public record shows about the new superintendent

Smith was appointed at a December 18, 2025 board meeting, effective July 1, 2026, and the district announced the hire the following day. He came from outside CCSD 180, most recently as Director of Curriculum and Instruction at Prairie-Hills Elementary School District 144.

Before his July 1 start, the board approved an administrative restructuring for 2026-27 that created three positions reporting to the superintendent: a Director of Student Services, a Director of Teaching and Learning, and an Assistant Director of Early Childhood and Family Engagement.

The last of those is the one worth noting against the enrollment record. A district whose entering class is smaller than its exiting class, and which is still well below its pre-2020 size, has put a dedicated administrator on early childhood and family engagement. Whether that is a response to the enrollment picture is not something the public record states, and Smith did not discuss it with us.

The ILEdTribune contacted representatives of CCSD 180 for comment and did not receive a response before publication.

Enrollment figures come from the Illinois State Board of Education: its report card count through 2024-25 and its fall enrollment count for 2020-21 through 2025-26. Illinois did not publish a 2017-18 figure in the report card series, so that year is absent from the charts and no year-over-year comparison crosses the gap. Appointment and restructuring details come from the district's own published announcements and board records.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

CCSD 180 - EdTribune IL - Illinois Education Data

Kenndell Smith Inherits a CCSD 180 Whose Rebound Has Slipped Two Years Running

What has happened since

What the public record shows about the new superintendent