By Bill Cameron, WLS-AM News

(CHICAGO) In the race for mayor, candidate Gery Chico says he’ll “take a good hard look” at changes for the Chicago Public Schools because of their current enrollment.

CPS enrollment has been dropping. There are 150,000 more seats than students in the system. Chico, the former school board president under Mayor Daley, says “when we don’t match up capacity with demand, you wind up having financial stress put on you.”

“You may have trouble meeting payroll,” Chico added, “You may have trouble meeting your pension obligations. You may have trouble coming up with the monies to keep your schools in top physical shape. We are basically cheating students from giving them every dollar we can for those students that are here every dollar, every dollar’s worth of education that we can.”

Cameron: “How many schools should be closed?”

Chico: “Oh, I don’t know. I’m not saying schools should be closed. I want to see what’s going on. None of us have the data before us.”

And while taping “Connected to Chicago” for Sunday night at 7, Chico came out for the hybrid elected school board with most of members appointed by the mayor.

@ 2018 WLS-AM News