Mary Dixon: Chicago’s next mayor will have a major hand in shaping the future of the city’s public school district. That’s because in the next four years, the district will shift to an elected school board and a moratorium on school closings will end. Perhaps most of all, the city’s leader will have to decide what to do with severely under-enrolled schools, as the district faces an increasingly limited budget. WBEZ education reporter Sarah Karp and politics reporter Mariah Woelfel report. Sarah starts us off.

Sarah Karp: Betzabel Laredo stood in the pouring rain this past spring outside of a South West side school. She was with about 100 other parents, protesting that her son’s middle school was losing money and laying off teachers.

Betzabel Laredo: (Translation from Spanish) Our kids can't learn in classes with double grades with fewer teachers. Our kids deserve to have libraries in schools, they deserve counselors and nurses. They deserve programs but with budget cuts, all of that is in limbo.

Sarah Karp: Our schools deserve to have libraries, counselors and nurses but with budget cuts all that is in limbo, she says. As an education reporter, I can say this type of protest is a yearly thing. And the next mayor will be walking right into this conundrum: what to do about a school system that is losing students and also is facing a major budget crisis. To some, the answer is easy, cut budgets or close entire schools. But CEO of the nonprofit Kids First Dan Annello says that can be hard to justify in schools that everyone agrees haven’t gotten what they need to succeed.

Dan Annello: You know, it feels a little unfair. And then there's also the reality that like we have a foot print of buildings for 500 thousand kids, and we're hovering around 300 thousand students.

Sarah Karp: So far, Mayor Lori Lightfoot hasn't been able to shut down under-enrolled schools. There’s been a moratorium on school closings, but that will end in 2025. Chicago’s next mayor will also be dealing with a pinched budget. Federal COVID relief money will run out, state funding remains inadequate, and pension costs and debt payments weigh on CPS’ budget. My colleague Mariah has been watching mayoral forum after mayoral forum as candidates talk through these issues.

Mariah Woelfel: Close severely under-enrolled schools. That’s what candidates Roderick Sawyer, Willie Wilson, Paul Vallas, and Sophia King say they’d be willing to do. Sawyer is the most emphatic.

Roderick Sawyer: When you have a school that is under 5% enrollment and 0% proficiency in reading and math and they don’t have the resources, extra curricular activities, librarian all the things that you want to have in a fully functioning school there. We’ve paid more attention and have more attachment to the building than we do to our own children, our students.

Mariah Woelfel: Most of the candidates––including Lightfoot and Congressman Jesus Chuy Garcia––said they’d only close schools after first trying to reduce crime and improve neighborhoods, with the hopes that families will return. Three progressive mayoral candidates are opposed to closings. Those are Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, State Representative Kam Buckner, and activist Ja’Mal Green. Here’s Green, who’s a public school graduate and now has kids in the district. He says the city should be investing in under resourced schools instead of closing them.

Ja’Mal Green: We have promoted charter schools and shut down these buildings. They have a lot of these schools that are under enrolled without the resources and wraparound resources needed to give individual attention to these students and our kids are suffering.

Mariah Woelfel: Green, like Buckner and Johnson, says one solution would be funding schools based on need instead of tying dollars just to enrollment.

Sarah Karp: But one candidate is pitching a drastic shift in the public education system altogether. Former CPS CEO Paul Vallas envisions a system of 100% choice where any family unhappy with their neighborhood option could go somewhere else, including publicly-funded, privately-run charter schools. Parent and activist Rousemary Vega says what she’s really looking for in the next mayor is an understanding of how consequential all of these CPS decisions are.

Rousemary Vega: We want you to vision who you are hurting when you're making these decisions. We want that kind of accountability, we want that kind of conscience.

Sarah Karp: Being a mayor who can balance all of these needs is perhaps a tall order. Sarah Karp

Mariah Woelfel: Mariah Woelfel, WBEZ News.

Heidi Goldfein