Chicago School Closing

After watching the clip about the Chicago School Closing,  I decided to look into the situation further. What I learned was that this was mainly a budget cut. Many of these schools were underutilized or overcrowded. There have been population shifts from certain neighborhoods to others. From this point of view, I understood the decision to close these schools. But the further I read I began to disagree with this decision. In this article (http://www.wbez.org/news/only-60-percent-students-chicagos-closed-schools-turn-welcoming-schools-108907) it talks about the stats of students enrolled after these school closings. With schools closing many children had to make longer, more dangerous walks to attend schools. How does this benefit the students? Closing schools shouldn't mean lower enrollment rates and the city shouldn't be putting its students at risk just to save money.

Recently the city has put out an application form for chartering schools. There are 11 districts that the city hopes to open chartering schools What I'm not entirely sure about is how this is going to solve the problem of schools being underutilized and over crowded.