About 60 Evanston residents, many holding small signs reading “Just Ride with Me on the Bus One Time, Both Ways!” and “It’s Basically a Decision of Fairness” attended a special Evanston/Skokie School District 65 board meeting Monday night devoted to a task force’s report on the Fifth Ward school issue.

“We can’t wait two years from now for the school,” said Roberta Hudson, the founder of Foster Park Neighbors. “We’re already losing them. There are kids that don’t want to go to school. We’re failing them.”

Ald. Joe Kent (5th) saw the issue more simply.

“I don’t see it being a hard choice to vote for the school,” Kent said. “The hard choice is what the school is going to focus on.”

At the meeting, the district presented a task force report that explores a new elementary school in the predominantly black Fifth Ward — including how to pay for it, what curriculum it would have and who would attend. The district has faced pressure from parents since a strategic planning committee in January recommended the creation of the new school.

The Fifth Ward, located in north-central Evanston, is composed mostly of black students and does not have a neighborhood school. For 30 years, Fifth Ward students have been bused to other schools, helping to satisfy the 60 percent guideline that requires no district school have more than 60 percent representation by one racial group.

Superintendent Hardy Ray Murphy, who was on the task force with several board members, and district staff prepared a 50-page school proposal.

Board member Hecky Powell, who has pressed for the school but also has expressed concerns financial realities might make it difficult to open, asked the rest of the board to act on the issue by April.

“If some of us really have an issue with this, we need to get it done instead of stringing it out,” Powell said.

Board member Bob Eder responded that the board should be able to make the school workable.

“This isn’t take-it-or-leave-it,” Eder said. “We can adapt it as we see it.”

Parents have asked for the school because of concerns that busing has a negative impact on Fifth Ward students. They also have questioned why the district continues the 60 percent guideline when a racial gap in test scores persists.

One obstacle to the new school is where to put the building. So far, informal negotiations with Family Focus to use part of its building at the former Foster Elementary School have not been successful, Murphy said.

The cost of building renovations is estimated at $1.3 million, based on plans for 12 classrooms and a gymnasium. Other needed spaces such as offices would be shared with Family Focus, Murphy said.

He told the board a $4.2 million state construction grant, which has been promised to the district, but not yet received, would help pay for expenses, including the $300,000 to $400,000 yearly cost of running the school.

The plan would allow the school to open without borrowing, Murphy said.

District staff also outlined the potential school’s curriculum that would include some programs not available at other schools.

“(Students) will be subjected to … the highest qualities of education,” Murphy said. “When they come out, they’ll be functioning at very high levels.”

The school would initially only have kindergarten through second grades, but a third grade would be added after the opening year.

Sixty percent of the school’s population would be from the Fifth Ward, and be accepted through an application and lottery process. The other 40 percent would be drawn from both inside and outside the ward to increase diversity.

The new school’s impact on the 60 percent guideline at other schools also was discussed. Officials are concerned a new school would divert enough black students from Kingsley Elementary School, 2300 Green Bay Road, to push its proportion of white students beyond the guideline.

The board will continue to discuss the Fifth Ward school and the 60 percent guideline. Two community meetings are scheduled this month. The first will be 7 p.m. Thursday at Chute Middle School, 1400 Oakton St., and the other will be 7 p.m. Oct. 16 at Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center, 1655 Foster St.