Fifth Ward residents repeatedly urged District 65 board members to “do the right thing” by approving a voter referendum for a long-awaited school in their neighborhood at a community forum Wednesday night.
The public input session comes less than a week before the district board is slated to vote on the new school in the city’s central core, which would require a constituent referendum in March 2012 per state law if advanced. At Monday’s regular board meeting, the public will also have the chance to weigh in an hour before the 7 p.m. start time.
Board President Katie Bailey prefaced Wednesday’s forum with what she called a “little summary of where we are” stemming from apparent confusion during public comment at Monday’s finance committee meeting.
“The decisions that the board makes are very important to you and the entire community,” Bailey told the more than 50 attendees gathered in the board room at the district headquarters, 1500 McDaniel Ave.
Bailey explained three avenues remain: building a K-5 school in the central core and adding to surrounding high school and middle school enrollment, building a 6-8 school in the central core and adding to surrounding elementary school enrollment, or increasing district-wide class sizes to accommodate ballooning enrollment.
At a working meeting Sept. 12, the district’s new school-referendum committee recommended building a Fifth Ward school encompassing kindergarten through eighth grade.
On Wednesday, Bailey described “education, social justice and capacity” as the board’s key considerations in moving forward.
That second quality dominated forum discussion, with all but one of 21 speakers expressing ardent support for a new school in the Fifth Ward as a way of bringing convenient education to the neighborhood’s African-American children for the first time in decades.
Since Foster School closed in 1979, the ward’s students have been bused to other D65 schools outside of their immediate neighborhood.
“It’s a very emotional issue to me because when I think about the fact that there are some students in this district who are not treated fairly by the color of the skin or the part of town where they live,” Ald. Peter Braithwaite (2nd) said as the night’s first public commenter. “I don’t know it sits with you all when you wake up in the morning and realize you have the opportunity to change that.”
Braithwaite was joined by Ald. Jane Grover (7th), who told board members they would “never know how grateful I am” if they green-light the March referendum.
Other attendees’ pleas for new school approval were more impassioned, with Evanston resident Evelina Bonnet wagging her finger at each board member while rhetorically asking them if there is a school in their ward.
Like many speakers, the Fifth Ward resident framed the new school debate in terms of racial fairness.
“One of the things I’m very disturbed about is the disparity in Evanston as a community,” Bonnet said. “I feel like I’m living in the South. It’s like the Fifth Ward across the railroad tracks.”
New school-referendum committee member Susan Hope-Engel urged board members to act unanimously next week, calling the opportunity before them a “historic moment.”
The District 65 parent dismissed the notion the district do nothing – the third option presented by Bailey at the forum’s start.
Several audience members shouted “amen” as Hope-Engel criticized that unpopular alternative.
“We have taken choice away from these families,” she said. “We cannot do that one more day. As for concerns that we cannot afford to build this new school – we cannot afford to not build this new school!”
Evanston resident Junad Rizki was less enthusiastic about the new school proposal. He said he does not have a “strong opinion on the school itself” but board members must consider the city’s tough fiscal reality in any future deliberations.
“District 65, whether you decide to raise taxes on anything, you better keep in mind the taxpayers are pretty unhappy,” Rizki said. “They realize what’s going on.”
The forum, originally slated for two hours Wednesday night, ran 30 minutes over after board member Richard Rykhus asked the audience why they believe a new school is the only way to unify diverse groups in Evanston.
He pointed to his own neighborhood in South Evanston, where families within a one-block radius send their children to six different schools but still socialize on a weekly basis.
Rykhus’ question sparked spirited reactions from several attendees, some of which claimed the Fifth Ward no longer has the same community staples that once bound together residents.
Beginning with Foster School’s closing in 1979, public officials have been “raping the community of its social and economic driving forces, said Evanston resident Jackie Muhammad.
Fifth Ward resident Bobby Burns described himself as the last person in the room to sell crack or hold a gun – stark evidence that the community dynamic in the Fifth Ward is much different from other areas in the city.
“I hate discussing it because it’s so simple,” he said. “It’s the only neighborhood in Evanston that has declined.”
District 65 constituents’ last opportunity to comment on the new school proposal will precede the board vote at Monday’s regular meeting. Public comment will be open 6 to 7 p.m. Monday.
