About 30 parents and students protested outside the Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies on Thursday morning, demanding the district reverse its plans to close the school’s seventh and eighth grade classrooms.
Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Superintendent Angel Turner announced the closure of seventh and eighth grade classrooms in an Oct. 16 email to families, citing “difficulty staffing for several key positions.” The classrooms will close after the district’s first trimester ends Nov. 15, Turner said in the email.
“We recognize the desire to stay at Bessie Rhodes to finish middle school,” she added. “However, approximately 20 children per grade level and a limited team of educators do not provide the consistent, well-rounded learning environment that our students need and deserve as they prepare to enter high school.”
Parents like Stephanie Roache, who has an eighth-grade son at Bessie Rhodes, said they received insufficient notice for the planned closure and criticized the district for what they called a lack of accountability and transparency.
“You can’t be in charge of this and not tell us what’s going on,” she told The Daily.
Roache started an online petition Saturday asking the district to reverse its plan. Among other requests, the petition also demands that the district reassign qualified administrators as part-time Bessie Rhodes teachers and hold discussions with parents before making major decisions related to the school.
The petition has received over 500 signatures as of Thursday night and requests a response from District 65 by Friday.
In June, the board voted to close Bessie Rhodes after the 2025-26 school year. Across three public hearings last spring, multiple parents said the district was unfairly targeting bilingual families by closing the school. The K-8 building is the only one in the district where all students learn in bilingual environments.
Roache told The Daily that she heard rumors that the school would close for several years, but the plans to move seventh and eighth grade students early surprised her. She said she and other parents need the district to listen to them before making major decisions about their children’s education.
“These are kids who have been at this school for the majority of their lives, most of them,” Roache said. “So if they’re not being heard right now, how is this going to make them feel about people in power — that they’re just going to get trampled over and their feelings are not going to get taken into account, even when it’s in their best interest?”
Before Roache revised the petition Wednesday night, a previous version contained 10 demands, including that Turner resign as superintendent. Roache told The Daily that she removed that demand to give Turner time to respond to parents’ concerns about the planned closure and lack of communication.
Roache said if Turner reversed the plan or paused it to hold more discussions with parents, she would not reinsert the call to resign.
In her email, Turner said the district will support students through the transition process, including through opportunities to meet peers, teachers and administrators at their new schools.
Affected parents learned their students’ new school assignments in emails sent Oct. 18. The district would transition students to the middle schools corresponding with their attendance areas, Turner said.
Turner announced a Zoom meeting with administrators and families for Oct. 17. However, the district canceled that meeting several hours before the planned start time, saying it would no longer be a “safe or productive space for group dialogue” after the Zoom link was posted online. Instead, the district invited families to meet with administrators individually.
According to Roache, district administrators said during her meeting that they eliminated two other options for the staffing shortage, including moving all seventh and eighth grade students to Haven Middle School and moving teachers from other schools to Bessie Rhodes.
District 65 officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
In a Thursday night email sent out to select parents, Turner apologized for the “rollout and announcement” of the news, recognizing the impact that the midyear move may have on students and staff.
“As superintendent, I hold myself and my team accountable,” Turner said. “I am deeply sorry for the pain and disruption that has been caused.”
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss and Skokie Mayor George Van Dusen sent a letter to Turner and the district board on Oct. 18, saying they were “uneasy” with the decision to close the classrooms given the “potential panic” it could create among families throughout the district.
The mayors called on the district to pause its seventh and eighth grade closures in favor of being “fully open with all stakeholders, both about the problems and a full menu of potential solutions, before taking dramatic action.”
The Thursday night email also noted that a final decision will be made by the end of the week.
Concerned parents will march Monday afternoon from the school to the Joseph E. Hill Education Center, where the district will hold its next board meeting.
Update: This story was updated to reflect a Thursday night email Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Superintendent Angel Turner sent to parents.
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Related Stories:
— District 65 School Board votes to close Dr. Bessie Rhodes School
— District 65 Board to vote on resolution on potential Bessie Rhodes closure
— District 65 to expand Dual Language program, parents remain concerned about Bessie Rhodes closure
