Classroom sizes, transportation and declined enrollment dominated conversations at Evanston/Skokie School District 65’s three Structural Deficit Reduction Plan community input meetings on Jan. 15-17.
The district held the meetings to gauge community priorities for Phase 2 of its SDRP, which seeks to eliminate the district’s current $13.2 million deficit. Superintendent Angel Turner presented the four potential scenarios to the District 65 Board of Education at its Jan. 13 Committee of the Whole meeting.
Turner and her team launched each meeting by recapping how they applied input from last year to their deficit-slashing plans. The goals included maintaining a holistic education for students, promoting arts and athletic extracurriculars, supplying improved mental health resources and instituting smaller class sizes.
District 65 parent and Board of Education candidate Peter Bogira attended the meeting at Haven Middle School on Jan. 15. He told The Daily that the community meetings are important during “critical situations” — like the one the district is currently in — to ensure there is clear communication and cohesion between stakeholder and district goals.
“It’s all hands on deck, and this is really a chance for all parents and community members to help shape the future of the district,” he said.
At the meeting, Bogira also spoke about the classroom sizes pitched in the SRDP’s four scenarios. The district’s proposed plan aims to have a maximum of 23 students in grades K-2, 25 students in grades 3-5 and 28 students in grades 6-8.
The American Federation of Teachers recommends class sizes be around 15-19 students, Bogira said.
At the Jan. 16 community meeting, District 65 parent and Evanston Township High School English teacher Sara Young said that at ETHS, freshman courses are around 22 students and Advanced Placement courses are about 25 students. She said it didn’t make sense to have middle school classrooms be larger because it is a more turbulent time in students’ education.
Turner emphasized that the district’s classroom size guidelines are part of a new contract with the District 65 Educators’ Council, which was announced in December.
She added that the goal is to fill classrooms to a number slightly lower than the guideline, so that there is wiggle room for new students who may join the district.
“We will try as best as possible not to exceed those guidelines, but we also have to take into consideration that enrollment has dropped in this district, and so we’re being thoughtful around what the enrollment numbers are in schools and how we need to best adjust to support the needs of students,” Turner said.
Community members also discussed the district’s proposed transportation cuts, which include reducing the number of bus aides, consolidating routes and eliminating preschool bus routes, all for the district’s general education population.
To address concerns about how long students will be on the bus with consolidated routes, Turner said she estimated each route would be no more than 50 minutes. For preschool, the Illinois State Board of Education does not mandate districts to have bus routes for general education students.
Such reductions are something the board will have to “grapple” with, Turner said.
Conversations on specific parts of the district’s SRDP all came back to a similar point: concern that the district will end up in a similar deficit again.
The current deficit in the district is $13.2 million. Each Phase 2 scenario, however, will cut costs by $15.2-16.1 million.
“We shot higher for higher reductions because we’re really trying to get the district back stable and get to a level of solvency,” Turner said.
The SRDP’s Phase 3 focuses on school consolidations, which the April elected District 65 board will be involved in, with conversations to start in February 2026.
In terms of school consolidation, community members asked administrators about the role of the Foster School that is currently being built in the 5th Ward. The school was supposed to be a K-8 school but due to budget predictions, is now going to be a K-5 school.
Board member Omar Salem, who attended several school community input meetings, said the board chose to move forward with the Foster School separately from the district’s deficit plan and that its funding comes from a “different pot of money.”
District 65 parent Jamie Swartzer said she appreciated the conversations at the community input meetings, and it was “encouraging” to see community input be received and implemented.
“This process, though painful, really offers us an opportunity as a district to identify our core identity and double down on that with future investments,” Swartzer said.
The board will vote on its Phase 2 course of action at its Jan. 27 meeting. The district will implement all decisions on July 1.
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