Around 140 community members shared their priorities for school closures and consolidations at three community meetings held by Evanston/Skokie School District 65 between April 10 and April 15.

District 65 administrators led the meetings, which will inform Phase 3 of the district’s Structural Deficit Reduction Plan. The final phase in the SDRP may include school closures and is a push to make the district financially sustainable after a $13.2 million deficit in fiscal year 2025.

Between Phases 1 and 2 of the SDRP, the district cut about $20 million in expenses, Chief Financial Officer Tamara Mitchell said. The goal for Phase 3 is to reduce district spending by another $10 million to 15 million. 

All Phase 3 decisions will be implemented in fiscal year 2027, Mitchell added. 

Potential school closures are also top of mind because the district has about $188 million in outstanding maintenance repairs, said Stacy Beardsley, the district’s assistant superintendent of performance management and accountability.

The district will see declining enrollment over the next few years, according to a 2024 demography report. Each school closed will save the district about $2 million per year, she said. 

“This is about care for the district now and going forward,” Beardsley said. 

On average, Beardsley said, the 18 buildings in the district are 79 years old. The average school building in the United States is 49 years old, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Beardsley added that the average building occupancy rate across the district is 65%, with schools ranging from 7% over capacity to 47% under capacity. 

After learning about the state of the district, meeting attendees split into groups to write lists of criteria they want the district to use when considering school closures. Some groups expressed doubt that school closures were enough to help the district save money. 

“$2 million in savings per school doesn’t seem like enough to close a school,” one poster read. 

Sixth Ward resident Rachel Waldinger said if a building needs a significantly larger number of repairs compared to others, it might not be worth keeping due to the extra costs it creates. 

The mother of three District 65 students emphasized that regardless of other criteria, excellence in schools is the most important thing. 

“I would rather walk a little bit farther with my kids to school if I knew that the school was an excellent school, had class sizes that provided a good learning environment (and) had a supportive principal and teachers,” Waldinger said. 

Walkability and building maintenance costs were the criteria most commonly reflected on groups’ posters. School enrollment and transportation costs were also top priorities for community members. 

Other priorities included keeping district programs like Two-Way Immersion and African-Centered Curriculum available, considering how the school buildings can be used by the larger Evanston community and compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act requirements. Currently, the district has four buildings that are less than 50% compliant with ADA guidelines, Beardsley said. 

Some groups wrote about maintaining a neighborhood school system and ensuring at-risk student populations have the resources they need. 

After writing their criteria, groups categorized each criteria based on four categories: excellence, equity, effective use of facilities and effective use of finances. The district came up with the criteria based on what districts in similar situations have done in the past, Beardsley said. 

Waldinger said the categories didn’t completely fit her group’s vision for closure criteria. 

“Our group felt that excellence should be an umbrella over everything and shouldn’t necessarily be the criterion closing schools,” she said. 

Second Ward resident Kimberly Holmes-Ross said she values student enrollment in relation to schools’ capacities and building conditions when it comes to looking at school closures. 

She added that creating a welcoming community is important, no matter the district’s school configuration.

“I would like all the students to be happy and healthy, where people felt safe and comfortable and there is a cultural competency amongst the schools,” said Holmes-Ross, who attended District 65 schools. 

Beardsley emphasized that no decisions had been made yet and one possible scenario is that no schools are closed — meaning that the expense cuts come from other areas. 

Participants had time at the end of the meeting to share ideas beyond school closures that could help the district. 

Across all three meetings, there were suggestions to consolidate Evanston’s two school districts, move pre-K into the elementary schools and increase fundraising efforts. Some community members also suggested partnering with Northwestern for transportation and other programming in the district. 

Holmes-Ross, the executive director of Evanston Cradle to Career, an organization that helps families connect with community resources, said engaging the community in meetings like these is important to ensure the district understands the community’s vision for its schools. 

“We all want our schools to succeed, and we know if the schools don’t succeed, we don’t succeed,” Holmes-Ross said.

Email: a.prakash@dailynorthwestern.com  

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Related Stories: 

— Newly elected school board members pledge increased community engagement 

— District 65 board discusses sustainability, school closure plans 

— District 65 board hears demography, equity progress indicator reports