The Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Board of Education signalled openness to extending its discussion timeline or staggering a three-school closure plan at a special board meeting Tuesday morning.
The potential school shutterings are part of Phase 3 of the district’s Structural Deficit Reduction Plan, in which District 65 aims to eliminate $10 to $15 million in spending, set to go into effect for the 2026-27 school year. Scenarios were first announced at a Sept. 29 board meeting.
Newly-elected Board President Patricia S. Anderson said the board may need to extend Phase 3 of the SDRP for district staff to model alternative scenarios based on board members’ new ideas or community members’ pitches at the district’s scenario feedback sessions. District staff are collecting input from sessions at each of the district’s middle schools and the Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center this week.
The board must request additional models from district administrators before its Nov. 3 meeting to be prepared for its current Nov. 17 scenario decision deadline, said Stacy Beardsley, assistant superintendent of performance management and accountability.
“If the deadline begins to slide, the feasibility to do it well becomes questionable,” she said.
The push for closing three schools one after another, instead of all at once, was led by board member Omar Salem, who wasn’t present at the Sept. 29 meeting.
Spreading out closures and ensuring that students wouldn’t be impacted multiple times would buy time for the administration to project financial effects more precisely, he said. It would also help the board proceed through multiple closures with more care, he added.
“I don’t see how that doesn’t work for us,” Salem said.
Salem said he had asked the board to schedule a special meeting before community feedback sessions on the administration’s proposed scenarios began Tuesday evening.
Anderson takes on board presidency as Sergio Hernandez steps down from leadership role
As board members and onlookers settled into their seats following a recess three hours into the meeting, a shrill whistle broke through the chatter.
“Don’t make me use my ‘teacher’ voice,” Anderson told the crowd.
Although she remained in the same chair she occupied as a member, the moment offered a glimpse of what a board might look like under Anderson’s gavel.
In her opening statement as board president, she said she would welcome different perspectives from the district’s bargaining units, parents and other community members. She also emphasized the need for creative solutions to ensure participation from marginalized groups.
“I’m the board president because I’m the most pragmatic person here,” Anderson said. “This is a team of eight, and there are eight different opinions.”
After three years in the role, Hernandez announced he would step down from the presidency in the wake of former Superintendent Devon Horton’s federal indictment Thursday.
Several community members called for Hernandez and board member Mya Wilkins to fully resign their positions for serving during Horton’s alleged actions. Wilkins was not present at the meeting.
Evanston resident Samantha Schwimmer said Hernandez “stood behind” Horton as experienced teachers were pushed out and transparency eroded.
“District 65 was once considered a crown jewel of our community,” Schwimmer said. “It is now a worthless, tarnished relic left in ruins by ego, denial and your failed leadership.”
In a message read to the board on her behalf, Lincolnwood Elementary School teacher Marla Dobrin wrote that she was disheartened by the board’s decision to schedule a special meeting for Tuesday morning at 9 a.m., five minutes before most of the district’s schools started.
Salem said he had asked the board to schedule a special meeting before community feedback sessions on the administration’s proposed scenarios began Tuesday evening. The board previously scheduled the special meeting for Oct. 8 at 5 p.m. — during parent-teacher conferences — but the rescheduled meeting time was even more inconvenient for teachers, parents and staff, Dobrin wrote.
“District 65 teachers always put our students first and at the forefront of what we do,” the message read. “Isn’t it about time the board and administration do the same for the teachers who are so dedicated to teaching them?”
District administration presents updates to recommended 3-school scenarios
Beardsley also shared updates to the three-school scenarios the administration presented to the board Sept. 29.
All three scenarios that the board agreed to discuss further involve closing Lincolnwood and Kingsley Elementary Schools. Washington Elementary School and Dawes Elementary School are also named as potential shutterings.
A third scenario, proposed by Board Vice President Nichole Pinkard, would close Dewey Elementary School and convert the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Literary and Fine Arts School into a K-5 neighborhood school. Beardsley said the administration is still modeling the final scenario and will present its findings at an Oct. 27 meeting.
Based on board feedback, Beardsley said the district shifted its recommended school boundaries to reduce projected utilization rates from over 100% at some schools to a maximum utilization of 88% overall across the district’s two modeled scenarios. Utilization rates measure enrollment as a percentage of a school’s capacity.
The suggested school boundary changes would move Orrington Elementary School’s boundary south and west while moving Dewey’s boundary further south. While the new boundaries would balance class sizes at each school more effectively, it would also raise transportation costs as more students would live far from school or cross large roads, Beardsley said.
Anderson said her main goals for Phase 3 of SDRP are to keep a balanced budget, maintain healthy levels of cash on hand and balance utilization rates as the cash-strapped district navigates a troubled fiscal future.
Board member Maria Opdycke stressed her desire for clear goals beyond those objectives. The district must bus students living more than 1.5 miles from their school or those for whom walking to school would pose a serious safety risk, but she pointed out that the district hasn’t decided how many students it aims to have fall under that policy after school closures.
Instead, Opdycke suggested reducing the district’s goal of always having 90 days of cash on hand to open up “wiggle room” to achieve the board’s broader value-based goals.
Opdycke added that she felt confident the district could slow down the process to find a “more holistic” solution.
“This board doesn’t have to act hastily in the same way that past boards have potentially done just because we think we might be at some fictional end of the road,” Opdycke said.
Hernandez, the board’s longest-tenured member, said the district’s pressing need to close schools has been a “can that’s kicked down the road” since it first projected a fiscal year 2025 deficit in 2017, the same year the district successfully passed a referendum. He defended past boards and said the district spent its funds to build staff capacity, improve school environments and enhance equity for the district’s most marginalized populations.
Closing schools is inevitable, he said, and the process will become harder if the board delays its decision. Staggering out closures as Salem suggested would result in further budget cuts, he added.
“We have already cut down to the bone,” Hernandez said. “Now, we’re going to be sawing bone in regards to programs and things we value as a community — the enrichments we have.”
Salem, who was elected to the board in 2023, said it was difficult to accept Hernandez’s point because he believed the district wouldn’t be in its current situation had past boards done more to address their financial woes.
Now, the board has to answer for the decisions its predecessors made, he said.
“We’re making cuts now that suck,” Salem said. “Class sizes are going up because previous boards didn’t do anything. We don’t need to make all these decisions now. We have time.”
Email: [email protected]
X: @sidvaraman
Related Stories:
— Devon Horton indictment investigation began in 2023, board leadership says
— ‘One shot to get this right’: D65 board mulls over school closure scenarios
