At the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 board meeting Oct. 27, the district’s Structural Deficit Reduction Plan consultant, Susan Harkin, pressed the board to define its goals more specifically so she can provide more concrete recommendations on its plan to cut costs and close schools.

“Part of why we don’t have specific data is because the net is really wide right now,” she said at the October meeting. “I feel very confident in modeling estimates, but again, if you change drastically what the parameters around that (are), I can’t do that for you.”

Harkin came to the board’s Monday night meeting directly challenging members in attendance to settle on the number of schools they want to close, when closures will occur and how school boundaries should change. 

The five board members in attendance unofficially honed in on two school closure scenarios — closing Kingsley Elementary School as well as either Lincolnwood Elementary School or Willard Elementary School — as it heads to an official vote Nov. 17 on which scenario to move forward with.

“It seems from a score perspective that we keep coming back to the same things: either 2-D (Kingsley and Willard) or 2-F (Lincolnwood and Kingsley),” board member Mya Wilkins said. “I don’t know if anyone else has a specific or compelling reason to open this up, but I would prefer to put our efforts into the most likely scenarios at this point.”

The board also reached a consensus to explore a phased model for additional spending cuts and revenue raising outside of school closures. Phase 3 of the district’s SDRP aims to find $10 to 15 million in savings to set the district on sound financial footing through Fiscal Year 2030.

After Harkin’s presentations at the last two meetings, the board decided to spread its budget-balancing decisions — school closures aside — across the next five years. The move allows it to consider future financial reports, such as a special education audit and Foster School construction costs, which could change its outlook, Board President Patricia S. Anderson said.

Board forges ahead without Salem, Opdycke

Reduced to a council of five, the board reached its conclusions without two of its most outspoken members for minimizing and staggering closures, Maria Opdycke and Omar Salem.

They were not present at the Monday meeting due to personal engagements, Anderson said.  Wilkins attended the meeting virtually because of a work engagement, she added.

Salem announced his resignation from the board in a Sunday letter published in the Evanston RoundTable. In the letter, Salem cited a “unique opportunity” that will require his family to leave Evanston for several months.

“Initially, I hoped to continue serving remotely, but after much reflection, I realized that wouldn’t be fair to the board or to the community,” he wrote. “This role requires full presence and engagement, and I wouldn’t be able to meet that standard from afar.”

The district has 60 days to appoint his replacement through an application process that is now underway, Anderson said.

Along with Opdycke and Board Vice President Nichole Pinkard, Salem supported closing only one school and exploring another closure in the future. While he acknowledged that he was stepping away at a challenging time for the district, he believed that it was the right decision for his family and the community, he wrote.

As requested by the board in its last meeting, Assistant Superintendent of Performance Management and Accountability Stacy Beardsley presented a staggered model in which Kingsley closes before the 2026-27 school year. District administrators evaluated all remaining schools in the Haven Middle School feeder pattern — Lincolnwood, Orrington and Willard Elementary Schools — based on the new parameters created by Kingsley’s closure.

Kingsley slipped from “commendable” to “targeted” on the 2025 Illinois Report Card, a designation it shares with the imminently closing Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies. 

Neighborhood school boundaries, which determine students’ school assignments, were redrawn to ensure that school communities would not be fragmented due to any Haven feeder school closures, Beardsley said. The new boundaries caused transportation costs to rise and walkability to fall as students would be forced to travel farther to attend their new school with their old friends, she added.

“Staying whole with your community feels important, yet every day (students) get up to walk to school,” Beardsley said. “There’s a long-term and a short-term impact piece that I think we’re trying to hold.”

Beardsley asked the board for feedback on how the administration should weigh different community values in mapping out scenarios. Some previous projections prioritized ideal utilization rates, which measure enrollment as a percentage of a school’s capacity, while others favored keeping school communities together.

Pinkard and other board members agreed that walkability must take the greatest priority as the district models school boundary changes. Other goals include minimizing the number of students who need to be bussed, avoiding relocation for specialized programs and minimizing change from the board’s currently agreed upon boundaries for the 2026-27 school year.

In their initial scenario creation, district administrators were asked to consider all school closures simultaneously occurring next summer, Pinkard said at the Oct. 27 meeting. Based on scoring criteria created by an SDRP subcommittee, closing Lincolnwood and Kingsley was judged to be the least impactful two-school closure, along with a scenario that would close Kingsley and Willard. District staff recommended both these scenarios to the board at its Sept. 29 meeting. 

Salem requested the Orrington and Lincolnwood model — which originally received the same score as the Kingsley and Willard plan — because of his concerns about closing two schools in close proximity to each other. On Monday, board member Andrew Wymer pointed out that the suggestion came from someone who was no longer part of the board.

“I’m in this odd spot of having to respond to emails for a scenario that I wouldn’t have selected to be under consideration, but now I’m trying to be sensitive to what is raised as a board member,” Wymer said.

District discusses opening forensic audit into Horton era finances

Board members deliberated over areas of focus to guide a potential external investigation into district financial management during former Superintendent Devon Horton’s tenure from 2020 to 2023. Horton was indicted on 17 counts of embezzlement, wire fraud and tax fraud on Oct. 8.

Based on recommendations from the district’s legal counsel, Chief Financial Officer Tamara Mitchell suggested hiring one of the “big four accounting firms” — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PwC and KPMG — to conduct the audit. Board members said they wanted any potential auditors to focus on administrative expenditures, special education transportation costs and no-bid contracts in particular.

Board member Sergio Hernandez, who has served on the board through three superintendents, said he wants to investigate the last 20 years of district finances to assess whether or not the district’s financial problems were endemic. Some staff in the district’s business office have served for 20 years, he said, presenting what board members thought to be balanced budgets at the time, but they might have been manipulated.

“I just want to make sure that we dig deep,” he said. “That’s my only intent.”

Considering how much time it would take to produce such a report, Anderson suggested focusing more intently on Horton’s term. The findings may be very important in how the board views its finances moving forward, she said, adding that she wanted the results sooner rather than later.

Email: s.sivaraman@dailynorthwestern.com 

X: @sidvaraman

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