After two failed votes in the fall, the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Board of Education unanimously voted to close Kingsley Elementary School after the 2025-26 school year alongside Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies at a Thursday special meeting.
Per Illinois School Code, the school closure process requires the board to hold three public hearings before officially voting on a closure. District 65 held hearings on Jan. 21 and 22, with the board voting directly following the third hearing.
While several Kingsley parents have said they have come to terms with their school closing at previous board meetings, they used the hearings to express concerns about the transition process that lies ahead.
“Kingsley families are not asking to be spared difficult realities,” Kingsley parent Peter Bogira wrote in a Jan. 9 letter to the board signed by over 100 school community members. “We are asking to be treated as full partners in understanding and shaping the consequences of those realities.”
Some parents criticized the timing of the hearings, claiming they prevented some community members from attending. The Jan. 21 hearing, which began at 6 p.m., conflicted with a district orchestra concert.
The second hearing was held at 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 22, preventing some community members — and Board members Maria Opdycke and Mya Wilkins —from attending due to work obligations.
“And then today’s morning hearing, I think absence speaks volumes,” Bogira said on Jan. 22. “We have a third of the board unable to attend … It’s a privilege to be here for any of us who were able to make it.”
At the first hearing, Kate Morris, a member of the Kingsley PTA executive board, laid out the organization’s four asks of the board, which she said reflect the priorities of the Kingsley community.
They include holding an information session about how the closure will be discussed with students at school, supporting Kingsley staff and students and hosting “two-way feedback sessions” so families can engage directly with the board and district regarding new school boundaries and permissive transfer requests.
Here are four major concerns parents echoed throughout the hearings.
Clarity about permissive transfer request process
During the week of Feb. 2, families of students will receive letters notifying them of their school assignments and explaining the process of accepting the assignment, applying for a permissive transfer or applying to return to their home school, according to Assistant Superintendent of Performance Management and Accountability Stacy Beardsley.
Throughout the week of Feb. 9, the district will hold Q&A meetings for the schools “most impacted” by closures, including Kingsley. At these meetings, district staff will answer questions related to school assignments and permissive transfer requests.
The permissive transfer application window will close by March 1. The request determinations will be sent to families by April 1, and the district may accept, decline or waitlist requests, Beardsley said, depending on grade level capacities at each school.
Kingsley parent Karianne Dvorak asked the board to engage with families in a “meaningful and respectful way,” which she said includes committing to granting transfer requests.
“I’ve sat in a meeting and heard for months about how underutilized our schools are, so therefore it doesn’t seem like it should be a problem to honor those permissive transfer requests on the Haven feeder pattern,” Dvorak said.
Kingsley students are slated to be split across four elementary schools in the Haven Middle School feeder pattern for the 2026-27 school year: Lincolnwood Elementary School, Willard Elementary School, the district’s new Foster School and Orrington Elementary School.
A survey a group of Kingsley parents conducted over four days that garnered 120 responses across the school community found that 69% of families preferred their assigned boundary school for next year, Kingsley and Haven parent Lauren McNamara said. But, when asked to choose a specific school in the Haven feeder pattern, 52% said they preferred Lincolnwood Elementary School, McNamara added.
Seventy-eight percent of parents would prefer guaranteed placement at a designated school instead of permissive transfers, Kingsley and Haven parent Colleen Egan said. Fifty-eight percent of parents want that school to be Lincolnwood, Egan added.
Kingsley parent Michelle Schumaker spoke of her prior experience with the permissive transfer process. She said her children used to attend Lincolnwood, but after moving three blocks from their previous home in 2021 and applying for a permissive transfer request to keep her children at the school, which Schumaker said was visible from her house, the request was denied without appeal.
Her children were instead assigned to Kingsley and experienced a “rushed transition,” which Schumaker said was not “easy on our family.”
“My ask is, please do not underestimate the impact of transition on these small children,” Schumaker said. “Please invest in transition to make sure that this can happen seamlessly for all the things that are impacted to support a successful transition.”
She added that a smooth transition would be a “small gesture” that will bring “closure and certainty that this community desperately needs.”
Support for Kingsley staff
Throughout the three hearings, parents, students and school staff members called on the district to support Kingsley teachers and staff throughout the coming transition.
Kingsley parent and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Literary and Fine Arts teacher Mary Young told the district that teachers need “timely clarity” about their placements for the upcoming school year, adding “the anxiety for them is building.”
Young also asked the board to consider pausing formal evaluations for relocated teachers next year, adding that transitioning into a new building and position places “significant weight” on them.
“Teachers are going to need adequate time to pack up their classroom. I can’t imagine how long a lifetime of teaching will take some of them to pack up and to move again,” Young said.
Several community members recognized Kingsley teachers by name and credited them for supporting students while experiencing uncertainty about their job security.
Kingsley fourth grader Kayla Bogira said that all of Kingsley’s teachers are the “best part” of going to school and asked the board to make sure teachers and staff “know where they are going.”
“Every day I come to school really excited to be there and ready to learn. Somehow my teacher, Mr. Howe, makes learning even more entertaining and fun, but still in a way where we can learn so much,” Kayla Bogira said. “Every teacher at Kingsley is an important part of Kingsley, and that is what makes Kingsley so amazing.”
Unknowns surround Lincolnwood Elementary School
Several Lincolnwood parents filled the front rows of District 65’s meeting room for each hearing wearing blue sweatshirts that read “LWD loves Kingsley.” On the back, the sweatshirts read “Low scorecards. High hopes.”
Jess Loftus, Kingsley’s PTA president, said she was “almost brought to tears” by the outfits. She added that the district’s PTA Council — which includes every school’s PTA — is “working closely” together to ease families’ transitions because “we’re all being impacted.”
Both Lincolnwood and Kingsley made it to the final round of deliberations as the board considered school closure scenarios. While Lincolnwood will remain open, it could be reconsidered for closure following the 2026-27 school year, depending on the district’s financial and building capacity status in October. The board included this staggered closure condition in the resolution to close Kingsley at its Jan. 9 meeting.
For Kingsley parent Jackie Ogawa, whose new assigned school is Lincolnwood, a potential staggered closure was her “worst fear” because that would mean her kids have to move twice.
“It puts us in a hard situation with permissive transfers of ‘Do we abandon the neighbors putting Lincolnwood in greater jeopardy of being closed next year?’” Ogawa said.
The conclusion of a months-long process
After starting with 33 potential closure scenarios in September, the District 65 board narrowed its options down to four contenders: Kingsley and Willard Elementary Schools, Kingsley and Lincolnwood, only Kingsley and only Lincolnwood. Each of the scenarios also included closing Willard’s Two-Way Immersion program.
These closures and consolidations are part of the district’s Structural Deficit Reduction Plan which aims to help the district reach financial sustainability.
The board failed to move forward with any closures across two votes in November and December, either gridlocking or failing to pass each of the final four scenarios.
The tie votes were made possible after former board member Omar Salem resigned at the beginning of November, citing an opportunity that took his family out of Evanston.
In December, Board President Patricia S. Anderson and Board Vice President Nichole Pinkard announced the board would not move forward with closures beyond Bessie Rhodes if it did not appoint its seventh member that month.
At the board’s Dec.15 meeting, the district announced it was closing Willard’s TWI program separate from any school closures.
On Jan. 7, with the board still lacking its seventh member, Anderson and Pinkard announced a surprise vote scheduled for Jan. 9. This time, the resolution was to close just Kingsley and reevaluate closing Lincolnwood in October 2026 if the district failed to meet specific financial and building capacity requirements.
The board unanimously passed the resolution, beginning the official process to close Kingsley which concluded at Thursday’s meeting. At Thursday’s meeting, Board member Andrew Wymer criticized the prolonged process.
“I want to own, as one of the six members of this board, that we were supposed to make the decision to do this on Nov. 17,” he said. “That was our deadline, and they’re making that decision that would get us to this point on Jan. 9, we’ve put the Kingsley community and the admin in a difficult place here.”
Following Thursday’s vote, several board members emphasized that more work lies ahead to ensure smooth transitions for families and a strong path forward for the district.
Anderson said this is an opportunity to “rebuild trust” between the community, the administration and school board.
“I’m excited about all of the comments from the community, about the wealth of ideas that are coming from the community,” she said. “I think we can use that as a starting point.”
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