Last updated Feb. 3 at 7:27 p.m.
Chris Van Nostrand (Kellogg ’09) has been appointed to the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Board of Education, Board President Patricia S. Anderson and Board Vice President Nichole Pinkard wrote in a message to families Monday. He will be sworn in at the board’s Feb. 9 Committee of the Whole meeting, according to their letter.
April Jordan, the district’s regional superintendent, informed the board of her decision earlier in the day, the board’s leadership wrote.
“We believe that Chris’s perspective as a D65 parent and his administrative experience will be extremely beneficial to our governance discussions,” Anderson and Pinkard wrote.
Van Nostrand will fill the seat vacated by former Board member Omar Salem in November and serve for the remainder of his term, which ends in April 2027. Salem stepped down, citing a “unique opportunity” taking his family out of Evanston for several months. Salem announced his resignation in a Nov. 2 letter published by the Evanston RoundTable.
The parent of two District 65 students and founder of Strength Wise Barbell, Van Nostrand was the sixth runner-up for the District 65 board in the April 2025 municipal election, which elected four new members.
“The most unbiased and democratic approach to fill the vacant seat, and still honor the voice of the community, was to rely on the 2025 school board election results and pair that information with those who formally applied with the Evanston-Skokie School District 65 Board of Education to fill the seat,” Jordan wrote in a Tuesday statement to The Daily.
Van Nostrand focused his April campaign on improving students’ experience amid the district’s budget shortfall.
In a Monday statement to The Daily, Van Nostrand called being able to serve on the District 65 board a “privilege.”
“We have a lot of work to do and a long road ahead, but I’m convinced that if we work together, we can create a financially sustainable school district centered on academic excellence,” he wrote.
Prior to founding his fitness business, Van Nostrand worked in higher education marketing and admissions at Northwestern and University of California, Berkeley. He studied political science at Kenyon College and earned his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.
Van Nostrand will begin his time on the board as the District 65 community navigates a time of transition.
Following the 2025-26 school year, Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies, Kingsley Elementary School and Willard Elementary School’s Two-Way Immersion program will close, and Foster School is slated to open this fall, implementing new school boundaries.
The district has already laid out its transition plan, including options for families to apply for return to home school and permissive transfer requests to attend a school different than the one assigned to them. Families will be sent their school assignments the week of Feb. 2 and have until March 1 to apply for transfers. The district is also holding open houses in February and March for each school as an opportunity for families to see their options before making final decisions.
However, Kingsley and Willard community members still have questions about what the process looks like for them, which started being discussed at district-led community meetings throughout January.
The board voted to close both Kingsley and Willard’s TWI program in January. The unanimous vote to close Kingsley came after the six-member board failed to approve one of its final four school closure scenarios across two votes in the fall.
The closure resolution also includes the condition that the board revisit the closure of Lincolnwood Elementary School in October 2026 if the district fails to meet certain financial stability and building capacity requirements.
In a 5-1 vote at its Jan. 26 meeting, board members made the shuttering of Willard’s TWI program official, following a district announcement of its closure at the board’s Dec. 15 meeting. The program’s closure was previously a possibility included in every aforementioned closure scenario.
These closures and program consolidations are cost-cutting measures part of the district’s Structural Deficit Reduction Plan, which aims to help the district reach fiscal sustainability.
Jordan’s decision comes on the last day of ISBE’s deadline to name a seventh member to the District 65 board.
Per Illinois School Code, a board has 60 days after a resignation — for District 65, until Jan. 3 — to name a board member to a vacant seat before the district’s ISBE regional superintendent steps in. The ISBE liaison then has 30 days after the district’s deadline to name a new member.
The board received 28 applications for the seat, including Van Nostrand, according to reporting from Evanston Now. In three closed-door sessions held to deliberate over candidates, the board failed to choose a seventh member.
“Chris has shared his excitement in joining the school board, and we look forward to working with him to promote an equitable and high quality education for every student in District 65,” Anderson and Pinkard wrote.
Clarification: This story has been updated to include a statement from April Jordan.
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Related Stories:
— Kingsley parents express concerns about district’s future at community engagement meetings
— D65 board votes 5-1 to close Willard TWI program
— Q&A: D65 candidate Chris Van Nostrand shares academic rigor, clear communication goals
