In September, Evanston/Skokie School District 65 staff presented 33 school closure scenarios to the District 65 Board of Education, aiming to execute the third phase of the district’s Structural Deficit Reduction Plan.
Phase 3, which officially began in February 2025, looks to slash between $10 to $15 million from the district’s budget to secure long-term financial sustainability. The district previously reduced its spending by $6.5 million and $13.3 million during Phases 1 and 2, respectively.
In January, after months of deliberation, the board unanimously voted to close Kingsley Elementary School in addition to Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies after the current school year. That month, the board also voted 5-1 to terminate Willard Elementary School’s Two-Way Immersion Program.
Kingsley’s closure resolution also requires the board to reconsider closing Lincolnwood Elementary School following the 2026-27 school year, depending on the district’s financial and building capacity status in October.
To better understand how District 65 parents currently feel about the district’s school closure and consolidation process, The Daily convened a focus group with eight parents to discuss the district’s recent decisions and their impacts on Evanston families.
Participants were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of declarative statements and then were given the opportunity to discuss their responses with other parents.
Responses have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Parents criticize opportunities to provide community feedback
In April, following the launch of Phase 3, the district held a series of sessions for community members to share their desired criteria for the school closure and consolidation process. The most common priorities included school walkability and maintenance. According to administrators, the feedback helped inform the district’s decisionmaking.
Also in April, three SDRP subcommittees — focused on district finances, facilities and student programming — were formed and began meeting to generate categories on which the district aimed to base its September scenario proposals. The categories and their weightings were first presented at a District 65 board meeting in June. The categories with the most weight were geography at 32% and equity at 22%, followed closely by building cost at 21%.
Following the initial scenario proposals, the district held three school closure feedback meetings to hear from community members. At the meetings, parents from across the district raised concerns over potential cuts to programming, credibility issues and potential impacts on students’ academic performance and mental health.
Following the November resignation of former board member Omar Salem, board leadership announced in early December it would vote to move forward with school closures if the vacant seat was filled by the end of the month. However, if the seventh member was appointed in January, board leadership said it would not take action to close schools before next school year. The board then backtracked on its decision and unanimously voted to close Kingsley in January, weeks before the new board member, Chris Van Nostrand, was appointed in February.
Alongside the two school closures, the district’s new Foster School will open for the 2026-27 school year following about two years of construction. The opening comes after decades of advocacy to return a neighborhood school to the historically and predominantly Black 5th Ward. The new school has the capacity to serve 600 K-5 students and will provide both an African Centered Curriculum and TWI.
THE DAILY: For those of you who said the district’s process lacked sufficient opportunities for community feedback, what was missing?
COLIN WINTERS: I was frankly hopeful we could get by with delaying things one more year, closing no schools and seeing if all the audits could come through first, (including) the special ed audit. I turned out to be entirely wrong because the special ed audit was a huge disappointment.
SHASKA DICE: I would say that with the opening of Foster and just the shift in enrollment over the years, I think we had to acknowledge that another school in addition to Bessie Rhodes might need to have been closed.
KELLY MCCABE: The reason why they wanted to close schools was not necessarily for the money, but it was so that enrollment at Foster would actually be feasible, which that’s fine, but they were never honest about that.
KATIE ARMISTEAD: If you look at the behavior of the administration over the past six months and view it through the lens of enrollment, not financial solutions, then the school closure debate and discussion makes a little bit more sense.
COLIN WINTERS: I think you’re completely correct. I just wish they’d said that and parents hadn’t turned against parents under different assumptions.
ANONYMOUS DISTRICT 65 PARENT: I gather that it was all above board, but I feel like I was offered multiple dates across multiple weeks about whether or not they could even vote again for next year.
And then all of a sudden, after the holidays and many other things that distract us as parents occurred, I came back up for air to find out where things were and found out that it was still okay to close one school. And there was also a way to set up the language in the (resolution) to leave a second school kind of dangling with somewhat ambiguous success criteria.
Parents reflect on Willard TWI termination, oppose revisiting Lincolnwood closure
In December, the district announced Willard’s TWI Program would end following the 2025-26 school year. Over 75 students are enrolled in the bilingual program, which brings together native Spanish and native English speakers to develop proficiency in both languages. The termination of Willard TWI was a component in each of the final four school closure scenarios the board considered in the fall. Current TWI students will be automatically assigned to the new Foster School to continue the program.
As part of the resolution to close Kingsley, the District 65 board included potentially discussing the closure of Lincolnwood in October if the district does not meet two goals, including reaching financial sustainability and maintaining an average K-5 building utilization rate of 75% or higher.
THE DAILY: For those who said no to the district potentially considering the closure of Lincolnwood, what concerns do you have?
KATIE ARMISTEAD: It’s setting up criteria that’s already — like you’re expected to fail in that criteria and really (do not have) a clear understanding of what the criteria means. And really, what can be done between January 19th and October relative to these issues? Not much.
ANONYMOUS DISTRICT 65 PARENT: The mathematical approach, the way that you use multiple non-similar quantitative measures and blend them into something called an index or a normalized score — it can be a powerful quantitative tool to inform a decision of this sort, but it’s just one tool. And the district kind of used it like this magic answering machine.
To think that we’re trying to do this in an environment where lots of folks don’t even have English as their native language, and we’re telling them that it’s rigorous, community-involved? It just feels so false, and it’s almost like gaslighting.
ALEXANDRA NEEDLE: Despite what was put in the resolution, among the people who attended the Kingsley closure session, there was still a lot of misunderstanding like, ‘Does Lincolnwood have to be at 75% capacity?’ ‘No, it means district-wide, there has to be 75% capacity.’ So there’s just these major decisions being made with unclear expectations across multiple parties, and it’s hard for everyone in the community to be actively engaged when everything’s just foggy for them.
KELLY MCCABE: I just keep coming back to the basic premise of, anything they’re doing should be to improve student outcomes and student achievement and education, right? And I feel like it’s never discussed. It’s never part of any of these conversations. I don’t know how they got so fixated on building utilization. I don’t even know, do we care about building utilization? Does that have any impact on student achievement? I don’t think anybody wants their kids crammed into classrooms at 90% capacity, or whatever their initial goal was.
Parents seek greater clarity on district transition process
In January, the district approved new attendance boundaries to account for school closures. Parents then received an email Feb. 4, notifying them about their initial school assignments for the 2026-27 school year. Families were given until March 1 to accept the assignment, file a permissive transfer request or request to return to their home school. Current TWI students at both Bessie Rhodes and Willard will be automatically assigned to Foster to continue the bilingual program but may request to return to their neighborhood school or stay at Willard.
For the over 800 students impacted by the school closures, the district has hosted a variety of meetings and open houses to ease the transition process. In February, the district held enrollment-support meetings at Kingsley and Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center to guide families through the school assignment process. On Feb. 4, a Foster School family meeting was held to discuss hopes and concerns for the new 5th Ward school. District staff were also present at Bessie Rhodes, Kingsley and Willard to answer questions about next steps of the transition process. Additional resources have been posted to the School Transition Hub page on the district website.
THE DAILY: For those who said no to the district doing a good job facilitating the transition, what’s missing from the process?
ALEXANDRA NEEDLE: Our child is pretty young, so we haven’t had a ton of experience at our school, but in talking with her teacher this year and her former teacher last year, the teachers are very much in the dark. And I think they’re the main part of what makes the school community special, and I think there’s a lot of concern in the community for the welfare of our teachers.
How are we going to retain our best teachers? How are we going to treat them with respect and compassion? There has just not been any care. Again, going back to that Kingsley closure support session, a lot of us vocalized that. And we’re repeatedly dismissed, and (the district) said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll talk to the teachers, this is not your concern,’ but it is.
SHASKA DICE: Now everything is on such a crunch that I assume that they have no idea who’s going where because the deadline was just made for (March 1) for permissive transfers. So they’re not going to really know about enrollment until April 1, which then puts everything into such a crunch in the last month of school, six weeks of school. It’s kind of crazy.
LIZ WOLENS: While some people can say, ‘Oh, it’s just a little thing. It was a form, and maybe the question was confusing,’ when tension is so high and concerns are so high, and there are options for people outside of the public school system in this town, every little thing matters. And in the corporate world, everyone says, ‘Everyone’s in sales.’ And I think here, everyone needs to think that everyone’s in communication and everyone’s in sales of the district, and I don’t feel like anyone’s selling me on the district these days.
KELLY MCCABE: Speaking to the transition process, I agree, in my mind, the teachers are the one saving grace for our family at least. It’s almost like two different worlds. There’s the administration, there’s the board — and in my mind, they’re a mess. But then there’s the actual school that you go to and the teachers that your kid interacts with. And we’ve had nothing but really super positive experiences. And for that reason, we’re staying.
But if the district and the administration don’t support the teachers — and I don’t believe that they are — and the teachers aren’t getting the communication and the clarity that they need — and I don’t believe that they do — it’s only a matter of time before that one saving grace that they have is also going to start to suffer.
KATIE ARMISTEAD: The consensus on this call and what I have heard in my experience in D65 is that everything wonderful about the district is because of the teachers and the schools and the families and the students. And it’s everything that we are struggling with is happening within (Joseph E. Hill Early Childhood Center), and I think this administration is not equipped to lead us right now. I think they haven’t been equipped to lead us, and I think that’s why we are repeatedly running into challenges. When you have weak leadership, who is not ready to meet the moment, you’re gonna run into constant challenges.
Majority of parents surveyed don’t trust district’s long-term vision
To conclude the focus group, The Daily asked parents a series of questions about District 65’s school board and administration, as well as their visions for the district’s future.
The Daily: What is your message to the District 65 board and administration?
COLIN WINTERS: I would say just we’re not your enemies, and I think there’s a lot of hostility between the board, the administration and the community. It shows up at the public hearings with lack of engagement, and I understand that they aren’t going to get into a back-and-forth with people, but I think it’s just endemic at this point.
This is not a community that’s divided, and there’s (not) people yelling (that) Creationism needs to be taught or anything like that. We’re 98% of the way together.
KELLY MCCABE: I don’t think this administration totally gets it — that there’s some serious structural issues and systemic issues. And they want to just kind of gloss over that or pretend they don’t exist or pretend like everything’s OK, and it’s not. There needs to be significant change and significant accountability put back into place that I don’t feel like is there right now.
But ultimately, I think my one takeaway message that I hope they get is this community is a gift. This community engagement that they have right now is a gift, and they shouldn’t squander it.
Isabella Kunc contributed reporting.
Email: [email protected]
X: @jdowb2005
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
X: @anavi_52
Related Stories:
— D65 voted to close Kingsley Elementary School. Here’s what parents want moving forward.
— ‘We’re making history’: Families express excitement, raise questions at Foster family meeting
