After seeing his son thrive in Willard Elementary’s Two-Way Immersion program, Marc Zarefsky wanted Evanston/Skokie School District 65 to expand bilingual education programs, not scale them back. For Zarefsky, the district’s decision to close two bilingual programs was a step in the wrong direction, he said.
At the end of the academic year, District 65 will consolidate Willard’s TWI program and the Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies into two strands at the new Foster School. The decision comes as a growing body of research highlights the benefits of bilingual education.
According to a 2024 study by the American Educational Research Association, native English-speaking first- through fourth-grade students who are enrolled in a dual language immersion program score higher in reading and math than students who do not participate in bilingual education.
Additionally, bilingual education can provide social, academic and language-development benefits in both English and a secondary language, according to Bradley Hoot, the director of the linguistics and Spanish programs at DePaul University.
“Bilingual education is really great in basically every way,” Hoot said.
These programs are highly popular. According to a 2023 survey, about two-thirds of Latino families in the U.S. would send their kids to bilingual education programs if available.
Closing bilingual programs can come with serious detriments, including displacing the students into schools outside of their community, said Joao Goebel, the chair of ESL/bilingual education at National Louis University.
However, according to Goebel, maintaining bilingual education can come with higher costs and staffing challenges.
The district’s decision to consolidate the two programs was part of its effort to reduce its deficit spending. District 65 is currently embroiled in a heated debate over Phase 3 of its Structural Deficit Reduction Plan, which aims to cut $16 million to $18 million from the district’s budget by fiscal year 2030.
“The district needed to make some financial decisions about how many schools the district was going to operate and what was financially sustainable,” said Stacy Beardsley, District 65’s assistant superintendent of performance management and accountability.
The operational challenges in maintaining the programs were exacerbated by the fact that the district’s enrollment has been declining in recent years. Student enrollment fell from about 8,000 in 2018 to a little more than 6,000 in 2025, according to the district’s Illinois Report Card.
Still, parents like Zarefsky have consistently prioritized bilingual education and expressed dissatisfaction with the district’s decision to shutter the programs.
Zarefsky said bilingual education is an opportunity to showcase how Evanston “has always prided itself on its diversity.”
Some TWI parents, like Bevin Seifert, have had to make difficult decisions about where to enroll their children going forward. Seifert said her son will stay at Willard Elementary without the bilingual program even though he has been enrolled in the program for four years.
“I know we’re making a choice, but it feels like we’re being pushed off the train,” Seifert said.
Zarefsky, meanwhile, maintains that Willard’s TWI program is one of “the best things that the district has to offer.”
“I think it felt like there was a lot of looking at it from a pure numbers basis and really not looking at the impact,” Zarefsky said.
Email: [email protected]
Related Stories:
— D202 board looks to expand multilingual services
— ‘This is a tragedy’: Willard TWI families stand at a crossroads after D65 decides to shutter program
