At the Roycemore School’s commencement last Friday, Board of Trustees Chair Gillian Deinoff handed graduating seniors their diplomas, each bearing her signature.
Most of the seniors did not know her personally.
Just weeks earlier, as news of financial turmoil and leadership changes shook the over-century-old Evanston private school, some students were unsure who would sign their diplomas — or who was leading the school at all.
Normally, the head of school signs diplomas, according to a recent graduate who requested anonymity out of fear of retribution from the school. After former head of schools Christopher English’s departure in April, now-interim head of school Morgan Busbey stepped up to fill his shoes.
The uncertainty capped a turbulent final stretch for Roycemore’s Class of 2026, whose last weeks of high school unfolded alongside questions about the school’s finances, leadership and future.
Nestled on the corner of Davis Street and Ridge Avenue, Roycemore is facing a financial crisis that has alarmed students, parents, alumni and former faculty. Current and former community members shared concerns about transparency, turnover and financial decisions under English’s tenure.
The news broke the day of Roycemore’s Blue and Gold Gala, its annual scholarship fundraiser, in an April 24 email to the school community from then-Board of Trustees Chair Anthony Chambers. Chambers outlined Roycemore’s “inconsistent financial performance” and announced an immediate leadership change from English to Busbey.
According to the anonymous graduate, parents, teachers and alumni received information about the crisis before current students did.
“It’s like no one’s driving the bus,” the graduate said.
Information on English has not been available on the school website since late April. The 2025-26 school year was English’s fourth at Roycemore. Previously, he worked as a school administrator in Kansas and Utah.
According to the Evanston RoundTable, Deinoff replaced Chambers as board of trustees chair on May 6, and she told the RoundTable that the school had received two more pledges totaling $450,000 on May 15, in addition to a May 9 $500,000 donation.
Deinoff did not respond to requests for comment.
Currently, the school has two ongoing fundraising campaigns: the Teachers First Fund, which aims to raise a goal of $650,000 in remaining salary commitments for the 2025-2026 school year, and the Save Roycemore Campaign, which has a goal of $2 million. As of June 12, the Teachers First Fund has collected over $175,000 in donations, while the Save Roycemore Campaign has raised over $700,000.
The graduate said the crisis has affected each part of the school community differently.
According to Roycemore’s 2025-2026 academic profile, there were 63 students in the upper school and 19 in the graduating class. The school had 33 full and part-time faculty members, with 13 in the upper school. According to the RoundTable, which cited observations from a May 21 parents-only meeting, just 191 students were enrolled as of May 21 — with 177 enrolled for the next academic year.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the school had a total of 224 students in the 2023-2024 academic year. In its academic profile from that year, the school reported having an enrollment of 74 students in the upper school, with 12.8% of them being international students.
“Every grade level has a different issue in the moment,” the graduate said in an interview several weeks ago. “For seniors, it’s just making sure that we graduate. For juniors, it’s making sure they have a senior year somewhere stable.”
The student said they knew at least one family with multiple children at Roycemore that had already paid tuition for the following year, raising questions about what would happen to that money if the school closed.
As of Friday, the school’s next academic year remains uncertain.
A “shock” to the community
Weinberg first-year Keira Kim attended Roycemore from 2011 to 2025. According to her, the school has changed significantly over the last couple of years.
“They really tried to promote their hands-on, one-on-one teaching style, and how amazing the academics were,” Kim said. “But as the financial problems and the issues with hiring teachers got worse, they started to offer less classes and began to opt in for online AP courses with partnerships.”
In high school, she found it especially difficult to learn with “a revolving door of teachers.”
This faculty turnover made it difficult to develop and maintain bonds with teachers and have consistent learning experiences, she said.
“A lot of the original teachers who were carrying on that legacy that Roycemore really cares about, they were let go for budgeting reasons, so there was always that flag, like, ‘Oh, something’s going on,’” Kim said.
Still, the sudden announcement of such a financial crisis came as “a huge shock” to her. She said she heard about it from her former teachers, in addition to receiving emails sent out to alumni.
However, current students did not find out by email. According to the recent graduate, they found out last — after their parents, teachers and alumni had all received the news.
“Teachers were warning us that something was coming. However, they were concerned for their jobs and their job safety if they were to alert us before the board finally came out with the news,” the graduate said.
Faculty turnover and financial strain raised long-term concerns
Students felt uncertainty in the final weeks of school, echoing community concerns that some former faculty said have been growing for years.
One former teacher, who left Roycemore in 2024 after nearly a decade at the school and requested anonymity for fear of professional retribution, said she became concerned after some faculty members were allegedly given employment contracts, which they signed, and then later saw those contracts withdrawn by the school. She stayed through the tenure of four different heads of school, she said.
“Even though I had a contract, I was very concerned that it wouldn’t be honored,” the former teacher said.
The former teacher said she estimated that about 30% of faculty turned over in 2024 and said some additional employees were terminated this May, followed by another round of departures over the summer.
She said some longtime faculty became concerned when English continued spending, including offering signing bonuses to new teachers, despite what they understood to be the school’s tenuous financial situation.
In tax returns for the fiscal year ending June 2024 from ProPublica, the school reported a net income loss of $251,758 — with $8,113,151 in revenue and expenses of $8,364,909. English received $226,764 in compensation.
Additionally, Roycemore’s finances were also shaped by changes in enrollment. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the former teacher said Chinese international students made up a significant share of the upper school — at one point, she estimated, 20% to 30% — and many paid full tuition.
But after the pandemic and shifts in U.S.-China travel regulations and politics, that enrollment stream slowed, leaving the school more exposed financially, she said.
She said English discussed an initiative involving travel to China that faculty considered an attempt to rebuild or replace the lost revenue stream from international students. The teacher said staff repeatedly asked for clarification but never received a clear explanation.
The former teacher said the lack of clarity concerned faculty, especially because Roycemore’s former Mandarin teacher and International Family Liaison John Trowbridge was allegedly left out of the planning process and later let go by the school.
“We were all going to John and being like, ‘What do you know?’” the former teacher said. “John would be like, ‘I don’t know anything either.’”
Trowbridge declined to comment on his time at Roycemore.
Roycemore teacher and learning specialist Karen Byrnes, who has worked at the school for over three decades, said she had heard of only one trip taken by English to China, which she understood as an effort to foster a potential partnership with a school there.
Because Chinese students were traveling to the U.S. less during and after COVID-19, Byrnes said, exploring such a partnership seemed “quite natural.”
The former teacher said Roycemore had long operated in a financially precarious position. Faculty knew the school’s budget depended heavily on enrollment and tuition revenue, she said.
As such, according to the former teacher, Roycemore benefited during the pandemic because many families enrolled while public schools closed or struggled, including some buildings in Evanston/Skokie School District 65. But faculty worried that enrollment bump would not last once public schools reopened and stabilized, something she said proved true.
“The faculty, the entire time, was always a little bit worried about counting on that money,” she said.
Some faculty members questioned whether budget cuts were consistently applied, according to the former teacher. In some cases, she said, employees were told positions were being eliminated for financial reasons, only to see similar roles filled later under different titles.
Throughout her years at Roycemore under four different heads of school, financial pressure was not new, she said. But at least under former head of schools Adrianne Finley Odell, who preceded English, she said staff had a clearer understanding of the school’s position.
“She communicated to the staff,” the former teacher said. “It’s not like she told everybody every detail, but she would have meetings where she would lay out the finances on the table.”
What Roycemore has meant to students
Byrnes said the crisis has been painful because of what the school means to students who have struggled elsewhere.
She described Roycemore as a place where students with different learning needs can take college preparatory classes and where teachers shape curriculum around individual students.
“I know that they are committed to refunding the families that don’t want to stay,” Byrnes said. “I know that going forward, they have extended the deadline for people to decide whether they want to stay, so they’ve been fairly lenient.”
Currently, the school has extended the deadline to July 1 for families seeking refunds on prepaid tuition for next year. According to the RoundTable, that tuition has already been spent.
McCormick first-year Marko Maruszewski, who attended Roycemore for four years, said he still sees the school as a place that shaped his educational and personal growth. His graduating class had 19 students and the upper school had about 80 students total — a size that he said made the community especially close.
He pointed to Roycemore’s former partnership with Northwestern that allowed high school students to take classes at the University, including higher-level math and STEM courses.
His older brother, Nikola Maruszewski, (McCormick ‘25) participated in the program, he said, but it ended before Marko Maruszewski reached high school.
“That was a huge drawing point to Roycemore at that time,” he said.
Marko Maruszewski added Roycemore’s teachers and small school environment helped him succeed in ways he didn’t think would have been possible at a larger school.
While he was a school ambassador at Roycemore, Marko Maruszewski said, Busbey organized panels that he spoke on, adding he trusted her to guide the school through the crisis.
Still, he said the scale of the financial crisis left him with unanswered questions. In particular, he was surprised that the school did not initially have the financial resources to cover the end of the 2025-2026 school year.
“It just raises the question of: Where did (the money) go?” Marko Maruszewski said. “I don’t think we’ll probably ever know the answer to that.”
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @yong_yuhuang
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