As tensions continue to brew over which schools Evanston/Skokie School District 65 will close at the end of the school year, the Board of Education reduced its target Monday from closing three schools at the end of the year to two schools.
Parents showed up at the Board of Education meeting in force, rallying to protest the school closures the board is considering to balance the school district’s budget and deal with nearly a decade of reduced enrollment. Previous cost-reduction scenarios that have been shared with the Board pointed toward Lincolnwood and Kingsley Schools as the most likely options the district could close at the end of the year.
Susan Harkin, a consultant for Student Centered Services, the firm hired by the previous School Board to assist the school district in its deficit reduction plan, said her firm recommended that the Board close two schools to better utilize school occupancy rates.
According to Harkin, four District 65 elementary schools operate at capacities between 35% and 56%. Optimal school utilization rates ranges between 80% to 90%, she said.
“We acknowledge that school closures are inherently challenging decisions; however, given the district’s current utilization rates and financial outlook, these measures are both essential and prudent,” Harkin said.
Closing two schools would increase the average school occupancy rate from 58% to around 70% or 72%, according to Harkin.
School utilization isn’t the only metric the school district is considering when it comes to school closures, according to prior reporting.
Since late June, district administrators have said in community engagement meetings that the district created score cards of criteria for school closures. The most pressing matters include equity, walkability, building functionality and lastly, economic impact if the district were to sell a building.
Ever since the indictment of former D65 Superintendent Devon Horton earlier in October, however, public trust in the district has faded and the frustration of parents potentially impacted by school closures has reached a boiling point at times.
As the Board’s decision on school closures approaches, Washington School parent Jordan Stark organized a “Save Our Schools” rally outside of the Joseph E. Hill Early Childhood Center ahead of Monday’s board meeting. More than 50 people signed up to comment in a near 90-minute public comment session, most of them parents or teachers.
Stark characterized closing three schools as a “nuclear option,” and suggested the school district reconsider its financial picture before making a decision to close more schools, outside of the previously-planned closure of Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies, which will shut its doors permanently at the end of the year.
“The financial budget has swung wildly in the last few years, so the Board and the district need to regain the trust of every parent,” Stark said.
A few public commenters, some of them members of the district’s Facilities Subcommittee that gave a recommendation to the Board on which schools to close, spoke in favor of the district’s administration and the public meetings previously held.
Lindsey White, a mother of two students, one at Hill and another at Oakton, said the rally is a “slap in the face” to the committee members who volunteered their time and provided guidance in a publicly-shared manner.
“This SDR (structural deficit reduction) process has been community led, data driven and fair, and it has shown us that there are two schools that come up consistently in every scenario we are looking at to the Board… Every single new board member leading up to the election said that they were up to the task of closing schools… I don’t see anything that has changed now, except that we’ve heard very loud voices speaking out against the results of the data — the data that’s based on categories that our community created,” White said.
“Now that we know which schools are on the line, other voices may be loud in support of starting over, abandoning all the work we have done, or slowing down, but we need to move forward for this community together.”
School Board member Andrew Wymer put forth a non-binding motion to get a sense of how the Board felt about the recommendation and a Nov. 17 decision date to decide which schools to pursue closing. The motion passed on a 4-3 vote.
The Board also discussed sequential school closings, which means closing one school at the end of the school year and another at the end of next year.
Some board members said a prolonged school closure environment could further disrupt school operations, and also because some students could be introduced to new schools for each of the next two years, depending on where they live and if their school were to close. Board members did not make a final decision on the issue.
A binding vote won’t happen on Nov. 17, but will signal the start of a longer process of public hearings.
Previous scenarios presented by the district’s administration to the Board consistently put Kingsley and Lincolnwood as the two schools the board should consider closing. Only one scenario out of four adds Willard to the list of options for the Board to consider when it comes to closing up to two schools.