I'd like to point out that this important board meeting was held on the first night of Passover, when Jewish families would not be able to attend. I understand this was a regularly scheduled board meeting but they should have moved this discussion to another date.
Here's my guess on the decision to close Bessie Rhodes rather than move the school into another building as was previously suggested by Omar Salem: Since a large fraction of Bessie Rhodes students are from the 5th ward, if Bessie Rhodes stays open and those students stay at Bessie Rhodes, there won't be enough students for the 5th ward school. Of course, the board can't say that part out loud. Is that what's going on?
I don't know the specifics but my (uninformed) guess is that it is a couple things:
1) They got the ball rolling on closing the Bessie Rhodes building long before they "discovered" the budgetary overruns with the fifth ward school. It was part of the promise to have a "school in a school", so they got everything moving a while ago and just let the process keep going.
2) Bessie Rhodes is literally kitty corner from Walker (the protest went right by it)
3) I think the Board wants to basically have TWI decentralized and they discussed this quite a bit last night when they went through plans with the curriculum people. I think Sergio was saying the dream is to have TWI in every school, not just as a magnet school, so all Spanish language speakers have a walkable school. I think that's noble, but like .. is that even possible?
First, it is important that we realize the District is NOT proposing expanding TWI to middle school. In the past, they were explicitly talking about TWI expansion to middle school, but you will see that in the recent months or so, they have shifted to discussing "middle school dual language expansion" which is explicitly NOT the same thing as TWI expansion. Dual language is an umbrella term. TWI is a specific model of dual language programming. They are not being clear as to which dual language model they are proposing for middle school, but they ARE being clear that it is decidedly NOT TWI.
The shift is troubling for a number of reasons...
First, TWI is becoming widely recognized as the gold standard dual language model that has the best learning outcomes. To replace a TWI school (Bessie Rhodes) with dual language middle school is a downgrade that is not supported by the data.
Second, their admission process for dual language will emphasize their legal obligations to students learning English- fair, and we expect you to follow the law, but what about other children of color who are native English speakers or bilingual? Their selection process could exclude these kids from dual language middle school. You do not just become bilingual in 5th grade and not need to practice language going forward. You need at least 2h/day of both languages to maintain fluency. Given that there is some data to suggest that TWI can help narrow achievement gaps for Black children, how is this non-TWI program actually promoting equity? And how is closing a TWI school full of black and brown children meeting our equity goals? Further, how is ISOLATING our English language learning students into a middle school dual language program promoting equity?
Third, they are claiming they "dont need TWI anymore" in middle school because everyone is bilingual by 5th grade. Their own data on English learning students suggests otherwise.
Just looking at the K-5 TWI issue alone- another important point is that the data is very clear that having 2 TWI strands in a school (ie 2 classes of TWI for every grade) is superior to 1 strand. This is due to isolation and other issues faced by a one strand approach. Not all of our elementary schools with TWI even have 2 TWI strands right now- so you are now proposing closing a fully 2 strand school (Rhodes) and funneling some students into an inferior one strand school.
I could go on but this seems like a reasonable start to answering your questions.
Thank you for this comment! I also saw last night that they were talking about middle school TWI being outsourced to ETHS. It wasn't clear to me how that would exactly work.
Drop me an email tom@foiagras.com if you're interested in writing something longer - i'd be willing to publish. I know next to nothing about TWI vs dual language but I suspect my readers (and me) would like to be more educated.
Just curious, aren't they currently doing TWI middle school at Bessie Rhodes?
I have a fifth grader in a (non-Bessie Rhodes) TWI school and we keep on getting emails that seem to recruit our kids to go to Bessie Rhodes. Having talked to other 5th grade parents, I don't think there are any who are going to send their kids there and it is mostly due to the fact that the board is going to close the school.
I can imagine that the place is going to be a ghost town for the next two years.
The highest grade that TWI Bessie Rhodes (which was launched in fall of 2018) has reached at this point is 5th grade.
For Fall 2024-2025, Middle School TWI was supposed to launch at Bessie Rhodes. However, they have now done the bait and switch of saying that "middle school dual language" will launch at Bessie Rhodes, not TWI. So while they are expanding the program, they are not actually expanding TWI if that makes sense.
I predict they will have issues filling the program due to what you raise, and the fact that Bessie Rhodes families have lost almost all faith in the District at this point. Many Rhodes families are making the difficult choice to remove their kids entirely from the program and enter the general middle schools to avoid the chaos and lack of district level leadership they have suffered for years at this point.
I will also point out that at one of the most recent board meetings, board member Biz Lindsay-Ryan paved the way for blaming families for under-enrolled middle school dual language by saying something to the effect of we need families to trust the program and make the choice to enroll. So once again, we are in a situation of district and board created chaos and uncertainty, and we will blame families for these failures.
It seems really ridiculous that they aren’t doing the dual language expansion first at Haven or Nichols where you already have TWI feeder schools. Our kid probably would continue Spanish if this were the case.
I know the plan is to phase it in district wide (although I’m not holding my breath this would actually happen). But the way they are doing it—piloting at a school that is going to be closed—is a recipe for failure.
Maybe that is the whole point, from the standpoint of the cynics on the board.
I think a big issue is teacher recruitment for twi. Our kids have had some great teachers, but they have also had some really inexperienced teachers who aren’t the best. I don’t know if there is higher turnover for the twi teachers, but at our school it seems the English language teachers have been around longer.
I have another long post I've written but not published about how national politics has absolutely ruined Evanston politics. Instead of being a community working together, it's a lot of paranoia and national fights happening on the local level.
I’d like to see that. The D65 parents Facebook page is awash in controversy at the moment due to elements of the Equity Army posting Hamas slogans in the group.
There is very little difference between the MAGA yahoos showing up at school boards yapping about trans textbooks and the Evanston Equity Army.
Both groups are obsessed with pushing a narrow identity politics at the expense of rational thinking, tolerance, and focusing on the mission of actually educating kids on basic skills like maths and writing.
I think this is a national problem is all of the United States, that we've poisoned what used to be pretty boring school district elections with political activists (on both sides). One of the major challenges with electing activist candidates is that they're usually not capable administrators, so everything devolves into political street fights while the intended audience gets ignored. This is why I ban any national political conversation from this comment section - there are lots of places to have these national fights and our local institutions are not the right place.
Can we start a new Facebook or google group for D65 caregivers? That one is so toxic. I feel bad for the new parents to town that post very simple questions in that group and have to deal with those toxic "lady dog whistle" postings or now all the stuff about Hamas.
I'm not a facebook user but there are other facebook groups that are not quite as combative, I just don't know what they're called. Someone can chime in.
I have a question as I was not in Evanston for the mandarin program at rhodes but I would love to be filled in on the history of that program and the death of it. Or does it still exist? I found this quote from an article in 2017 and it sounds very familiar to the current situation...
"Bessie Rhodes parent Kuan-Ren Su said he was concerned that the school’s administration only contacted parents four days before Beardsley presented the TWI program to the board.
“I have strong feelings that (the program) was made very much in haste,” Su said. “From what I understand, it was discussed for the past couple of years, but for them to make a decision so quickly, there was a lack of communication with parents.”
Su said he sent his children to Bessie Rhodes for its Mandarin program.
He said he fears the Mandarin program will be eliminated because administrators have said it is unclear how the school’s other language programs could be affected by the implementation of the TWI program. Su added that he does not have anything against the proposed program, but he fears Spanish-speaking students would be prioritized over his children.
“Prior to receiving the email, we’ve been very happy to go to Bessie Rhodes,” Su said. “It’s kind of heartbreaking to hear that it’s going to change.”
Don't quote me on this but I believe there is some Mandarin instruction still at BR. The man quoted in the article is married to a current board member so her family was personally affected by the changes at BR several years ago.
You're in luck. BRGS' families have decided to protest ahead of Public Hearing 2 (May 6) and Public Hearing 3 (May 20). For these protests, we will forgo marching and just meet in front of JEH at 5:00 pm. There will be food, drinks and merry-making. These are family-friendly events and all supporters are welcome. https://yosoybessierhodes.com/2024/04/28/monday-may-6-protest-protesta-del-lunes-6-de-mayo/
That's a great question, Penny, thank you. All the PTAs in District 65 can do their own fundraising and spend funds on their own schools. Money left over from that fundraising goes back into the Pep One Fund kitty in July, and then gets redistributed shortly thereafter to all the PTAs using an equity algorithm for the next school year. While the BRGS PTA did their best to come up with a budget for the 2023-24 school year, we still have a number of ad hoc discretionary expenses that we couldn't anticipate, like planning a protest march. Your donation helps the PTA cover those unexpected costs, and any remainder will be returned to Pep One Fund. It also turns out that Bessie Rhodes is one of the greatest beneficiaries of this redistribution project because we have the highest percentage (66%) of low-income students in the District, so even a Pep One Fund donation ultimately helps Bessie Rhodes a great deal.
I'd like to point out that this important board meeting was held on the first night of Passover, when Jewish families would not be able to attend. I understand this was a regularly scheduled board meeting but they should have moved this discussion to another date.
Also notable was that ETHS did not have school yesterday and D65 did - they might want to line up the high holidays better.
Here's my guess on the decision to close Bessie Rhodes rather than move the school into another building as was previously suggested by Omar Salem: Since a large fraction of Bessie Rhodes students are from the 5th ward, if Bessie Rhodes stays open and those students stay at Bessie Rhodes, there won't be enough students for the 5th ward school. Of course, the board can't say that part out loud. Is that what's going on?
I don't know the specifics but my (uninformed) guess is that it is a couple things:
1) They got the ball rolling on closing the Bessie Rhodes building long before they "discovered" the budgetary overruns with the fifth ward school. It was part of the promise to have a "school in a school", so they got everything moving a while ago and just let the process keep going.
2) Bessie Rhodes is literally kitty corner from Walker (the protest went right by it)
3) I think the Board wants to basically have TWI decentralized and they discussed this quite a bit last night when they went through plans with the curriculum people. I think Sergio was saying the dream is to have TWI in every school, not just as a magnet school, so all Spanish language speakers have a walkable school. I think that's noble, but like .. is that even possible?
A couple of comments-
First, it is important that we realize the District is NOT proposing expanding TWI to middle school. In the past, they were explicitly talking about TWI expansion to middle school, but you will see that in the recent months or so, they have shifted to discussing "middle school dual language expansion" which is explicitly NOT the same thing as TWI expansion. Dual language is an umbrella term. TWI is a specific model of dual language programming. They are not being clear as to which dual language model they are proposing for middle school, but they ARE being clear that it is decidedly NOT TWI.
The shift is troubling for a number of reasons...
First, TWI is becoming widely recognized as the gold standard dual language model that has the best learning outcomes. To replace a TWI school (Bessie Rhodes) with dual language middle school is a downgrade that is not supported by the data.
Second, their admission process for dual language will emphasize their legal obligations to students learning English- fair, and we expect you to follow the law, but what about other children of color who are native English speakers or bilingual? Their selection process could exclude these kids from dual language middle school. You do not just become bilingual in 5th grade and not need to practice language going forward. You need at least 2h/day of both languages to maintain fluency. Given that there is some data to suggest that TWI can help narrow achievement gaps for Black children, how is this non-TWI program actually promoting equity? And how is closing a TWI school full of black and brown children meeting our equity goals? Further, how is ISOLATING our English language learning students into a middle school dual language program promoting equity?
Third, they are claiming they "dont need TWI anymore" in middle school because everyone is bilingual by 5th grade. Their own data on English learning students suggests otherwise.
Just looking at the K-5 TWI issue alone- another important point is that the data is very clear that having 2 TWI strands in a school (ie 2 classes of TWI for every grade) is superior to 1 strand. This is due to isolation and other issues faced by a one strand approach. Not all of our elementary schools with TWI even have 2 TWI strands right now- so you are now proposing closing a fully 2 strand school (Rhodes) and funneling some students into an inferior one strand school.
I could go on but this seems like a reasonable start to answering your questions.
Thank you for this comment! I also saw last night that they were talking about middle school TWI being outsourced to ETHS. It wasn't clear to me how that would exactly work.
Drop me an email tom@foiagras.com if you're interested in writing something longer - i'd be willing to publish. I know next to nothing about TWI vs dual language but I suspect my readers (and me) would like to be more educated.
Just curious, aren't they currently doing TWI middle school at Bessie Rhodes?
I have a fifth grader in a (non-Bessie Rhodes) TWI school and we keep on getting emails that seem to recruit our kids to go to Bessie Rhodes. Having talked to other 5th grade parents, I don't think there are any who are going to send their kids there and it is mostly due to the fact that the board is going to close the school.
I can imagine that the place is going to be a ghost town for the next two years.
The highest grade that TWI Bessie Rhodes (which was launched in fall of 2018) has reached at this point is 5th grade.
For Fall 2024-2025, Middle School TWI was supposed to launch at Bessie Rhodes. However, they have now done the bait and switch of saying that "middle school dual language" will launch at Bessie Rhodes, not TWI. So while they are expanding the program, they are not actually expanding TWI if that makes sense.
I predict they will have issues filling the program due to what you raise, and the fact that Bessie Rhodes families have lost almost all faith in the District at this point. Many Rhodes families are making the difficult choice to remove their kids entirely from the program and enter the general middle schools to avoid the chaos and lack of district level leadership they have suffered for years at this point.
I will also point out that at one of the most recent board meetings, board member Biz Lindsay-Ryan paved the way for blaming families for under-enrolled middle school dual language by saying something to the effect of we need families to trust the program and make the choice to enroll. So once again, we are in a situation of district and board created chaos and uncertainty, and we will blame families for these failures.
It seems really ridiculous that they aren’t doing the dual language expansion first at Haven or Nichols where you already have TWI feeder schools. Our kid probably would continue Spanish if this were the case.
I know the plan is to phase it in district wide (although I’m not holding my breath this would actually happen). But the way they are doing it—piloting at a school that is going to be closed—is a recipe for failure.
Maybe that is the whole point, from the standpoint of the cynics on the board.
I think a big issue is teacher recruitment for twi. Our kids have had some great teachers, but they have also had some really inexperienced teachers who aren’t the best. I don’t know if there is higher turnover for the twi teachers, but at our school it seems the English language teachers have been around longer.
Cynically, I think the D65 board stopped caring about TWI and the Hispanic community after the last presidential election changed who was in office.
I have another long post I've written but not published about how national politics has absolutely ruined Evanston politics. Instead of being a community working together, it's a lot of paranoia and national fights happening on the local level.
I’d like to see that. The D65 parents Facebook page is awash in controversy at the moment due to elements of the Equity Army posting Hamas slogans in the group.
There is very little difference between the MAGA yahoos showing up at school boards yapping about trans textbooks and the Evanston Equity Army.
Both groups are obsessed with pushing a narrow identity politics at the expense of rational thinking, tolerance, and focusing on the mission of actually educating kids on basic skills like maths and writing.
I think this is a national problem is all of the United States, that we've poisoned what used to be pretty boring school district elections with political activists (on both sides). One of the major challenges with electing activist candidates is that they're usually not capable administrators, so everything devolves into political street fights while the intended audience gets ignored. This is why I ban any national political conversation from this comment section - there are lots of places to have these national fights and our local institutions are not the right place.
Can we start a new Facebook or google group for D65 caregivers? That one is so toxic. I feel bad for the new parents to town that post very simple questions in that group and have to deal with those toxic "lady dog whistle" postings or now all the stuff about Hamas.
I'm not a facebook user but there are other facebook groups that are not quite as combative, I just don't know what they're called. Someone can chime in.
I have a question as I was not in Evanston for the mandarin program at rhodes but I would love to be filled in on the history of that program and the death of it. Or does it still exist? I found this quote from an article in 2017 and it sounds very familiar to the current situation...
"Bessie Rhodes parent Kuan-Ren Su said he was concerned that the school’s administration only contacted parents four days before Beardsley presented the TWI program to the board.
“I have strong feelings that (the program) was made very much in haste,” Su said. “From what I understand, it was discussed for the past couple of years, but for them to make a decision so quickly, there was a lack of communication with parents.”
Su said he sent his children to Bessie Rhodes for its Mandarin program.
He said he fears the Mandarin program will be eliminated because administrators have said it is unclear how the school’s other language programs could be affected by the implementation of the TWI program. Su added that he does not have anything against the proposed program, but he fears Spanish-speaking students would be prioritized over his children.
“Prior to receiving the email, we’ve been very happy to go to Bessie Rhodes,” Su said. “It’s kind of heartbreaking to hear that it’s going to change.”
From https://dailynorthwestern.com/2017/11/09/city/district-65-officials-propose-two-way-immersion-program-bessie-rhodes-school/
Its crazy that district 65 doesn't offer mandarin that I know of. Or does it?
Don't quote me on this but I believe there is some Mandarin instruction still at BR. The man quoted in the article is married to a current board member so her family was personally affected by the changes at BR several years ago.
Sounds like a good turnout! Hoping if there's another march that I can make it.
Thank you for your support, CB. Bessie Rhodes parents aren’t planning to hold another protest, but there are other ways that you can get involved: https://yosoybessierhodes.com/2024/02/14/get-involved/
Thank you again.
Dear CB,
You're in luck. BRGS' families have decided to protest ahead of Public Hearing 2 (May 6) and Public Hearing 3 (May 20). For these protests, we will forgo marching and just meet in front of JEH at 5:00 pm. There will be food, drinks and merry-making. These are family-friendly events and all supporters are welcome. https://yosoybessierhodes.com/2024/04/28/monday-may-6-protest-protesta-del-lunes-6-de-mayo/
I fully support Bessie Rhodes parents, but I was curious about the website which allows people to donate to the Bessie Rhodes PTA.
Would the donation actually go to Bessie Rhodes PTA or does it get sent to the district wide PTA fund?
I thought school PTAs couldn’t raise money for their own purposes.
That's a great question, Penny, thank you. All the PTAs in District 65 can do their own fundraising and spend funds on their own schools. Money left over from that fundraising goes back into the Pep One Fund kitty in July, and then gets redistributed shortly thereafter to all the PTAs using an equity algorithm for the next school year. While the BRGS PTA did their best to come up with a budget for the 2023-24 school year, we still have a number of ad hoc discretionary expenses that we couldn't anticipate, like planning a protest march. Your donation helps the PTA cover those unexpected costs, and any remainder will be returned to Pep One Fund. It also turns out that Bessie Rhodes is one of the greatest beneficiaries of this redistribution project because we have the highest percentage (66%) of low-income students in the District, so even a Pep One Fund donation ultimately helps Bessie Rhodes a great deal.
👀