Ugg! We as Evanstonians like to say we are helping the marginalized but here we go again hurting families by removing an affordable child care program. A 3:30 pick up won't work for a majority of working families...so then what? We have kids alone? roaming the streets? What about meals? This political climate is (nationally and locally) is just more than I can handle...Ugg...Just Ugg!
Not to mention, the staff that is utilized over the summer are also working the regular school year and how folks support their own families. While there has been an hourly pay rate increase for the sacc staff, ending the entire summer program does not make a dent in the structural deficit. I'm aggravated by this district always looking for a work around to avoid addressing the increasingly top heavy admin. I believe the community has spoken to this time and again, yet the cuts always seem to harm the families being served. Everyone can see the giant elephant in the room. Appalling.
It is also important to note that for the SACC workers, the summer pay is critical to their financial well-being. If we stop paying them for the summer, many will be forced to seek other jobs.
Pulling out my calculator, $142,000 costs divided by 60 kids = about $2,400 or $300 per week. The market will bear a price $500. Just raise the price and serve people better, it's not hard.
You will see exactly whey the Democrats are so feckless by what I predict will happen on Monday: the 'equity' ideologues will say increasing the costs is inequitable, so we need to shut the whole program down.
This reminds me of a discussion the board had a couple of years ago on Right at School aftercare vs the D65 in house service. If I remember correctly they were upset that more families were sending their kids to Right at School rather than the D65 option.
Joey--without any evidence--said something like, "I bet if you go into the D65 after care that it is all 'black and brown' kids while Right at School is all white."
At our elementary school this was utterly ridiculous. Both were fully integrated and the reason more families were choosing Right at School was that it was more flexible. You can send your kid one day, five days, one day a month, it doesn't matter. The D65 option required you commit to either 3 or 5 days for the whole term with zero flexibility.
So people who have erratic work schedules by far perferred the Right at School flexibility.
Joey and his 'equity' cronies didn't have a clue about this because their narrow ideology makes it impossible to understand the circumstances of many in the district.
If you want to get extra equitable, you can charge $450 a week and give a discounted rate to families who already qualify for free lunch. If it sells out fast at the higher price, add a teacher and bump the group size to 80. This stuff is so basic, it hurts.
Until I saw this post, I had forgotten how spots at City of Evanston camps go the morning of registration like they were Taylor Swift tickets. Not knowing this, and thinking that the City offered readily accessible, similar quality programs is the fruit of having a ton of administrators who don't live in Evanston.
It made me think of the exporting of athletics to the City. Obviously no one recognized that for most of the out of school sports, the City is basically a landlord for athletic fields and they don't actually run the programs. FAAM/ETHS feeder program- basketball, EBSA - baseball/softball, AYSO/Team Evanston/FC Lakeshore/Jabhat - soccer, and so forth.
Our family's experience with sports activities run by the City is that they were of pretty dubious value. Maybe others feel differently.
Net result - things that are not equivalent get passed off as being the same.
It’s crazy to me that D65 sports programs are not free. For the past few years you could just sign your kid up through school and they could play. The organization was kind of a mess but kids played. And it meant anyone could play regardless of whether they could pay. Now it’s through the park district (at least for the younger elementary kids I am not sure about 3rd-5th) with a fee. And the middle school teams have a fee to participate too. The district spent tens of thousands on catered meals for administrators and now some kids can’t play sports because it’s no longer free.
Check out the City of Evanston Immersion in the Arts program at Orrington School. Precare from 7:30 am and campers go to the citywide post care at Lincolnwood til 6pm. Price point isnt much higher than Kid City and we are highly structured. We add additional sections if we fill up on the first day of registration. Guest artists, field trips and Lighthouse Beach every Friday.
It's like - I get it - there are administrative costs to running a program like this and they probably want to argue they can't do that anymore. But just bake that into the budget. For well off parents, just pass through the cost and for the poor kids let the state subsidize it.
I will chime in with an additional consideration: Skokie families in D65 get charged non-resident prices for City of Evanston summer camps. If your child would like to attend summer camp with their school friends, they have to pay extra (an extra that prices some families out). Affected parents asked the Parks District to change this (like they did for the beaches) and got a flat ‘no.’ I suspect that if the City worked with D65 and looked into it further, they’d find that offering resident prices to the limited number of Skokie families in D65 would be financially feasible.
Evanston residents also pay the non-resident fee for Skokie parks & rec programs, because they are funded by residents’ taxes, correct? I assume the rationale is that residents have already paid part of their tuition in the form of taxes while non-residents have not. I would welcome a reciprocity arrangement in which Evanston and Skokie programs extend resident status to one another—but since the whole program faces elimination, additional discounts are probably a non-starter right now.
No no, you’re right Kasey. For the D65-run camps, the price is the same for Skokie D65 families. I’m referring only to the Parks and Recs camps, run by the city. I think resident-fee reciprocity would make sense if Evanston kids were attending Skokie schools. But the tax issue that you raise still holds: Skokie D65 families pay D65 school taxes but not Evanston parks and rec taxes. If they eliminate the D65 summer camp, I think the case is even stronger for allowing D65 Skokie families to attend Evanston camps with their school friends at resident prices, since there would now be no same-cost option for all D65 kids.
I don’t live in Skokie but we have done quite a few Skokie camps just because I find them better organized and run and the non resident rate for Skokie camps is pretty similar to the resident rate for Evanston camps in a lot of cases.
Yes, the park district ones. My kid has done summer and school break camps and we’ve had good experiences and I’ve found them to be the same cost or even cheaper than Evanston. Obviously you have to have the time and transportation to get your kid to Skokie.
I appreciate this spreadsheet. Can I humbly ask for a 'location' column? Some of them are self-explanatory--but the City runs camps from Lovelace Park all the way down to the South.
That was a golden moment. All of this "reimagining" has made this district less accessible than ever. That's a big part of the issue. Everything is automated by email, and human contact is non existant. Nobody, parents or staff, are having their hands held or are being catered to. I feel misled by the presentation regarding SACC. The numbers are not necessarily inaccurate, but the way the program works was very misleading and omitted information. Again, for all of the admin, the team can come up with a broader "reimagining" that is beneficial for ALL od THE STUDENTS instead of throwing vague ideas at the wall to see what sticks.
Yeah that was a total joke. I know so many parents, myself included that would beg to differ about “white glove service”. ignored emails, ignored calls, ignored in person waiting to speak to administrators. Pretty incompetent. Maybe that’s what “white glove service” means?? In that case we would love to discontinue that!
They kicked it down the road and will decide some time in the future.
Which is great! Given the uncertainty, now parents have to pay deposits for other camps to cover their bases and forfeit them if D65 votes to keep the program!
I think we can chalk this one up to Turner's incompetence. According to the Roundtable a bunch of parents showed up to public comment and mentioned the obvious: raise the fees slightly. To which the board said, "hey, that sounds like a good idea, Turner run the numbers." As if it isn't the most obvious solution.
Turner should have been prepared with that scenario last night so they could put this to bed. Instead parents are going to have to scramble with the City camps, put down deposits and be out of money.
I guess I would say if the argument is that there are adequate city offerings that could replace D65 you would think they would align the decision time to occur before Evanston's registration.
We've known there has been an operating deficit for months. The savings numbers for axing the D65 camp probably haven't changed in months. Why couldn't they have had this wrapped up by December or early January?
To be honest, an outlay of near $2k is a lot for many. Times it by two or three kids. I don’t know what kind of job I’d have to get to be able to spend $500 a week on summer camp for 10 weeks…that’s like lottery winnings money.
I will complain to anyone who will listen that the world we live in now is incredibly hostile to parents and families - this is one example. I only have a single kid, so I can painfully eat the $2,000 for the summer but yeah, if you have 2+ kids, it gets really expensive really quickly. I can't afford to eat $3,000 or more for the expensive camps.
If you go through the document, it does say that for free lunch kids, the State will subsidize it at $46/day, which is around $1800 for the whole summer.
But it's the middle class that's getting pinched the hardest with stuff like this...
Seriously. No one wants to spend money to help families even exist. Which begs the question why do they want to force people to have more kids they don’t want to spend money on to grow up healthy, fed, watched, and educated. I tell all the 20+ year olds I know to really think if having kids even makes sense in this world. I mean, it’s too late for us, but if I can help one other person be able to actually take a vacation once in ten years and to buy any piece of furniture or appliance at all brand new and not used, I gotta do it.
Also, didn't they change to a fee based summer school last year? Which is also very unfortunate but I realize it is necessary. However, that is another change that also hurts families and students that probably could have been saved if there was better oversight.
Might have been longer than that. I've done it two years, at least, and paid around 1800 both years. The year before that I did the CoE ones, which were a disaster to schedule around.
Ugg! We as Evanstonians like to say we are helping the marginalized but here we go again hurting families by removing an affordable child care program. A 3:30 pick up won't work for a majority of working families...so then what? We have kids alone? roaming the streets? What about meals? This political climate is (nationally and locally) is just more than I can handle...Ugg...Just Ugg!
Not to mention, the staff that is utilized over the summer are also working the regular school year and how folks support their own families. While there has been an hourly pay rate increase for the sacc staff, ending the entire summer program does not make a dent in the structural deficit. I'm aggravated by this district always looking for a work around to avoid addressing the increasingly top heavy admin. I believe the community has spoken to this time and again, yet the cuts always seem to harm the families being served. Everyone can see the giant elephant in the room. Appalling.
$54,000 is about 1/3 of an administrative position; they are really trying to nickel and dime this.
It is also important to note that for the SACC workers, the summer pay is critical to their financial well-being. If we stop paying them for the summer, many will be forced to seek other jobs.
Is there one person in D65 or the board who has ever taken even an undergraduate level finance course? Just one?
Pulling out my calculator, $142,000 costs divided by 60 kids = about $2,400 or $300 per week. The market will bear a price $500. Just raise the price and serve people better, it's not hard.
These are the things we democrats need to do and then shout loudly from the rooftops that we are doing them.
You will see exactly whey the Democrats are so feckless by what I predict will happen on Monday: the 'equity' ideologues will say increasing the costs is inequitable, so we need to shut the whole program down.
This reminds me of a discussion the board had a couple of years ago on Right at School aftercare vs the D65 in house service. If I remember correctly they were upset that more families were sending their kids to Right at School rather than the D65 option.
Joey--without any evidence--said something like, "I bet if you go into the D65 after care that it is all 'black and brown' kids while Right at School is all white."
At our elementary school this was utterly ridiculous. Both were fully integrated and the reason more families were choosing Right at School was that it was more flexible. You can send your kid one day, five days, one day a month, it doesn't matter. The D65 option required you commit to either 3 or 5 days for the whole term with zero flexibility.
So people who have erratic work schedules by far perferred the Right at School flexibility.
Joey and his 'equity' cronies didn't have a clue about this because their narrow ideology makes it impossible to understand the circumstances of many in the district.
I sent my kid to Right at School and didn't even know there was a D65 option!
Just more results in every way
If you want to get extra equitable, you can charge $450 a week and give a discounted rate to families who already qualify for free lunch. If it sells out fast at the higher price, add a teacher and bump the group size to 80. This stuff is so basic, it hurts.
Until I saw this post, I had forgotten how spots at City of Evanston camps go the morning of registration like they were Taylor Swift tickets. Not knowing this, and thinking that the City offered readily accessible, similar quality programs is the fruit of having a ton of administrators who don't live in Evanston.
It made me think of the exporting of athletics to the City. Obviously no one recognized that for most of the out of school sports, the City is basically a landlord for athletic fields and they don't actually run the programs. FAAM/ETHS feeder program- basketball, EBSA - baseball/softball, AYSO/Team Evanston/FC Lakeshore/Jabhat - soccer, and so forth.
Our family's experience with sports activities run by the City is that they were of pretty dubious value. Maybe others feel differently.
Net result - things that are not equivalent get passed off as being the same.
It’s crazy to me that D65 sports programs are not free. For the past few years you could just sign your kid up through school and they could play. The organization was kind of a mess but kids played. And it meant anyone could play regardless of whether they could pay. Now it’s through the park district (at least for the younger elementary kids I am not sure about 3rd-5th) with a fee. And the middle school teams have a fee to participate too. The district spent tens of thousands on catered meals for administrators and now some kids can’t play sports because it’s no longer free.
Check out the City of Evanston Immersion in the Arts program at Orrington School. Precare from 7:30 am and campers go to the citywide post care at Lincolnwood til 6pm. Price point isnt much higher than Kid City and we are highly structured. We add additional sections if we fill up on the first day of registration. Guest artists, field trips and Lighthouse Beach every Friday.
!!!!
How is this an equitable solution to cut this when they are leaving themselves space to not cut administrative positions.
It's like - I get it - there are administrative costs to running a program like this and they probably want to argue they can't do that anymore. But just bake that into the budget. For well off parents, just pass through the cost and for the poor kids let the state subsidize it.
I will chime in with an additional consideration: Skokie families in D65 get charged non-resident prices for City of Evanston summer camps. If your child would like to attend summer camp with their school friends, they have to pay extra (an extra that prices some families out). Affected parents asked the Parks District to change this (like they did for the beaches) and got a flat ‘no.’ I suspect that if the City worked with D65 and looked into it further, they’d find that offering resident prices to the limited number of Skokie families in D65 would be financially feasible.
Evanston residents also pay the non-resident fee for Skokie parks & rec programs, because they are funded by residents’ taxes, correct? I assume the rationale is that residents have already paid part of their tuition in the form of taxes while non-residents have not. I would welcome a reciprocity arrangement in which Evanston and Skokie programs extend resident status to one another—but since the whole program faces elimination, additional discounts are probably a non-starter right now.
Sorry, I take your point: this is D65 program, not a parks & rec one. My mistake! 🙏
No no, you’re right Kasey. For the D65-run camps, the price is the same for Skokie D65 families. I’m referring only to the Parks and Recs camps, run by the city. I think resident-fee reciprocity would make sense if Evanston kids were attending Skokie schools. But the tax issue that you raise still holds: Skokie D65 families pay D65 school taxes but not Evanston parks and rec taxes. If they eliminate the D65 summer camp, I think the case is even stronger for allowing D65 Skokie families to attend Evanston camps with their school friends at resident prices, since there would now be no same-cost option for all D65 kids.
I don’t live in Skokie but we have done quite a few Skokie camps just because I find them better organized and run and the non resident rate for Skokie camps is pretty similar to the resident rate for Evanston camps in a lot of cases.
The Park district ones? Let me add to my spreadsheet
Yes, the park district ones. My kid has done summer and school break camps and we’ve had good experiences and I’ve found them to be the same cost or even cheaper than Evanston. Obviously you have to have the time and transportation to get your kid to Skokie.
I appreciate this spreadsheet. Can I humbly ask for a 'location' column? Some of them are self-explanatory--but the City runs camps from Lovelace Park all the way down to the South.
I loved the “white glove service” comment from Turner; ask any teacher who has had to deal with JEH in the last five years about their experience.
That was a golden moment. All of this "reimagining" has made this district less accessible than ever. That's a big part of the issue. Everything is automated by email, and human contact is non existant. Nobody, parents or staff, are having their hands held or are being catered to. I feel misled by the presentation regarding SACC. The numbers are not necessarily inaccurate, but the way the program works was very misleading and omitted information. Again, for all of the admin, the team can come up with a broader "reimagining" that is beneficial for ALL od THE STUDENTS instead of throwing vague ideas at the wall to see what sticks.
Yeah that was a total joke. I know so many parents, myself included that would beg to differ about “white glove service”. ignored emails, ignored calls, ignored in person waiting to speak to administrators. Pretty incompetent. Maybe that’s what “white glove service” means?? In that case we would love to discontinue that!
what was the verdict? We're summer camp planning now!
They kicked it down the road and will decide some time in the future.
Which is great! Given the uncertainty, now parents have to pay deposits for other camps to cover their bases and forfeit them if D65 votes to keep the program!
I think we can chalk this one up to Turner's incompetence. According to the Roundtable a bunch of parents showed up to public comment and mentioned the obvious: raise the fees slightly. To which the board said, "hey, that sounds like a good idea, Turner run the numbers." As if it isn't the most obvious solution.
Turner should have been prepared with that scenario last night so they could put this to bed. Instead parents are going to have to scramble with the City camps, put down deposits and be out of money.
https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/01/28/district-65-board-approves-13-3-million-in-cuts-for-next-school-year/
To be fair, it wasn't brought to the board as an agenda item with a vote attached, it was just an informational item.
I guess I would say if the argument is that there are adequate city offerings that could replace D65 you would think they would align the decision time to occur before Evanston's registration.
We've known there has been an operating deficit for months. The savings numbers for axing the D65 camp probably haven't changed in months. Why couldn't they have had this wrapped up by December or early January?
I complained so much about this back in October that waiting until January took away all their optionality. They could've approved this all back then.
To be honest, an outlay of near $2k is a lot for many. Times it by two or three kids. I don’t know what kind of job I’d have to get to be able to spend $500 a week on summer camp for 10 weeks…that’s like lottery winnings money.
I will complain to anyone who will listen that the world we live in now is incredibly hostile to parents and families - this is one example. I only have a single kid, so I can painfully eat the $2,000 for the summer but yeah, if you have 2+ kids, it gets really expensive really quickly. I can't afford to eat $3,000 or more for the expensive camps.
If you go through the document, it does say that for free lunch kids, the State will subsidize it at $46/day, which is around $1800 for the whole summer.
But it's the middle class that's getting pinched the hardest with stuff like this...
Seriously. No one wants to spend money to help families even exist. Which begs the question why do they want to force people to have more kids they don’t want to spend money on to grow up healthy, fed, watched, and educated. I tell all the 20+ year olds I know to really think if having kids even makes sense in this world. I mean, it’s too late for us, but if I can help one other person be able to actually take a vacation once in ten years and to buy any piece of furniture or appliance at all brand new and not used, I gotta do it.
Also, didn't they change to a fee based summer school last year? Which is also very unfortunate but I realize it is necessary. However, that is another change that also hurts families and students that probably could have been saved if there was better oversight.
Might have been longer than that. I've done it two years, at least, and paid around 1800 both years. The year before that I did the CoE ones, which were a disaster to schedule around.