District 65 Board Votes to Close Bessie Rhodes

5-2 Vote Closes School, Board Members Omar Salem and Donna Wang Su Oppose Closure

Update: I made a bunch of typos including saying they’re closing the Fifth Ward school in the first paragraph. These typos are fixed. If you find any more, please comment. I wrote this at like 5am, so I’m a little groggy.

In a contentious meeting last night, the District 65 Board passed a resolution to close
Bessie Rhodes. The resolution was not made available to the public before the meeting, despite the Board referencing it several times.¹

Update 6/11/2024 9:38am: The District has made the resolution available this morning. You can read it here.

You can watch the meeting at the below link;

Shortly before the vote, Board Member Soo La Kim chimed in again citing “equity” as the reason for closing the school.

When I joined the Board it was to ensure equitable outcomes for all students .. part of difficult but necessary change for all of us and delaying that change is another way of getting in the way of a certain dream.

At this point, someone in the audience chimed in - you can’t hear it on YouTube video. It got pretty contentious and they ceased conversation and held the vote. The resolution to close the school passed 5-2, with opposition from Donna Wang Su and Omar Salem.

It’s not clear what “certain dream” she was talking about. The Fifth Ward School is going to break ground shortly (she said so herself) regardless of whether Bessie Rhodes closes or not. The Board was very explicit that they don’t have a plan going forward, suggesting a new Student Assignment Committee (SAP3).

SAP3 Will Solve All Problems

Before the vote and presumably to soften the landing, the District presented to the Board plans for a SAP3 committee. The Board emphasized multiple times that SAP3 will come up with “creative” and “exciting” solutions in light of closing Bessie Rhodes.

Regarding SAP1 and SAP2 outcomes - It’s not clear where these claims come from - the output of the SAP 1 committee was to build the Fifth Ward school. You can read the letter written by a member of the committee. In the abstract sense, you could claim that the new school ensures walkable schools but the second point makes no sense at all. There’s no evidence to suggest that the “most vulnerable” students are in the Fifth Ward or what “most vulnerable” means at all.²

There was no output from the SAP 2 committee and, in fact, the committee terminated in October 2023, when the Board was “shocked” by the financial challenges of the new school. Even during the last night’s meeting, Board Member Omar Salem added comments regarding this multiple times;

It feels disingenuous to say that SAP 2 made recommendations because we never really finished the process … we as a group never actually chose the one we wanted to present to the School Board

The Board didn’t address my Open Meetings Act complaint regarding the SAP committees. However, they noted they’re going to have “stakeholder groups” this time. It’s unclear if this committee will be held in public, however the Board suggested they would like monthly updates - further evidence that this is explicitly a subsidiary committee of the School Board and should be compliant with the OMA.

Dr. Horton Lied About the Fifth Ward School

After the vote, Board members all chimed in with various opinions. Board Member Hailpern at least acknowledged that Dr. Horton lied to them throughout the process, something that I’ve been writing about for more than a year now.

We we’re were lied to. We lost months of progress thinking we were building a K-8 school. We can’t ignore that. I don’t want to rehash it. We have to move on and do to the best plan for what we got. But, there is no love loss for me on the transition to our new superintendent because we were lied to. It was a huge error.

When I asked Cordogan-Clark when they were here before us if they had any idea if this Board wasn’t informed on the budget difference. Brian looked at us and said no. We did ask questions and weren’t given the information.

There was time to do some of this earlier. We didn’t get that opportunity. It was stolen from us.

Board President Sergio Hernandez agreed but wasn’t quite willing to call it a lie. ³

I agree. We were misinformed.

But he continues and closes again by citing vague claims about equity,

What I’ve learned in the nine years I’ve been here that we’re going to try to work and hold up to our values around equity and ensuring access to families as best as possible. This is a learning process for me, I’ve never been part of a school closing. It’s absolutely hard. Again, this is a learning moment and we have to be a lot more intention in engaging community as best as possible, including our most marginalized.

It’s nice that this was a learning opportunity for him - because the learning opportunity for the TWI and English Learners is effectively over. Every Board Member, Every Day, Whatever It Takes.

1. No other Evanston government entity does this: voting on resolutions and requiring media to ask for copies after the fact. Resolutions, especially like this, should be made available in the meeting agendas.

2. In fact, if you want to get technical on “most vulnerable” from a racial or socioeconomic lens, they should be looking at the 8th ward (by Howard St), not the 5th ward - where million dollar housing is currently for sale.

3. Recall that it was Mr. Hernandez that gave Dr. Horton a $10k fee waiver on his late fees regarding his repayment agreement.