This made national headlines this AM because school closures is a national story right now. For all the quotes from board members about equity, this was the national headline: “Board votes to close only bilingual school in north suburban Chicago district..”
My sense from following closing school stories is there are board members in your district who are trying to right perceived wrongs that happened decades ago through current day standards and it is like pushing a square peg in a round hole. No school district with segregated housing got this right, to be fair, or has found a great solution. Families benefit from community schools they can walk to, but kids benefit from integration, schools that offer programs that attract families, and districts that are solvent.
I think districts will be best served by planning for the students they have now and are projected to have in the next few years. It is imperfect, but government is imperfect. Nationally, Black & White majority districts are facing growing Latino populations and the attention to that reality & what they may need is slower than one would hope.
This situation is so sad for the affected families. It will not go away just because board members hope it wills
I’d love to read more about the way other cities with similar histories of segregated housing have addressed this dilemma, either mistakes to learn from or examples to follow.
Hey folks - don't be offended but this is too personal in terms of criticism than I like in the comment section for non public officials. I don't know the full story on this and don't really have a ton of time this week to dig into this to validate these claims. I don't want to open myself up to a defamation claim though, so I am going to delete. Email me tom@foiagras.com if issues.
I have absolutely no empathy for anyone on the Board, and I don’t appreciate any comments now —ahem, Joey —as they’re finally all exposed for their incompetence and buffoonery (you don’t even want to hear what I think about their hero, Dr. Horton & his administration). Recall that SooLa got the most votes of all candidates the last time she ran—she has had a mandate since…who she is, and what she thinks of us, has been clear and on display…it’s just that many refused to see it.
The bottom line is this: the core of this Board has caused tremendous damage to this community —with lifelong negative impact for the kids we’re all supposed to be centering our collective work on (the hypocrisy here is staggering). I think people need to understand, however, that the closure of BR is only the beginning. Dark times are ahead in 65, but yeah, those of us that have called it for years now —we’re the bad guys.
Now I want to know: what exactly did he say in those lies? Prior to yesterday, the Board claimed they had no idea about anything. Now it sounds like maybe Dr. Horton did say some things to the board .. what did he say, I wonder?
FYI I don't think you're the bad guys anymore. So far, I've only seen like 2 people in the facebook groups or in comment sections defending this Board.
Has the board ever explained why they targeted BR first? Why not analyze the whole district (which is what I thought Sarita Smith was doing) and then announce closures all at once?
Why was there no mention of the fact that SAP 1 did NOT recommend closing Rhodes? I was trying to come up with what the most offensive comment of the meeting was and narrowed it down to Biz talking about “grieving” and Mr. Hernandez justifying taking the vote by saying they are “only voting to close a building”. While it was refreshing to actually hear the word “lie”, it was pathetic how quickly Mr. Hernandez tried to soften it to “misinformed”. No, you were lied to and you lied to the BR community.
You really deserve loads of credit for reporting on this topics (and school related issues generally) in great detail and with great clarity over many, many months.
Glad that Mr. Hernadez at minimum learned something on behalf of my child and the children of Bessie Rhodes. The children of Bessie Rhodes also learned a hard lesson last night: that their parents couldn’t protect them from the incompetency of District 66 leaders. If this Board can’t explain to the children in the room their decision , then perhaps they should be more reflective on who they committed to serve: all children of District 65.
I was one of the parents that pushed back on Soo La Kim stating “ how dare you say that Brown children are on the way” of this so called dream.
Lastly, putting all on Horton as if Turner wasn’t already a leader under his administration and as if Joey and Sergio along with other Board Members were part of the problem eases accountability. If Horton lied is because the Board did not do their job. And ask the right questions Who holds this Board accountable ? No one. But we are not done.
I'd like to encourage everyone to voice your disappointment to School Board members directly. They are under the impression they can do what they want without consequence, and they will not act differently unless the public outcry is direct and sustained (and we vote in new members).
The next round of SAP meetings should be public and participation should be open to all. It’s outrageous that the substantive decisions about our public schools are being made in closed sessions by the board’s allies.
Sergio's rant about how they care about community input yesterday made no sense to me - literally the point of public board meetings with a public comment section is so that the community can be part of the decision making process. We even have an election where we pick the people who will be making decisions. ITS THE WHOLE POINT OF GOVERNMENT!!
Time and time again, this board shows that they view themselves as PTA level 2 and not serious elected officials in charge of $150m of taxpayer money. (No offense to the PTA members who probably do more for the kids than this board does)
Stepping to the lectern one final time, Horton said that back in 2020, when he had just arrived in Evanston, the school board gave him the all-important task of returning a school to the Fifth Ward, even though a funding source had not been identified at that point.
“It happened,” Horton said. “The Fifth Ward is a community of strength and resilience, and I believe that today’s reopening of a school is a testament to that spirit.”
Amid the good vibes and celebratory mood in the air at Foster Field, Ruff also harkened back to the hardship and sacrifice that he and others in the Fifth Ward had to go through for years to get to today.
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Please consider how absolutely fricking insane it was to give this speech in a completely empty field!!
I remember that bit where he said the board gave him the task to build the new school at the beginning of his tenure.
When, exactly, was the proposed school first brought up at a board meeting? I don’t remember hearing anything until after the SAP nonsense was underway.
Are we talking about another open meetings act violation here?
Nice to see a couple members show some independence and push back a bit.
Closing Bessie Rhodes is wrong and unneeded. That school community deserves better.
Possible Correction- you wrote “Close 5th Ward School” in the lead paragraph. I think you meant BR (unless that was a deliberate allusion to Foster’s closing?)
We now (tentatively) have timing for the closure of BR and opening of the fifth ward school, but with the timeline being pushed back two years from the original one, what does this mean for the students who are "grandfathered in" to their existing schools when the other ones open? Previous SAP details stated those students could continue at existing schools even after the opening of the fifth ward school and only NEWLY enrolled students would automatically default to assignment based on the new attendance areas. If someone starts kindergarten in Fall 2025 at a school designated for closure (beyond BR), how are they honoring that? By waiting till after the 2030-31 school year to actually close the physical school(s)? Or are these the "tough decisions" they've made vague overtures to a million times cryptically without showing their hand?
Let’s remember the original sin here: the 2019 superintendent search, done in secret, with only a single finalist winds up hiring a guy who had zero experience as a superintendent and who had serious personal financial issues. The board also lied about the search process as it was underway, saying they couldn’t reveal the finalist’s name because he requested anonymity even though he was traveling all over the country at the time participating in public searches.
Like most people, I immediately googled Horton’s name when he was announced and the first hit that came up was the NBC report saying he owed tens of thousands of dollars to the City of Chicago for fines associated with his real estate side gig.
It wasn’t available on google at the time, but a simple background check would have picked up his bankruptcy filing. Although his transgressions did not stem from his work in school administration, they absolutely say something about his judgement and character. This is job where you have to oversee a multi million dollar budget.
Under a responsible board his application would have been rejected. Had his name been released prior to his hiring, there likely would have been an outcry due to his inexperience and character.
Consider his first bankruptcy. He bought 4 properties with mortgages, immediately doubled down on two of them and refinanced and then failed to make payments.
His second bankruptcy involved empty land he bought in the city, failed to maintain and then amassed a ton of fees on the property. Sounds familiar.
It was also common knowledge that he publicly was interviewing for several large public school Super jobs around the country and not getting them (red flag). He was turned down by Grand Rapids (Mich) public for not showing an interest in their large Hispanic population. Huge red flag.
Makes you really wonder who the other finalist was...or even any of the five they'd narrowed the pool down to back in January. @Tom I'm guessing there no way to find out who other candidates were retroactively through FOIA?
One of my favorite songs was “ You can anything you want at Alice’s restaurant “. Arlo Guthrie. You can get anything you want when you use the word “ equity”. It’s the trump card. Another trump card is “ walkability”. Use those words when you want what you want. How is walkability going to work when they look at Willard , Orrington and Kingsley for closure ?
While his ‘yes’ vote was disappointing, I appreciated board member Joey Hailpern acknowledging the lies of the previous administration and all the confounding variables that have popped up since the original K-8 school-within-a-school plan was offered.
I believe him when he says he is sincere about rebuilding trust, despite his irritating habit of trying to work all the angles. But how can a couple members with open eyes and good intentions compete with a board majority that believes the same thing on Wednesday that they believed on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday?
Seriously Chris? The ONLY mandate of the board is to hire/fire the Superintendent and approve the budget. It’s not to reform a system, bring equitable change or any of the moronic and socialist things the board talks about, almost none of which discuss bringing better educational outcomes to the so called marginalized they claim to care so much about. So when anyone says they have any empathy for a board member that was part of Horton’s hiring and then continued to let that guy do his thing without question which resulted in spending millions of dollars on pet projects, hiring of shady friends, a botched Covid plan that kept kids out of classrooms far too long and over $500m spent on his own personal security I WANT TO PUKE. The board is accountable for Horton from start to finish. Don’t ever think otherwise.
I remember Sergio making statements during the last election that they needed to take on affordable housing! Maybe a little guilt for the gentrification that will accompany the new school, but so far out of the board’s purview that it’s ridiculous.
Most of the board is so far outside their mandate it's hard to even fathom. If you listen to a school board meeting, it is abundantly clear. They also think that because they were voted in (mind you less than 20% of all Evanston voters voted in the last election), they have been given the golden ticket to pursue their initiatives. Let's be honest....you shouldn't have initiatives as a school board member. The charge is fairly simple and they are failing miserably at their core duties.
I don’t think there’s anything socialist about an arrangement that extracts millions of dollars of public funds and deposits it into whatever private firm owns those lease certificates. Redistributing wealth up and and out of a community seems tragically, familiarly capitalist to me.
The socialism is avoiding the referendum which I would argue they legally need to build a new school bc the board believes a new school "must" be built to bring equity to ward that lost a school 60 years ago when the demographics were different. The ISBE statute allowing lease certs was likely meant for small school additions (think the multi-purpose room addition at Willard about 15 years ago). Yes, paying bankers taxpayer money to broker a questionable deal feels yuck, but having a board in charge of a $160 million budget with their mindset is a far bigger problem. Also, to clarify, lease certificate owners don't hold deposits. They get paid interest and principal. That's their return.
I should do an update on lease certificate stuff - the way that D65 used this is not what the Municipal Reform Act intended it to be used for. My understanding is that the main intent of this funding is to give public bodies the ability to fund things quickly without a referendum in the case of (1) building danger/hazards or (2) statutory changes (such as requiring full day preschool). It wasn't meant to be an all-in funding mechanism and not even Skokie, who used one to build Lincoln Middle School, funded the entire thing this way.
I emailed the board a few weeks ago to suggest that they sue Raymond James for misleading them with respect to the lease certificates. I did get a nice reply from one board member (Ms. Su) thanking me.
I think we are in strong agreement about the board going way outside the bounds of their job description and acting like they’re the great champions of the oppressed while making the city and schools more inhospitable to the populations they claim to be helping. Once we have a board that can stay in their lane and take responsibility for their own actions I’d be happy to grab a coffee and debate ideologies. Until then, I’m happy to focus on electing a board that won’t hemorrhage money, students, and faculty.
I am going to make a post on this soon - by far - the biggest challenge I've encountered in local politics is this question: in a highly technocratic liberal society - what is the right level of interaction between elected officials and technocratic staffers? What comprises a "lane" for someone who is elected and can't be fired? What types of problems are acceptable for them to deviate from the lane? What if staffers they appoint suck? I think this is a much harder question than people appreciate and it is rampant across all levels of evanston government.
I think if they had the same goals, ideals and ‘dreams’ but were actually good at their jobs I wouldn’t care. The role of a school board is probably pretty vague and leaves a lot of freedom for varied agendas but again, you have to actually be good at your job.
I took particular offense at board member Soo La Kim lecturing the audience about how she didn’t run for the school board to maximize the benefit for her own children, as if it’s impossible for her to be acting in her own self-interest, while also implying that the BR community were only concerned with ‘hoarding resources’ for their children at the expense of the district as a whole.
It looks like she’s acting in her self-interest to be the hero who went down in history as returning a fifth ward school and bringing “walkability” to Evanston/district65 schools.
I'd almost prefer that Board members act in their own self interest for their own kids - it means they have skin in the game instead of some vague dedication to "equity"
Forget self-interest for their kids, the Board isn't even structured to ensure every Ward is represented, let alone every school community. So, there are schools with literally no voice on the Board.
What I've been told in the past is that the campus liaison structure accounts for that. Yet, if you ask the Board if their campus liaisons actually visit the campuses you can expect a 500 word email explaining why that isn't an obligation (in a particular case to explain why Biz had not visited Haven MS even once during the contentious 2021-2022 school-year).
The majority of the Board does not demonstrate an interest in kids or education, at all. A couple members aside, most of them seem to be there to represent their own professional interests. It's shameful.
Not only did Biz not visit the school, she then lectured us about how even reaching out to her [our elected representative and supposed school board liaison] was white supremacy in action because it was "going around" the leadership of the school [even though many parents HAD started with the school leadership and also her literal role was supposed to ameliorate those interactions between parents and district employees].
I'm curious if Haven's (wonderful, IMO) principal was grateful that the school's Board liaison took such a principled stand against offering tangible, in-person support with the broader school community - a stand that resulted in her doing basically nothing - during a time when every available hand should have been on-deck to help a struggling school.
I agree completely. The BR students are being treated like another resource to be allocated in service of the board’s grand plan. It doesn’t matter if they spend one year in a neighborhood school, then another at a nearby school when the first school is closed/consolidated. They (and the other students displaced by consolidation) will wind up wherever they need to in order to facilitate the board’s plan. Maybe if they had kids in the affected schools (like superintendent Horton’s were in King Arts, which is why no one mentioned that school until Joey Hailpern did yesterday), they would show a little more care in jerking these kids around.
If walkability is still a chief factor in their goals, there are very few options for closures that wouldn't impact walkability for a subset of their students. So why not just be clear about what schools they're targeting for closure. The only possibility I see is closing one of Kingsley or Lincolnwood and redistricting those kids to the 5th Ward school or Willard based on where they live closest to. Currently there are already students being bussed to Orrington who live in NE Evanston so they don't have to make the dangerous crossing on the street level tracks north of Central, and kids who are bussed to Dewey from the Noyes-Ridge area, what's their walkable school that doesn't involve crossing Green Bay? There are kids zoned for Willard who live west of Crawford, who aren't walkable to any other school.
I’m not sure that walkability is still a chief factor —that’s the thing. It was part of their justification to get the new 5th Ward built —and I don’t really think they care about it when it comes to the rest of the district. Just like I don’t believe that they were ever serious about a “school within a school.” That was merely another ploy to quiet a community during a school board election and crucial moment in getting the new school across the proverbial finish line. Awful, just awful.
I agree with this assessment. New school as an asset replacement for Kingsley seems like a slam dunk. Lincolnwood is 4 blocks west and new school is 3 blocks South. Otherwise, any closure is a net negative to walkability.
She and a majority of the board are willing to do tangible harm (BR student displacement, possibly to schools that will be closed in the near future) in service of an intangible dream (walkability, equity). Her plan only has two parts: f- around and find out. And if the rumors are true, it sounds like she won’t be on the board during the ‘find out’ phase of her plan.
Thanks for that intel. I then expect Soo La Kim to resign not long before the election so they (read: the current board members) can appoint someone that they want long-term. This board has a pattern of doing that -- they "pick and choose" their successors from their circle of like-minded thinkers instead of offering it up to the electorate to decide and vote. Of course, that person then needs to be elected when the election comes, but incumbency is powerful....I think Donna Wang Su and Omar Salem are the ONLY current board members to first join when voted in from an election? And shockingly, they're the only two that went "against the grain" on this vote.
I have found Soo La Kim in particular (with Biz a close second) to often be condescending in her remarks throughout her tenure. Joey Hailpern is the only (longstanding) board member who is willing to acknowledge a mistake and shows some empathy ...
There is great irony in the fact that this equity/racial-lens-obsessed board is getting national headlines about closing the most diverse/low income school. This board values certain minority groups over others though and also needs the 37% of BR students to populate their new school that is the beacon symbol of "educational reparations" lest it be left half empty with few that want to go there.
To be fair, there have also been a fair number of elections where folks ran unopposed or with not much opposition. Prior to 2021, there wasn't much competition in these races.
Wow, that is good context to have....would also be interesting to overlay what the turnout was (% of total electorate who voted) for those. How many of the above winners were appointed before being elected? Is it true that Omar and Donna were the only ones?
This “board” and administration make Tiffany Henyard look like the model public servant. So many parallels, it’s a disgrace. A big shout out to the Bessie Rhodes students and community for their unwavering advocacy- also to the Evanston families, and (now) former district educators and administrators who openly took a stand against Horton’s phony and disingenuous agenda since day 1- putting the children first. My hypothesis, more national exposure and a deeper dive into the overall consequences of this board and administration’s actions or lack thereof. Of course, with more litigation exposing the corruption and the incompetence that was already on public display.
Tom, I've been curious about King Lab School as well. Do you know if it was in any of the discussion in
SAP 1 or 2? Or at a school board meeting? It seems logical to me that students in the fifth ward could get to King without incurring the expense of busing students to Lincolnwood. For decades King Lab was used to maintain the 60% guideline, that no school would have more than 60% of any race. Since that is no longer a prerogative, it only make sense to use King as a neighborhood school.
Why is King Arts completely escaping all scrutiny in this? I simply don't understand how that wasn't the school targeted for closure when it had worse building deficiency needs than BR did. It's weird that it never even seems to be mentioned in the last few years.
The thing that's also kind of crazy about the lack of discussion of King Arts is that the entire neighborhood around there is bussed to Lincolnwood and it is only two blocks from the fifth ward.
If "walkability" is the goal, you could imagine a scenario where you get rid of its magnet status and redistrict so the kids bussed to Lincolnwood walk to King. You also make a few adjustments on the West end of the Dewey map so all of the kids who live south of Emerson go to either Dewey or the neighborhood King school. All of those addresses are less than a mile from either King or Dewey.
You do that and you eliminate bussing to Willard and Lincolnwood.
All of the addresss north of Emerson continue to go to Kingsley, which is less than a mile from the furthermost point in the existing boundaries. Are kids south of McCormick actually bussed to Kingsley currently?
Yes, except King Lab is in the 2nd Ward, so I am sure you'll see the Make The Fifth Ward Great Again people oppose the idea.
I must give the new school advocates some credit for framing the debate around City of Evanston Wards. You hear people repeat the falsehood that "The Fifth Ward is the only ward that doesn't have a school." (There is no school in the First Ward and nobody talks about that).
Of course the reality is that the ward boundaries are arbitrary, can change every decade after the Census, and have nothing to do with the school district.
It would have saved the taxpayers lots of money if the City of Evanston had just moved the 5th Ward boundaries--which end right now at Green Bay and McCormick-- a few hundred feet across Green Bay to include the Prairie/Lincoln/McCormick/Green Bay block. It wouldn't have added any population to the Fifth Ward, but the MTFWGA crowd would get two Fifth Ward schools overnight!
My kids have to go to a different ward to go to school and it means absolutely nothing.
It’s also very close to the fifth ward. I don’t know if it’s “walkable” for all of the fifth ward but I also don’t understand the focus on “walkability” when most kids are not walking to school alone in 2024.
According to State law, the district must offer free transport to any student living more than 1.5 miles from school or if they have to endure hazardous traffic.
Most of the Lincolnwood bussing district is less than 1.5 miles from the school. Perhaps McCormick is considered hazardous so that is why they are providing bus service.
There are no objective measure of hazard in the school code. It gets determined by the district.
Making King Arts a neighborhood school and expanding Dewey’s boundaries a couple of blocks west would do wonders for walkability. You are way below the 1.5 mi threshold and there are no serious traffic roads that can’t be dealt with by a crossing guard.
Didn’t I hear the city is doing something at the bridge on Emerson at Beck Park like a pedestrian overpass as part of the major improvements of the park? It could be that once that is in place, it removes Emerson as a safety hazard barrier for kids in that part of the ward so the district won’t have to bus them. Because as of now, anyone on the other side of Emerson would face that as a walkable barrier. Saves money on bussing and voila- school pays for itself! It’s called math, people! Quite seriously, the debacle of the new school aside, a pedestrian overpass there would be very welcome for bikers and runners and kids trying to get north to the skate park. I’m hoping it is true- being able to get kids safely to school is just a bonus.
I’m a 5th ward resident on Wesley, I live 2 blocks from Dewey but my kids are bussed into orrington. I have always wanted my kids to go to Dewey but Sarita told me it wasn’t equitable. A walk to the new 5th ward school across Emerson feels extremely difficult in comparison to Dewey.
I think King is left out of consideration for closure or change to local school because that is where they redirect kids to that have proved to have significant behavioral issues (I assume they have additional teaching resources there for this). Someone tell me if they know this not to be the case here. Or I was told (but can’t quite believe) it is because it has the King name attached, etc.
The SAP committee did mention KA. Not specifically that it should be closed but that magnet schools are the most under utilized buildings in the district and they further speculated that adding a fifth ward school may reduce KA enrollment even further and would perhaps negate the need for a magnet school in that location. See the SAP Data Day meeting notes from Jan 15, 2022 here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dZg0ZWHR-tSikxBJiBG6re_HquRGgnmICMh73G0OZaM/edit
I think I saw it proposed somewhere before, but would KA have the capacity to absorb Bessie families in a "school-within-a-school" capacity, or just convert it a dual-purpose magnet school? With some enrollment trickling from KA to the new school based on assigned mapping, would that open up sufficient capacity for that?
This made national headlines this AM because school closures is a national story right now. For all the quotes from board members about equity, this was the national headline: “Board votes to close only bilingual school in north suburban Chicago district..”
My sense from following closing school stories is there are board members in your district who are trying to right perceived wrongs that happened decades ago through current day standards and it is like pushing a square peg in a round hole. No school district with segregated housing got this right, to be fair, or has found a great solution. Families benefit from community schools they can walk to, but kids benefit from integration, schools that offer programs that attract families, and districts that are solvent.
I think districts will be best served by planning for the students they have now and are projected to have in the next few years. It is imperfect, but government is imperfect. Nationally, Black & White majority districts are facing growing Latino populations and the attention to that reality & what they may need is slower than one would hope.
This situation is so sad for the affected families. It will not go away just because board members hope it wills
I have often said that what the school board wants is a time machine, not a new school
I’d love to read more about the way other cities with similar histories of segregated housing have addressed this dilemma, either mistakes to learn from or examples to follow.
Hey folks - don't be offended but this is too personal in terms of criticism than I like in the comment section for non public officials. I don't know the full story on this and don't really have a ton of time this week to dig into this to validate these claims. I don't want to open myself up to a defamation claim though, so I am going to delete. Email me tom@foiagras.com if issues.
I have absolutely no empathy for anyone on the Board, and I don’t appreciate any comments now —ahem, Joey —as they’re finally all exposed for their incompetence and buffoonery (you don’t even want to hear what I think about their hero, Dr. Horton & his administration). Recall that SooLa got the most votes of all candidates the last time she ran—she has had a mandate since…who she is, and what she thinks of us, has been clear and on display…it’s just that many refused to see it.
The bottom line is this: the core of this Board has caused tremendous damage to this community —with lifelong negative impact for the kids we’re all supposed to be centering our collective work on (the hypocrisy here is staggering). I think people need to understand, however, that the closure of BR is only the beginning. Dark times are ahead in 65, but yeah, those of us that have called it for years now —we’re the bad guys.
Now I want to know: what exactly did he say in those lies? Prior to yesterday, the Board claimed they had no idea about anything. Now it sounds like maybe Dr. Horton did say some things to the board .. what did he say, I wonder?
FYI I don't think you're the bad guys anymore. So far, I've only seen like 2 people in the facebook groups or in comment sections defending this Board.
Has the board ever explained why they targeted BR first? Why not analyze the whole district (which is what I thought Sarita Smith was doing) and then announce closures all at once?
The answer is buried somewhere in the SAP committee meeting notes
Agree, at its core this BOARD has caused irreparable harm and there is no accountability .
Why was there no mention of the fact that SAP 1 did NOT recommend closing Rhodes? I was trying to come up with what the most offensive comment of the meeting was and narrowed it down to Biz talking about “grieving” and Mr. Hernandez justifying taking the vote by saying they are “only voting to close a building”. While it was refreshing to actually hear the word “lie”, it was pathetic how quickly Mr. Hernandez tried to soften it to “misinformed”. No, you were lied to and you lied to the BR community.
Excellent article/report, Tom.
You really deserve loads of credit for reporting on this topics (and school related issues generally) in great detail and with great clarity over many, many months.
Glad that Mr. Hernadez at minimum learned something on behalf of my child and the children of Bessie Rhodes. The children of Bessie Rhodes also learned a hard lesson last night: that their parents couldn’t protect them from the incompetency of District 66 leaders. If this Board can’t explain to the children in the room their decision , then perhaps they should be more reflective on who they committed to serve: all children of District 65.
I was one of the parents that pushed back on Soo La Kim stating “ how dare you say that Brown children are on the way” of this so called dream.
Lastly, putting all on Horton as if Turner wasn’t already a leader under his administration and as if Joey and Sergio along with other Board Members were part of the problem eases accountability. If Horton lied is because the Board did not do their job. And ask the right questions Who holds this Board accountable ? No one. But we are not done.
I'd like to encourage everyone to voice your disappointment to School Board members directly. They are under the impression they can do what they want without consequence, and they will not act differently unless the public outcry is direct and sustained (and we vote in new members).
schoolboard@district65.net; hernandezs2@district65.net; wilkinsm@district65.net; kims2@district65.net; hailpernj@district65.net; sud@district65.net; lindsayryanb@district65.net; salemo@district65.net
The next round of SAP meetings should be public and participation should be open to all. It’s outrageous that the substantive decisions about our public schools are being made in closed sessions by the board’s allies.
Sergio's rant about how they care about community input yesterday made no sense to me - literally the point of public board meetings with a public comment section is so that the community can be part of the decision making process. We even have an election where we pick the people who will be making decisions. ITS THE WHOLE POINT OF GOVERNMENT!!
Time and time again, this board shows that they view themselves as PTA level 2 and not serious elected officials in charge of $150m of taxpayer money. (No offense to the PTA members who probably do more for the kids than this board does)
The Board was lied to. Even though finances (and looking into them) are their responsibility. Joey can’t play the victim here.
Now the Board lied to Rhodes parents. It’s the Circle of Life. Cycle of Abuse.
Here in Evanston, the lies just flow downhill until it screws the poor kids.
The board was not lied to by Horton - they didn’t do their job to ask or say no. They let him run wild. They absolutely failed at their jobs.
I still can't believe they gave him those awards in that empty field in June 2023 without once looking around and being like "hey, wheres the school?"
To quote from the Evanston Roundtable story:
https://evanstonroundtable.com/2023/06/20/evanston-d65-dedicates-fifth-ward-school-site/
Stepping to the lectern one final time, Horton said that back in 2020, when he had just arrived in Evanston, the school board gave him the all-important task of returning a school to the Fifth Ward, even though a funding source had not been identified at that point.
“It happened,” Horton said. “The Fifth Ward is a community of strength and resilience, and I believe that today’s reopening of a school is a testament to that spirit.”
Amid the good vibes and celebratory mood in the air at Foster Field, Ruff also harkened back to the hardship and sacrifice that he and others in the Fifth Ward had to go through for years to get to today.
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Please consider how absolutely fricking insane it was to give this speech in a completely empty field!!
I remember that bit where he said the board gave him the task to build the new school at the beginning of his tenure.
When, exactly, was the proposed school first brought up at a board meeting? I don’t remember hearing anything until after the SAP nonsense was underway.
Are we talking about another open meetings act violation here?
Probably. I suspect the 2020-2023 era was rampant with OMA violations
Absolutely!
Nice to see a couple members show some independence and push back a bit.
Closing Bessie Rhodes is wrong and unneeded. That school community deserves better.
Possible Correction- you wrote “Close 5th Ward School” in the lead paragraph. I think you meant BR (unless that was a deliberate allusion to Foster’s closing?)
oops
fixed. it's early!
We now (tentatively) have timing for the closure of BR and opening of the fifth ward school, but with the timeline being pushed back two years from the original one, what does this mean for the students who are "grandfathered in" to their existing schools when the other ones open? Previous SAP details stated those students could continue at existing schools even after the opening of the fifth ward school and only NEWLY enrolled students would automatically default to assignment based on the new attendance areas. If someone starts kindergarten in Fall 2025 at a school designated for closure (beyond BR), how are they honoring that? By waiting till after the 2030-31 school year to actually close the physical school(s)? Or are these the "tough decisions" they've made vague overtures to a million times cryptically without showing their hand?
Let’s remember the original sin here: the 2019 superintendent search, done in secret, with only a single finalist winds up hiring a guy who had zero experience as a superintendent and who had serious personal financial issues. The board also lied about the search process as it was underway, saying they couldn’t reveal the finalist’s name because he requested anonymity even though he was traveling all over the country at the time participating in public searches.
Like most people, I immediately googled Horton’s name when he was announced and the first hit that came up was the NBC report saying he owed tens of thousands of dollars to the City of Chicago for fines associated with his real estate side gig.
It wasn’t available on google at the time, but a simple background check would have picked up his bankruptcy filing. Although his transgressions did not stem from his work in school administration, they absolutely say something about his judgement and character. This is job where you have to oversee a multi million dollar budget.
Under a responsible board his application would have been rejected. Had his name been released prior to his hiring, there likely would have been an outcry due to his inexperience and character.
Consider his first bankruptcy. He bought 4 properties with mortgages, immediately doubled down on two of them and refinanced and then failed to make payments.
His second bankruptcy involved empty land he bought in the city, failed to maintain and then amassed a ton of fees on the property. Sounds familiar.
Receipts:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17AONCBkdWQm0ihmxCnhy8zmWbONBg6IRbBmcykDRLd0/edit?gid=0#gid=0
This is the guy the Board trusted to bring a school back to the Fifth Ward? Tells you how much they care about the fifth ward.
It was also common knowledge that he publicly was interviewing for several large public school Super jobs around the country and not getting them (red flag). He was turned down by Grand Rapids (Mich) public for not showing an interest in their large Hispanic population. Huge red flag.
And that they literally did the same process again : a closed search that generated one finalist from the same failing school as Horton
Makes you really wonder who the other finalist was...or even any of the five they'd narrowed the pool down to back in January. @Tom I'm guessing there no way to find out who other candidates were retroactively through FOIA?
One of my favorite songs was “ You can anything you want at Alice’s restaurant “. Arlo Guthrie. You can get anything you want when you use the word “ equity”. It’s the trump card. Another trump card is “ walkability”. Use those words when you want what you want. How is walkability going to work when they look at Willard , Orrington and Kingsley for closure ?
While his ‘yes’ vote was disappointing, I appreciated board member Joey Hailpern acknowledging the lies of the previous administration and all the confounding variables that have popped up since the original K-8 school-within-a-school plan was offered.
I believe him when he says he is sincere about rebuilding trust, despite his irritating habit of trying to work all the angles. But how can a couple members with open eyes and good intentions compete with a board majority that believes the same thing on Wednesday that they believed on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday?
Seriously Chris? The ONLY mandate of the board is to hire/fire the Superintendent and approve the budget. It’s not to reform a system, bring equitable change or any of the moronic and socialist things the board talks about, almost none of which discuss bringing better educational outcomes to the so called marginalized they claim to care so much about. So when anyone says they have any empathy for a board member that was part of Horton’s hiring and then continued to let that guy do his thing without question which resulted in spending millions of dollars on pet projects, hiring of shady friends, a botched Covid plan that kept kids out of classrooms far too long and over $500m spent on his own personal security I WANT TO PUKE. The board is accountable for Horton from start to finish. Don’t ever think otherwise.
I remember Sergio making statements during the last election that they needed to take on affordable housing! Maybe a little guilt for the gentrification that will accompany the new school, but so far out of the board’s purview that it’s ridiculous.
Most of the board is so far outside their mandate it's hard to even fathom. If you listen to a school board meeting, it is abundantly clear. They also think that because they were voted in (mind you less than 20% of all Evanston voters voted in the last election), they have been given the golden ticket to pursue their initiatives. Let's be honest....you shouldn't have initiatives as a school board member. The charge is fairly simple and they are failing miserably at their core duties.
I don’t think there’s anything socialist about an arrangement that extracts millions of dollars of public funds and deposits it into whatever private firm owns those lease certificates. Redistributing wealth up and and out of a community seems tragically, familiarly capitalist to me.
The best of both worlds - money out of our pockets to Wall Street AND a messy public works project! Public-private partnership at its best.
The socialism is avoiding the referendum which I would argue they legally need to build a new school bc the board believes a new school "must" be built to bring equity to ward that lost a school 60 years ago when the demographics were different. The ISBE statute allowing lease certs was likely meant for small school additions (think the multi-purpose room addition at Willard about 15 years ago). Yes, paying bankers taxpayer money to broker a questionable deal feels yuck, but having a board in charge of a $160 million budget with their mindset is a far bigger problem. Also, to clarify, lease certificate owners don't hold deposits. They get paid interest and principal. That's their return.
I should do an update on lease certificate stuff - the way that D65 used this is not what the Municipal Reform Act intended it to be used for. My understanding is that the main intent of this funding is to give public bodies the ability to fund things quickly without a referendum in the case of (1) building danger/hazards or (2) statutory changes (such as requiring full day preschool). It wasn't meant to be an all-in funding mechanism and not even Skokie, who used one to build Lincoln Middle School, funded the entire thing this way.
I emailed the board a few weeks ago to suggest that they sue Raymond James for misleading them with respect to the lease certificates. I did get a nice reply from one board member (Ms. Su) thanking me.
That would be very helpful!
I think we are in strong agreement about the board going way outside the bounds of their job description and acting like they’re the great champions of the oppressed while making the city and schools more inhospitable to the populations they claim to be helping. Once we have a board that can stay in their lane and take responsibility for their own actions I’d be happy to grab a coffee and debate ideologies. Until then, I’m happy to focus on electing a board that won’t hemorrhage money, students, and faculty.
I am going to make a post on this soon - by far - the biggest challenge I've encountered in local politics is this question: in a highly technocratic liberal society - what is the right level of interaction between elected officials and technocratic staffers? What comprises a "lane" for someone who is elected and can't be fired? What types of problems are acceptable for them to deviate from the lane? What if staffers they appoint suck? I think this is a much harder question than people appreciate and it is rampant across all levels of evanston government.
I think if they had the same goals, ideals and ‘dreams’ but were actually good at their jobs I wouldn’t care. The role of a school board is probably pretty vague and leaves a lot of freedom for varied agendas but again, you have to actually be good at your job.
I took particular offense at board member Soo La Kim lecturing the audience about how she didn’t run for the school board to maximize the benefit for her own children, as if it’s impossible for her to be acting in her own self-interest, while also implying that the BR community were only concerned with ‘hoarding resources’ for their children at the expense of the district as a whole.
It looks like she’s acting in her self-interest to be the hero who went down in history as returning a fifth ward school and bringing “walkability” to Evanston/district65 schools.
I'd almost prefer that Board members act in their own self interest for their own kids - it means they have skin in the game instead of some vague dedication to "equity"
Forget self-interest for their kids, the Board isn't even structured to ensure every Ward is represented, let alone every school community. So, there are schools with literally no voice on the Board.
What I've been told in the past is that the campus liaison structure accounts for that. Yet, if you ask the Board if their campus liaisons actually visit the campuses you can expect a 500 word email explaining why that isn't an obligation (in a particular case to explain why Biz had not visited Haven MS even once during the contentious 2021-2022 school-year).
The majority of the Board does not demonstrate an interest in kids or education, at all. A couple members aside, most of them seem to be there to represent their own professional interests. It's shameful.
Not only did Biz not visit the school, she then lectured us about how even reaching out to her [our elected representative and supposed school board liaison] was white supremacy in action because it was "going around" the leadership of the school [even though many parents HAD started with the school leadership and also her literal role was supposed to ameliorate those interactions between parents and district employees].
I'm curious if Haven's (wonderful, IMO) principal was grateful that the school's Board liaison took such a principled stand against offering tangible, in-person support with the broader school community - a stand that resulted in her doing basically nothing - during a time when every available hand should have been on-deck to help a struggling school.
Probably about as much as he appreciated Horton basically throwing him under the bus during the school town hall that was finally held.
I agree completely. The BR students are being treated like another resource to be allocated in service of the board’s grand plan. It doesn’t matter if they spend one year in a neighborhood school, then another at a nearby school when the first school is closed/consolidated. They (and the other students displaced by consolidation) will wind up wherever they need to in order to facilitate the board’s plan. Maybe if they had kids in the affected schools (like superintendent Horton’s were in King Arts, which is why no one mentioned that school until Joey Hailpern did yesterday), they would show a little more care in jerking these kids around.
And they're not even telling us what the "grand plan" is!! What is it besides just handwavey claims about "equity"??
According to Sergio his grand plan is system level changes , at least that what he stated when he scolded us after the meeting
If walkability is still a chief factor in their goals, there are very few options for closures that wouldn't impact walkability for a subset of their students. So why not just be clear about what schools they're targeting for closure. The only possibility I see is closing one of Kingsley or Lincolnwood and redistricting those kids to the 5th Ward school or Willard based on where they live closest to. Currently there are already students being bussed to Orrington who live in NE Evanston so they don't have to make the dangerous crossing on the street level tracks north of Central, and kids who are bussed to Dewey from the Noyes-Ridge area, what's their walkable school that doesn't involve crossing Green Bay? There are kids zoned for Willard who live west of Crawford, who aren't walkable to any other school.
I’m not sure that walkability is still a chief factor —that’s the thing. It was part of their justification to get the new 5th Ward built —and I don’t really think they care about it when it comes to the rest of the district. Just like I don’t believe that they were ever serious about a “school within a school.” That was merely another ploy to quiet a community during a school board election and crucial moment in getting the new school across the proverbial finish line. Awful, just awful.
I agree with this assessment. New school as an asset replacement for Kingsley seems like a slam dunk. Lincolnwood is 4 blocks west and new school is 3 blocks South. Otherwise, any closure is a net negative to walkability.
She and a majority of the board are willing to do tangible harm (BR student displacement, possibly to schools that will be closed in the near future) in service of an intangible dream (walkability, equity). Her plan only has two parts: f- around and find out. And if the rumors are true, it sounds like she won’t be on the board during the ‘find out’ phase of her plan.
Thanks for that intel. I then expect Soo La Kim to resign not long before the election so they (read: the current board members) can appoint someone that they want long-term. This board has a pattern of doing that -- they "pick and choose" their successors from their circle of like-minded thinkers instead of offering it up to the electorate to decide and vote. Of course, that person then needs to be elected when the election comes, but incumbency is powerful....I think Donna Wang Su and Omar Salem are the ONLY current board members to first join when voted in from an election? And shockingly, they're the only two that went "against the grain" on this vote.
I have found Soo La Kim in particular (with Biz a close second) to often be condescending in her remarks throughout her tenure. Joey Hailpern is the only (longstanding) board member who is willing to acknowledge a mistake and shows some empathy ...
There is great irony in the fact that this equity/racial-lens-obsessed board is getting national headlines about closing the most diverse/low income school. This board values certain minority groups over others though and also needs the 37% of BR students to populate their new school that is the beacon symbol of "educational reparations" lest it be left half empty with few that want to go there.
To be fair, there have also been a fair number of elections where folks ran unopposed or with not much opposition. Prior to 2021, there wasn't much competition in these races.
2023: 3 winners, 5 candidates (Wilkins, Salem, Hernandez)
2021: 4 winners, 8 candidates (Kim, Hailpern, Lindsay-Ryan, Su)
2019: 3 winners, 3 candidates (Tanyavutti, Mendoza, Hernandez)
2017: 4 winners, 5 candidates (Chow, Cohen, Hailpern, Kartha)
2017-special: 1 candidate, 1 winner (Tanyavutti)
2015: 3 winners, 4 candidates (Rykhus, Phillips, Brown)
2013: 4 winners, 4 candidates (Quattrocki, Chow, Kartha, Garrison)
Wow, that is good context to have....would also be interesting to overlay what the turnout was (% of total electorate who voted) for those. How many of the above winners were appointed before being elected? Is it true that Omar and Donna were the only ones?
Stay tuned - I got my intern working on compiling this!!
Sounds eerily familiar to the strategy others implemented from a recent administration. Except it's more like "f- around and cash out"
This “board” and administration make Tiffany Henyard look like the model public servant. So many parallels, it’s a disgrace. A big shout out to the Bessie Rhodes students and community for their unwavering advocacy- also to the Evanston families, and (now) former district educators and administrators who openly took a stand against Horton’s phony and disingenuous agenda since day 1- putting the children first. My hypothesis, more national exposure and a deeper dive into the overall consequences of this board and administration’s actions or lack thereof. Of course, with more litigation exposing the corruption and the incompetence that was already on public display.
I think it's time for us to bring in Lori Lightfoot to kick some ass!!!
Tom, I've been curious about King Lab School as well. Do you know if it was in any of the discussion in
SAP 1 or 2? Or at a school board meeting? It seems logical to me that students in the fifth ward could get to King without incurring the expense of busing students to Lincolnwood. For decades King Lab was used to maintain the 60% guideline, that no school would have more than 60% of any race. Since that is no longer a prerogative, it only make sense to use King as a neighborhood school.
Somewhere in the comments above there is a section on this — my impression is that the SAP committee didn’t want to touch it, but who knows!
Why is King Arts completely escaping all scrutiny in this? I simply don't understand how that wasn't the school targeted for closure when it had worse building deficiency needs than BR did. It's weird that it never even seems to be mentioned in the last few years.
I assume the SAP committees basically decided it wasn't on the table - for reasons we'll never know because it was a closed committee!!
The thing that's also kind of crazy about the lack of discussion of King Arts is that the entire neighborhood around there is bussed to Lincolnwood and it is only two blocks from the fifth ward.
If "walkability" is the goal, you could imagine a scenario where you get rid of its magnet status and redistrict so the kids bussed to Lincolnwood walk to King. You also make a few adjustments on the West end of the Dewey map so all of the kids who live south of Emerson go to either Dewey or the neighborhood King school. All of those addresses are less than a mile from either King or Dewey.
You do that and you eliminate bussing to Willard and Lincolnwood.
All of the addresss north of Emerson continue to go to Kingsley, which is less than a mile from the furthermost point in the existing boundaries. Are kids south of McCormick actually bussed to Kingsley currently?
Yes ... move the boundaries a little and voila, you have a Fifth Ward school (King Lab). And you've saved $40 million.
Yes, except King Lab is in the 2nd Ward, so I am sure you'll see the Make The Fifth Ward Great Again people oppose the idea.
I must give the new school advocates some credit for framing the debate around City of Evanston Wards. You hear people repeat the falsehood that "The Fifth Ward is the only ward that doesn't have a school." (There is no school in the First Ward and nobody talks about that).
Of course the reality is that the ward boundaries are arbitrary, can change every decade after the Census, and have nothing to do with the school district.
It would have saved the taxpayers lots of money if the City of Evanston had just moved the 5th Ward boundaries--which end right now at Green Bay and McCormick-- a few hundred feet across Green Bay to include the Prairie/Lincoln/McCormick/Green Bay block. It wouldn't have added any population to the Fifth Ward, but the MTFWGA crowd would get two Fifth Ward schools overnight!
My kids have to go to a different ward to go to school and it means absolutely nothing.
It’s also very close to the fifth ward. I don’t know if it’s “walkable” for all of the fifth ward but I also don’t understand the focus on “walkability” when most kids are not walking to school alone in 2024.
According to State law, the district must offer free transport to any student living more than 1.5 miles from school or if they have to endure hazardous traffic.
Most of the Lincolnwood bussing district is less than 1.5 miles from the school. Perhaps McCormick is considered hazardous so that is why they are providing bus service.
There are no objective measure of hazard in the school code. It gets determined by the district.
Making King Arts a neighborhood school and expanding Dewey’s boundaries a couple of blocks west would do wonders for walkability. You are way below the 1.5 mi threshold and there are no serious traffic roads that can’t be dealt with by a crossing guard.
Didn’t I hear the city is doing something at the bridge on Emerson at Beck Park like a pedestrian overpass as part of the major improvements of the park? It could be that once that is in place, it removes Emerson as a safety hazard barrier for kids in that part of the ward so the district won’t have to bus them. Because as of now, anyone on the other side of Emerson would face that as a walkable barrier. Saves money on bussing and voila- school pays for itself! It’s called math, people! Quite seriously, the debacle of the new school aside, a pedestrian overpass there would be very welcome for bikers and runners and kids trying to get north to the skate park. I’m hoping it is true- being able to get kids safely to school is just a bonus.
Would be nice to have a crossing there and a pedestrian bridge over the canal
I’m a 5th ward resident on Wesley, I live 2 blocks from Dewey but my kids are bussed into orrington. I have always wanted my kids to go to Dewey but Sarita told me it wasn’t equitable. A walk to the new 5th ward school across Emerson feels extremely difficult in comparison to Dewey.
I think King is left out of consideration for closure or change to local school because that is where they redirect kids to that have proved to have significant behavioral issues (I assume they have additional teaching resources there for this). Someone tell me if they know this not to be the case here. Or I was told (but can’t quite believe) it is because it has the King name attached, etc.
The SAP committee did mention KA. Not specifically that it should be closed but that magnet schools are the most under utilized buildings in the district and they further speculated that adding a fifth ward school may reduce KA enrollment even further and would perhaps negate the need for a magnet school in that location. See the SAP Data Day meeting notes from Jan 15, 2022 here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dZg0ZWHR-tSikxBJiBG6re_HquRGgnmICMh73G0OZaM/edit
I think I saw it proposed somewhere before, but would KA have the capacity to absorb Bessie families in a "school-within-a-school" capacity, or just convert it a dual-purpose magnet school? With some enrollment trickling from KA to the new school based on assigned mapping, would that open up sufficient capacity for that?
Thanks, that's interesting. King arts gets mentioned a bunch and BR not at all in the initial doc