District 65 to Begin SAP 3 Process
Yet another very important process (decisions regarding closing schools), operating outside the public view
District 65 plans to announce a restart to the Student Assignment Process (SAP) - you can view the memo in tomorrow’s board meeting. The objective of the SAP committee is to make a recommendation regarding which schools to keep open and which schools to close. It is sugar-coated in the memo:
Now, SAP III will draw upon the work from SAP II to develop recommendations to the superintendent regarding four specific initiatives:
1. Foster School Transition Planning
2. School Consolidation(s)
3. TWI / Dual Language Programming
4. Early Childhood Program Expansion
But with another $10 million budget deficit and dwindling reserves, the District is going to have to make some hard choices in the coming year(s). This is a topic that should be important to all Evanston residents - it impacts your families, your children, and your neighborhood.
Yet again, the process will be done as a closed committee of district staffers.
The District will provide regular public updates to the board on the progress of each SAP III team’s progress and post meeting agendas, minutes, and related documents and resources to the SAP Resource Hub on the District’s website. Also, our Communication Team will send out a monthly community update via email/ text message and include video recaps as part of the Superintendent’s Scoop messaging to the community.
This is close, but it is not the same as holding a public meeting that is compliant with the Open Meetings Act:
The public does not have a right to attend or petition the committee.
The public will not have access to video recordings of the committee, and instead will have access to “video recaps” - whatever that means.
There are no requirements regarding recording minutes, approval of prior minutes, and so on.
I had previously written about the District’s SAP1 and SAP2 process, arguing that it violated the Open Meetings Act and requesting the Illinois AG to mandate OMA compliance for SAP3. You can read their letter to me. The AG ruled in favor of the District. Their fundamental claim was the following:
Lack of Authority to Review Potential Future Violations:
I request asked the Public Access Bureau to mandate that the Committee comply with the provisions of the Open Meetings Act (OMA) for future meetings and make all past records available to the public. However, section 3.5(a) of OMA does not grant the office the authority to review potential allegations of OMA at upcoming meetings.
Untimely Submission of the Request for Review:
The alleged past violations reported did not occur within 60 days of my submission on May 23, 2024. For meetings that occurred in 2023, your Request for Review did not provide evidence of reasonable diligence in discovering the violations within the 60-day period after the information was made publicly available.
This makes sense - I waited too long to complain about SAP1 and SAP2, and the IL AG doesn’t have the authority to require future compliance. I don’t like to lose, but I get it - fine - I don’t want to litigate over “reasonable diligence.”1
School Districts have a right to run internal committees for various things - you can imagine operational topics such as curriculum, transportation, and so on where there is no necessity for public participation. But in this case, they’re running this as a quasi-public non-OMA committee to discuss the primary function of the elected school board - which schools to keep open and which to close.
These conversations need to be held in public - or the next school closure is going to look a lot like what happened with Bessie Rhodes: a secretive process that eventually lands in front of the Board who takes this recommendation uncritically and a very confused community asking, “Hey, why weren’t we part of this discussion?”
I believe I operated with “reasonable diligence”
Commenting on my own story but I have written a letter to the board since I won't be able to make public comment tomorrow:
Hello Board-
I've recently published a story on the SAP3 process:
https://www.foiagras.com/p/district-65-to-begin-sap-3-process
But I'm writing to you as a citizen.
I strongly encourage/implore you to pass a resolution requiring that the new SAP3 committee be run as a subsidiary committee of the Board of Education and not an internal committee under the Superintendent, as what appears to be planned.
Advantages:
- Legitimacy: A subsidiary committee allows full citizen participation (via public comment) and can ensure the process is legitimate. If you end up closing a school, you want to be able to look back and show all the opportunities you provided for comment in accordance with transparency and best practices.
- Transparency: A subsidiary committee gives you, the Board, full view into the data, logic, and decisions made by the committee. It was clear during the Bessie Rhodes closure hearings that SAP2 didn't have good data and we didn't learn that until the votes for closure.
- Statutory Authority: Making decisions regarding opening and closing schools is a core statutory authority granted to you by IL School Code. Being part of these conversations in an open and transparent way is a core function of your Board duties.
- OMA Compliance: A subsidiary committee has full Open Meetings Act compliance requirements, compared to the internal committee which does not and the District's promises of transparency are unenforceable.
- Equity: If you strongly believe in equity, as I believe you and I do, having non-public SAP3 meetings is fundamentally in violation of the idea of inclusion. How can you be sure that the D65 Administration is giving voice to the disadvantaged unless you give them an opportunity to participate in a fully public and transparent committee?
- Breadth of Ideas: Many of you commented during the BR closure hearings that you're excited for the concept of new and innovative ideas that SAP3 can bring to the table. If so, why permit the Administration to hold this in private without public comment, so they can select the ideas they like or don't like?
As far as I know, you have full authority to require such transparency and I believe you can do so by passing a simple resolution requiring SAP3 to be a Board Subcommittee. I strongly urge you to do so before the SAP3 meetings begin.
Lastly, the Administration in their memo promises things like the publication of minutes, video summaries, and so on - why not go the extra step and just require full compliance with OMA? I see no compelling reason not to, especially if they're already committing to do most of the transparency work.
Thank you-
--
Tom Hayden
Thank you for covering this, Tom. I hope you continue to file complaints with the Illinois AG and hold this School Board and Central Admin accountable. I also noticed in this memo that they mention a Race Equity Inclusion Assessment (REIA) as if it has already been done. Recall that the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights wrote to the School Board imploring them to conduct an REIA because they have not done one yet:
https://www.clccrul.org/blog/chicago-lawyers-committee-urges-evanstonskokie-sd65-to-reconsider-proposal-to-close-bessie-rhodes-school
Now, they dubiously suggest that one already exists. (!!!)
Also note that the entire phrasing "consider feasibility; the Race Equity Inclusion Assessment (REIA); and financial, operational, and community impacts" is in a gray font color, as opposed to the black font color of the rest of the memo. Someone clearly just added this text to the memo, I would argue as window-dressing, to make it look like they are addressing legal obligations and residents' concerns.