Interesting point about just how negative bussing is. 60203 kids get bussed, King Arts kids get bussed. Lots of non-black 5th ward kids get bussed. What is the impact on those students? Millions of kids nationwide get on a school bus each day. It’s not about bussing anymore. And I would vote no on a school as I did in 2012. For many reasons and the top one being that this is just fiscally irresponsible and it is a feel-good move that isn’t even supported by many of the residents in the neighborhood. I also have to say that I think you are wrong about the political climate- if there were a referendum (and people actually went and voted), you would not see overwhelming support for this school. What you see today is overwhelming support for not being labeled publicly a racist or white supremecist. But the voting booth is private and d65 knew this. That’s exactly why they didn’t run the referendum as they should. There continues to be an exodus of teachers and students and the Board will install another CPS Horton cronie. I am grateful for the choices we have in Evanston for excellent schooling outside of d65. I worry about what the effects will be at ETHS- given that there are no advanced classes other than AP (which we already know accepts C-level students who have no business in such courses), are your kids going to be stuck in classes where a good portion of students can’t even read at grade level? I want my kid punching above his weight, not getting sucked down. These are the fears many parents in town have. And this is a D65 problem which they ignore or obfuscate, preferring the PR/“equity” win of a behemoth school we cannot afford over spending concerted effort and funds on bringing the students who need it up to par. That’s actual equity- who cares what building you get there in or what vehicle takes you there. Equity is fake af in this town. If you cared, you would make increasing skills and ability the priority over a “walkable” school. What kid is going to say in 20 years, “Sure, I still can’t read good and I didn’t go to college and my current and future income is negatively impacted, but my grade school was ALMOST leed certified! And I only had to walk a half mile (and cross Green Bay/Emerson in rush hour by myself) to get there!”?
This is why I think it is telling that a discussion of student performance was entirely absent from the District's argument for the school.
It was entirely couched in a warped nostalgia for righting some sort of wrong that Joseph Hill (the first D65 Black Superintendent) oversaw 50 years ago. This nostalgia was evident at the groundbreaking ceremony this week where the Roundtable reported that Evanston Cradle to Career head, Kimberly Holmes-Ross said that "we’ve been watching the Fifth Ward have a slow death for the last few decades."
A "slow death"? Really? The ward is more diverse than ever before and the neighborhood has lots of new businesses and restaurants like Soul and Smoke and Double Clutch. It seems pretty vibrant to me.
As I mentioned in my other post, there is little evidence that eliminating busing in the neighborhood will actually improve educational outcomes. This article from a scholar at Dartmouth about busing in Michigan is an interesting study where they find that there is no statistical relationship between taking the bus to school and academic performance. They do find a statistical relationship between bus access and a decline in chronic absenteeism.
If these results held for Evanston we would expect to see zero impact on performance and higher levels of chronic absenteeism at the new school. Is that worth $30 million dollars taken from the operating budget?
Yeah the gentrification over there is already underway - have you seen all the houses that just got demolished on Emerson?
I think the analysis would be tough, it's not like you'd have a control group of kids that should be bussed but didn't get bussed. It's hard to do analytics on this kind of stuff where to have a control group, you're basically doing a social experiment.
This is why I keep arguing that this is a *political* challenge more than a financial or educational one. The argument to build the school is political and doing this lease certificate to jam it through doesn't help the political cause of convincing the town why it's necessary.
With that said, I do think kids should all be able to walk to school but perhaps I lack enough knowledge about who walks and who doesn't. I live by Lincoln where we all walk and am a little blind to the rest of the town.
At the school board celebration meeting when people spoke about this new school one of the board members compared how they grew up in Michigan and their life was just so bad because they didn’t get to take the bus. And the 8th ward is now the most predominantly black I heard Hortons interviewer confirm on a YouTube just last week
I grew up in Michigan riding the bus and I can tell you that it’s overrated and I couldn’t wait to drive at 16 just so I didn’t have to ride the bus anymore.
If I am not mistaken, desegregation happened under Dr. Coffin, but point taken. Joe Hill didn't think the plan was a wrong needed to be righted. And the 5th ward had a school- King Lab (in the old Foster School). Perhaps the biggest failure was relocating King Lab to Skiles. Kids were bussed in to King Lab- that was the point. When Kimberly Holmes says she sees a slow death, she is referring to the so-called gentrification and diversification of the ward resulting in less and less black owners/residents. You can't have your "own" ward and continue to lament redlining of 60+ years ago if the people that now live in the redlined ward aren't black. That is problematic for some, which is also why the current alderman wants to ensure the boundaries of the ward allow for a majority-minority ward for purely political purposes. Some might call that gerrymandering. If/when the school is built, if it doesn't run out of money and become a mediocre building, if the population is mixed enough, if crime in the area is at acceptble levels, if there aren't major "Haven-esque" behavior problems, then the school will be a draw for families looking for starter/affordable homes to move to. This will encourage neighborhood development and new construction/rehabbing but will displace some current residents. Some will capitalize on it by selling at a profit and moving elsewhere, some must move elsewhere where the living is cheaper. Either way, the ward is not in decline now, nor will it be. We all know what happens in a boom neighborhood (think Bucktown/Wicker Park but tiny); crappy homes make way for new builds and money moves in for the location and amenities of Evanston. The 5th ward is pretty close to NU. Be careful what you wish for. It is already happening in the ward...drive around and see.
Hi Tom - the demolition of the homes on Emerson actually was an anti-gentrification move. I live nearby and have been keeping tabs. A private developer attempted to purchase the property a few years ago and turn it into a nice market rate apartment complex, but local residents fought it and the city council did not approve the purchase. So, who purchased the lot to please the masses? The City of Evanston for 1.6M after it was listed for 1.2M and never sold (but 1.6M was the appraised amount assuming the zoning density sticks -- at a lower zoning density which the surrounding community wants, it was just north of a mil).
The City of Evanston hasn't totally decided what they're going to do with the site, but councilmembers have expressed a desire to turn the site into low income/subsidized/affordable housing. The fire department was using the long vacant buildings for training purposes over the last few months before demolition. The buildings there certainly have been an eyesore for years, so I don't think anybody is sad to see them go, but I was very sad to see huge mature trees get taken out earlier on the property (ironic given how the City of Evanston is trying to impose restrictions on residents taking down trees on private property).
If you look at the census data, that area hasn't seen a huge influx of affluent purchasers but there are definitely small pockets of it and you see some rehabbed homes just north of Emerson on Wesley and the like. But people have been saying for YEARS that the SEE gentrification and the figures don't (yet) support that. With Double Clutch, Soul & Smoke, and a few pockets of development/rehabbed homes, we may see it down the road, but people have been saying that for 20 years. Ironically, maybe a new school will make the area more desirable and lead to buyers with more means. We shall see....But the small property lots and aged (but not historic) housing stock is a high hurdle on many of the blocks. It's not an area developers routinely look at properties to "flip."
Don’t know that I would agree that’s true in the whole ward. Drive around close to Beck Park and you will see lots of new and flipped homes. I see it daily. Look how much the new construction homes at Dodge and Emerson sold for a couple years ago. And the ones on Church and Grey in the last 6 years. It is happening. I moved to the 7th ward in 2010 and spent most of my kids’ youth at Fleetwood and Foster Field. It was walkable for us. I’ve seen the changes, and it’s getting better all the time.
Yes, desegregation of Foster began in the late 60s under Coffin, but white kids were bused in to Foster. Foster closed in 1979 when Hill was superintendent. The closure was due to decline in student numbers. I think Kingsley closed at around the same time. The District sold Foster but held on to Kingsley which they re-opened later.
Unfortunately the voters didn't seem to care about this clearly reckless funding scheme. (I won't even bring up Horton's own sketchy history with finances and real estate, which should have been a red flag before he was even hired).
One obvious solution that I don't believe has been explored would be to work with the city to rehab the Morton Civic Center and convert at least part of the building back into a school.
it is a historic school building in the Fifth Ward. It is not being used to its capacity and needs some capital upkeep.
A scenario could be one where the city continues to occupy certain parts of the building, move some departments downtown (where there is a surplus of office space available), D 65 could use the lease certificate cash to invest in upkeep in the building (and, hopefully the other buildings they own that are in a state of deferred maintenance).
I hold no hope for this to happen, largely because the D 65 Board obviously doesn't care about fiscal responsibility and I am confident that they will do another behind-closed-doors superintendent search to bring in another candidate with a weak record that fits with their ideological disposition.
These same voters that (I think) would've approved a referendum on this as long as it was couched in the right politics. This is why I think the lease certificate was short sighted, the Evanston electorate in 2012 has very different opinions on racial equity than it did in 2022.
One other thing to point out on the "racial equity" aspect of this: the vast majority of African Americans in Evanston live outside the Fifth Ward (2900 5th ward African Americans out of 12,500 city-wide).
How is this new school supposed to help those people?
Tom, Do you know if the District did ANY actual analysis on the impact of busing on student performance in school? They know all the kids who are bussed. They know their scores on the standardized tests. They know their race. They know their free- and reduced- lunch status.
You could do a very simple statistical analysis controlling for race, income, etc.. which could test if bussing is a predictor of test scores.
Before even contemplating a new school, it would be irresponsible to NOT do this analysis.
There are plenty of empirical studies that suggest bussing does not negatively effect performance AND that integrated schools result in better outcomes for low income and minority students. Does that hold in Evanston?
My hunch is that they a) either didn't do the analysis, or b) did the analysis and found that bussing is not a significant predictor. Likely the big predictors are things like reduced and free lunch.
This new school will do absolutely nothing for those kids in other parts of the city who may be minority or low income. In fact, as your article mentions it is going likely starve resources from throughout the district from things like instruction, so it could very well be a net-negative all around.
I don't know the answers to your questions; I have seen some research they did correlating test scores with bussing but that data is generally not available to the public (it can't be properly anonymized)
We don't necessarily need to see the raw data (although they could easily be anonymized by assigning specific addresses to a Census block group).
I would like to see the research you mention. If they did something like correlating bused students from the fifth ward with their test scores, that would ignore a bunch of other confounding variables like socio-economic status. It is basically meaningless in terms of understanding the impact of taking the bus to school.
If you do a basic regression analysis you can hold those socio-economic variables constant. Since we undoubtedly have low-income, kids of color walking to other schools in the district, you can map the differential variable (whether the kid takes the bus or not) and see if it is significant.
My sense is that they did not conduct a statistically sound analysis. If you look at the people in charge of the process, their resumes don't suggest a real background in statistics. The woman who directs student assignments is a clinical social worker who ran programming for the YMCA.
The head data person for the District has an EdD from Aurora University. For a PhD you usually have to have a strong data-oriented and quantitative study for your dissertation. For an EdD from Aurora? No such thing. The 'data' for her dissertation were interviews with 5 college students!?!?!
Unfortunately we don't have serious people running the show at D65--part of this is the Education-Consultant complex that elevates things like EdD degrees to give a veneer of credentialing. It is not surprising we get to this point with a board that is almost entirely comprised of functionaries in this same system.
I don't know, I have a pretty deep background in statistics and if you asked me to do this analysis I'd probably just shrug. The problem is, without a randomized control, you're comparing apples to oranges and even in an ideal world where you could control for every socio-economic variable possible, what's the point? Even if your proved some link between bussing and test scores, that's not the point of the project or the school. Maybe people *say* it is but that's all just political posturing.
I do largely agree with you on the EdD situation - they seem to be handing these things out like candy these days. One year of online schooling and you get a EdD?! Absurd.
I always find it so ridiculous when you talk to people at D65--and their public presentation--how it's always "Dr. this" and "Dr. that."
I work at NU and used to work at UC where I interact with Nobel prize winners, National Academy of Sciences members, top international scientists, and literally nobody uses honorifics.
Do we ever hear anybody refer to Dan Biss as "Dr. Biss"? I called him 'Mayor Biss' once and he told me to call him Dan.
Can someone explain how all these children are going to walk to school, during I don’t know, the winter months with extreme temperatures and conditions. Under 1.5 mile walks for all
One conclusion that HAS been reached time and time again, on the other hand, is that those living in poverty do MUCH better in life (Education, salary, health) when they are in communities and schools that are NOT full of poverty. HUD did a very powerful randomized study of Section 8 housing placing low income households in different neighborhoods/schools. Many of the recipients actually do NOT want to be placed in areas that aren't high poverty as they feel uncomfortable/not welcome in those areas. However, those children that were randomly assigned to areas where poverty/low education parents are NOT the overwhelming majority of their neighbors and peer-set had much better educational and life outcomes decades later. It was very robust longitudinal study. So, if certain fifth ward students are going from a school that is 25% free/reduced lunch now to a school that is 60% free/reduced lunch in the future (even if it's in "walking distance"), I would expect educational results to DECLINE based on the current accepted scientific research in the area. Of course, the aspect of taking a bus to the school wasn't an attribute studied for any predictive/correlative values in the prior studies. ;)
When the 5th ward funding was first proposed I wondered that if cutting busing could pay for an entire new school + smaller classrooms across the district, why had no one proposed this before? Yes, the desegregation busing is its own topic and tied to this, but it seems this silver bullet was found the second someone wanted to find it.
How can all these violations of Illinois laws being broken be reported and someone held accountable? This is at least the second laws I’ve seen you point out being brokenare the feds or someone been notified ?
I personally wish a parent or someone would sue to stop it as you mentioned happened in Wheaton. Indirectly related I heard Devon Reid say on a YouTube that the reparations payments switching to cash payments could be stopped if someone in town sued but he didn’t think anyone in the community would do that because it’s such a great community (I’m paraphrasing his words). Likely same here. However, I saw that one property owner did sue about the homeless shelter so hopefully someone sues.
I think also there are lots of cases where the law is broken but there are functionally no consequences. What's the consequence of breaking IL School Code? Nothing. Also, with all the of the bad contracts, contracts to friends that Dr. Horton was giving out, unless there are kickbacks or some other scheme where he benefits, I don't think any prosecutor is going to take the case. Even with FOIA, if someone violates FOIA in bad faith, my only recourse is to the IL Attorney General who currently has a >1 year backlog of FOIA cases (unless I want to sue)
What is a example of violating foia in bad faith and is this currently happening to you? If so, I assume from the districts law firm? If so is there any chance of a future story on that law firms’ violations not just involving foia as I imagine that firm is helping cover up these crimes and likely others since they are so involved all sorts of aspects of d65. someone is possibly working on a reporting action against that firm (as nothing else seems to be being done) in the somewhat near future. Perhaps it’s D65s lawyers helping the school board and superintendent break all these laws, with the firms knowledge of laws one would think perhaps they could be held accountable since apparently no one else is from conflicts of interest etc
Actually the bad faith denials are coming from the US Department of Education. D65 and their law firm have fought me on a few things but I at least have some mechanisms I can follow to get the documents. I think they've mostly acted in good faith with me and I appreciate it. However, when the US Government takes a FOIA and just never fills it, there's *nothing* you can do unless you want to sue or organize a revolution.
I saw this but I couldn't tell whether it was the interest rate or what Raymond James calls the "Effective Interest Rate" or the "All-in True Interest" rate. The latter one derives from the fact that the District can put the money (temporarily) into an interest bearing account and collect proceeds. Then they take this amount off the top. So I (think) the interest rate for the lease certificates is 5% but they're getting some of that back while the money sits in an account and collects interest (which is what it is doing now).
Fundamentally, this is a financial product the taxpayers of Evanston just purchased.
We (taxpayers) did at least luck out that they secured the product when they did to some extent. The rate would have been MUCH worse just a few months later, and especially now. Still not super "cheap" financing in the end, but saved millions over what the product would look like today. D65 got it just in time from a rate increase perspective.
The use case that D65 seemed to use in suggesting it's a legitimate funding source was Sunset Ridge. That's the only other district in the area that I'm aware of that's used lease certificates in building a new school (they built a new school literally adjacent to the prior school and then tore it down afterward; so it was a brand new school but in the exact same site/property as the existing one).
You are right. This is the subject of a future story but because of the investment strategy, there's actually more cash ($41m) in the lease certificate account than they took out because they took the money at low rates and now it is high rates. D65 running a little hedge fund I guess; Northwestern would be proud!
Interesting point about just how negative bussing is. 60203 kids get bussed, King Arts kids get bussed. Lots of non-black 5th ward kids get bussed. What is the impact on those students? Millions of kids nationwide get on a school bus each day. It’s not about bussing anymore. And I would vote no on a school as I did in 2012. For many reasons and the top one being that this is just fiscally irresponsible and it is a feel-good move that isn’t even supported by many of the residents in the neighborhood. I also have to say that I think you are wrong about the political climate- if there were a referendum (and people actually went and voted), you would not see overwhelming support for this school. What you see today is overwhelming support for not being labeled publicly a racist or white supremecist. But the voting booth is private and d65 knew this. That’s exactly why they didn’t run the referendum as they should. There continues to be an exodus of teachers and students and the Board will install another CPS Horton cronie. I am grateful for the choices we have in Evanston for excellent schooling outside of d65. I worry about what the effects will be at ETHS- given that there are no advanced classes other than AP (which we already know accepts C-level students who have no business in such courses), are your kids going to be stuck in classes where a good portion of students can’t even read at grade level? I want my kid punching above his weight, not getting sucked down. These are the fears many parents in town have. And this is a D65 problem which they ignore or obfuscate, preferring the PR/“equity” win of a behemoth school we cannot afford over spending concerted effort and funds on bringing the students who need it up to par. That’s actual equity- who cares what building you get there in or what vehicle takes you there. Equity is fake af in this town. If you cared, you would make increasing skills and ability the priority over a “walkable” school. What kid is going to say in 20 years, “Sure, I still can’t read good and I didn’t go to college and my current and future income is negatively impacted, but my grade school was ALMOST leed certified! And I only had to walk a half mile (and cross Green Bay/Emerson in rush hour by myself) to get there!”?
This is why I think it is telling that a discussion of student performance was entirely absent from the District's argument for the school.
It was entirely couched in a warped nostalgia for righting some sort of wrong that Joseph Hill (the first D65 Black Superintendent) oversaw 50 years ago. This nostalgia was evident at the groundbreaking ceremony this week where the Roundtable reported that Evanston Cradle to Career head, Kimberly Holmes-Ross said that "we’ve been watching the Fifth Ward have a slow death for the last few decades."
A "slow death"? Really? The ward is more diverse than ever before and the neighborhood has lots of new businesses and restaurants like Soul and Smoke and Double Clutch. It seems pretty vibrant to me.
As I mentioned in my other post, there is little evidence that eliminating busing in the neighborhood will actually improve educational outcomes. This article from a scholar at Dartmouth about busing in Michigan is an interesting study where they find that there is no statistical relationship between taking the bus to school and academic performance. They do find a statistical relationship between bus access and a decline in chronic absenteeism.
If these results held for Evanston we would expect to see zero impact on performance and higher levels of chronic absenteeism at the new school. Is that worth $30 million dollars taken from the operating budget?
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED622132.pdf
Yeah the gentrification over there is already underway - have you seen all the houses that just got demolished on Emerson?
I think the analysis would be tough, it's not like you'd have a control group of kids that should be bussed but didn't get bussed. It's hard to do analytics on this kind of stuff where to have a control group, you're basically doing a social experiment.
This is why I keep arguing that this is a *political* challenge more than a financial or educational one. The argument to build the school is political and doing this lease certificate to jam it through doesn't help the political cause of convincing the town why it's necessary.
With that said, I do think kids should all be able to walk to school but perhaps I lack enough knowledge about who walks and who doesn't. I live by Lincoln where we all walk and am a little blind to the rest of the town.
At the school board celebration meeting when people spoke about this new school one of the board members compared how they grew up in Michigan and their life was just so bad because they didn’t get to take the bus. And the 8th ward is now the most predominantly black I heard Hortons interviewer confirm on a YouTube just last week
I grew up in Michigan riding the bus and I can tell you that it’s overrated and I couldn’t wait to drive at 16 just so I didn’t have to ride the bus anymore.
If I am not mistaken, desegregation happened under Dr. Coffin, but point taken. Joe Hill didn't think the plan was a wrong needed to be righted. And the 5th ward had a school- King Lab (in the old Foster School). Perhaps the biggest failure was relocating King Lab to Skiles. Kids were bussed in to King Lab- that was the point. When Kimberly Holmes says she sees a slow death, she is referring to the so-called gentrification and diversification of the ward resulting in less and less black owners/residents. You can't have your "own" ward and continue to lament redlining of 60+ years ago if the people that now live in the redlined ward aren't black. That is problematic for some, which is also why the current alderman wants to ensure the boundaries of the ward allow for a majority-minority ward for purely political purposes. Some might call that gerrymandering. If/when the school is built, if it doesn't run out of money and become a mediocre building, if the population is mixed enough, if crime in the area is at acceptble levels, if there aren't major "Haven-esque" behavior problems, then the school will be a draw for families looking for starter/affordable homes to move to. This will encourage neighborhood development and new construction/rehabbing but will displace some current residents. Some will capitalize on it by selling at a profit and moving elsewhere, some must move elsewhere where the living is cheaper. Either way, the ward is not in decline now, nor will it be. We all know what happens in a boom neighborhood (think Bucktown/Wicker Park but tiny); crappy homes make way for new builds and money moves in for the location and amenities of Evanston. The 5th ward is pretty close to NU. Be careful what you wish for. It is already happening in the ward...drive around and see.
I was going to say, there's already a ton of gentrification happening over there. Just check out what's happening on Emerson right now.
Hi Tom - the demolition of the homes on Emerson actually was an anti-gentrification move. I live nearby and have been keeping tabs. A private developer attempted to purchase the property a few years ago and turn it into a nice market rate apartment complex, but local residents fought it and the city council did not approve the purchase. So, who purchased the lot to please the masses? The City of Evanston for 1.6M after it was listed for 1.2M and never sold (but 1.6M was the appraised amount assuming the zoning density sticks -- at a lower zoning density which the surrounding community wants, it was just north of a mil).
The City of Evanston hasn't totally decided what they're going to do with the site, but councilmembers have expressed a desire to turn the site into low income/subsidized/affordable housing. The fire department was using the long vacant buildings for training purposes over the last few months before demolition. The buildings there certainly have been an eyesore for years, so I don't think anybody is sad to see them go, but I was very sad to see huge mature trees get taken out earlier on the property (ironic given how the City of Evanston is trying to impose restrictions on residents taking down trees on private property).
If you look at the census data, that area hasn't seen a huge influx of affluent purchasers but there are definitely small pockets of it and you see some rehabbed homes just north of Emerson on Wesley and the like. But people have been saying for YEARS that the SEE gentrification and the figures don't (yet) support that. With Double Clutch, Soul & Smoke, and a few pockets of development/rehabbed homes, we may see it down the road, but people have been saying that for 20 years. Ironically, maybe a new school will make the area more desirable and lead to buyers with more means. We shall see....But the small property lots and aged (but not historic) housing stock is a high hurdle on many of the blocks. It's not an area developers routinely look at properties to "flip."
Thank you for this correction; I haven’t been following that story as closely as I should have been. Much appreciated comment 🙏
Don’t know that I would agree that’s true in the whole ward. Drive around close to Beck Park and you will see lots of new and flipped homes. I see it daily. Look how much the new construction homes at Dodge and Emerson sold for a couple years ago. And the ones on Church and Grey in the last 6 years. It is happening. I moved to the 7th ward in 2010 and spent most of my kids’ youth at Fleetwood and Foster Field. It was walkable for us. I’ve seen the changes, and it’s getting better all the time.
Yes, desegregation of Foster began in the late 60s under Coffin, but white kids were bused in to Foster. Foster closed in 1979 when Hill was superintendent. The closure was due to decline in student numbers. I think Kingsley closed at around the same time. The District sold Foster but held on to Kingsley which they re-opened later.
Thank you guys for this background!!
I could be wrong about the timing of Kingsley's closing. But it was definitely closed during the 1980s.
Unfortunately the voters didn't seem to care about this clearly reckless funding scheme. (I won't even bring up Horton's own sketchy history with finances and real estate, which should have been a red flag before he was even hired).
One obvious solution that I don't believe has been explored would be to work with the city to rehab the Morton Civic Center and convert at least part of the building back into a school.
it is a historic school building in the Fifth Ward. It is not being used to its capacity and needs some capital upkeep.
A scenario could be one where the city continues to occupy certain parts of the building, move some departments downtown (where there is a surplus of office space available), D 65 could use the lease certificate cash to invest in upkeep in the building (and, hopefully the other buildings they own that are in a state of deferred maintenance).
I hold no hope for this to happen, largely because the D 65 Board obviously doesn't care about fiscal responsibility and I am confident that they will do another behind-closed-doors superintendent search to bring in another candidate with a weak record that fits with their ideological disposition.
These same voters that (I think) would've approved a referendum on this as long as it was couched in the right politics. This is why I think the lease certificate was short sighted, the Evanston electorate in 2012 has very different opinions on racial equity than it did in 2022.
One other thing to point out on the "racial equity" aspect of this: the vast majority of African Americans in Evanston live outside the Fifth Ward (2900 5th ward African Americans out of 12,500 city-wide).
How is this new school supposed to help those people?
Tom, Do you know if the District did ANY actual analysis on the impact of busing on student performance in school? They know all the kids who are bussed. They know their scores on the standardized tests. They know their race. They know their free- and reduced- lunch status.
You could do a very simple statistical analysis controlling for race, income, etc.. which could test if bussing is a predictor of test scores.
Before even contemplating a new school, it would be irresponsible to NOT do this analysis.
There are plenty of empirical studies that suggest bussing does not negatively effect performance AND that integrated schools result in better outcomes for low income and minority students. Does that hold in Evanston?
My hunch is that they a) either didn't do the analysis, or b) did the analysis and found that bussing is not a significant predictor. Likely the big predictors are things like reduced and free lunch.
This new school will do absolutely nothing for those kids in other parts of the city who may be minority or low income. In fact, as your article mentions it is going likely starve resources from throughout the district from things like instruction, so it could very well be a net-negative all around.
I don't know the answers to your questions; I have seen some research they did correlating test scores with bussing but that data is generally not available to the public (it can't be properly anonymized)
We don't necessarily need to see the raw data (although they could easily be anonymized by assigning specific addresses to a Census block group).
I would like to see the research you mention. If they did something like correlating bused students from the fifth ward with their test scores, that would ignore a bunch of other confounding variables like socio-economic status. It is basically meaningless in terms of understanding the impact of taking the bus to school.
If you do a basic regression analysis you can hold those socio-economic variables constant. Since we undoubtedly have low-income, kids of color walking to other schools in the district, you can map the differential variable (whether the kid takes the bus or not) and see if it is significant.
My sense is that they did not conduct a statistically sound analysis. If you look at the people in charge of the process, their resumes don't suggest a real background in statistics. The woman who directs student assignments is a clinical social worker who ran programming for the YMCA.
The head data person for the District has an EdD from Aurora University. For a PhD you usually have to have a strong data-oriented and quantitative study for your dissertation. For an EdD from Aurora? No such thing. The 'data' for her dissertation were interviews with 5 college students!?!?!
https://www.proquest.com/openview/a91d9a3d030781ac00fb3de21f258b28/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
Unfortunately we don't have serious people running the show at D65--part of this is the Education-Consultant complex that elevates things like EdD degrees to give a veneer of credentialing. It is not surprising we get to this point with a board that is almost entirely comprised of functionaries in this same system.
I don't know, I have a pretty deep background in statistics and if you asked me to do this analysis I'd probably just shrug. The problem is, without a randomized control, you're comparing apples to oranges and even in an ideal world where you could control for every socio-economic variable possible, what's the point? Even if your proved some link between bussing and test scores, that's not the point of the project or the school. Maybe people *say* it is but that's all just political posturing.
I do largely agree with you on the EdD situation - they seem to be handing these things out like candy these days. One year of online schooling and you get a EdD?! Absurd.
I always find it so ridiculous when you talk to people at D65--and their public presentation--how it's always "Dr. this" and "Dr. that."
I work at NU and used to work at UC where I interact with Nobel prize winners, National Academy of Sciences members, top international scientists, and literally nobody uses honorifics.
Do we ever hear anybody refer to Dan Biss as "Dr. Biss"? I called him 'Mayor Biss' once and he told me to call him Dan.
Can someone explain how all these children are going to walk to school, during I don’t know, the winter months with extreme temperatures and conditions. Under 1.5 mile walks for all
I walk my kid to school every day, even when it’s brutally cold
One conclusion that HAS been reached time and time again, on the other hand, is that those living in poverty do MUCH better in life (Education, salary, health) when they are in communities and schools that are NOT full of poverty. HUD did a very powerful randomized study of Section 8 housing placing low income households in different neighborhoods/schools. Many of the recipients actually do NOT want to be placed in areas that aren't high poverty as they feel uncomfortable/not welcome in those areas. However, those children that were randomly assigned to areas where poverty/low education parents are NOT the overwhelming majority of their neighbors and peer-set had much better educational and life outcomes decades later. It was very robust longitudinal study. So, if certain fifth ward students are going from a school that is 25% free/reduced lunch now to a school that is 60% free/reduced lunch in the future (even if it's in "walking distance"), I would expect educational results to DECLINE based on the current accepted scientific research in the area. Of course, the aspect of taking a bus to the school wasn't an attribute studied for any predictive/correlative values in the prior studies. ;)
Great work as always.
When the 5th ward funding was first proposed I wondered that if cutting busing could pay for an entire new school + smaller classrooms across the district, why had no one proposed this before? Yes, the desegregation busing is its own topic and tied to this, but it seems this silver bullet was found the second someone wanted to find it.
Funny how that works
How can all these violations of Illinois laws being broken be reported and someone held accountable? This is at least the second laws I’ve seen you point out being brokenare the feds or someone been notified ?
I personally wish a parent or someone would sue to stop it as you mentioned happened in Wheaton. Indirectly related I heard Devon Reid say on a YouTube that the reparations payments switching to cash payments could be stopped if someone in town sued but he didn’t think anyone in the community would do that because it’s such a great community (I’m paraphrasing his words). Likely same here. However, I saw that one property owner did sue about the homeless shelter so hopefully someone sues.
I think also there are lots of cases where the law is broken but there are functionally no consequences. What's the consequence of breaking IL School Code? Nothing. Also, with all the of the bad contracts, contracts to friends that Dr. Horton was giving out, unless there are kickbacks or some other scheme where he benefits, I don't think any prosecutor is going to take the case. Even with FOIA, if someone violates FOIA in bad faith, my only recourse is to the IL Attorney General who currently has a >1 year backlog of FOIA cases (unless I want to sue)
What is a example of violating foia in bad faith and is this currently happening to you? If so, I assume from the districts law firm? If so is there any chance of a future story on that law firms’ violations not just involving foia as I imagine that firm is helping cover up these crimes and likely others since they are so involved all sorts of aspects of d65. someone is possibly working on a reporting action against that firm (as nothing else seems to be being done) in the somewhat near future. Perhaps it’s D65s lawyers helping the school board and superintendent break all these laws, with the firms knowledge of laws one would think perhaps they could be held accountable since apparently no one else is from conflicts of interest etc
Actually the bad faith denials are coming from the US Department of Education. D65 and their law firm have fought me on a few things but I at least have some mechanisms I can follow to get the documents. I think they've mostly acted in good faith with me and I appreciate it. However, when the US Government takes a FOIA and just never fills it, there's *nothing* you can do unless you want to sue or organize a revolution.
https://www.district65.net/Page/2605#:~:text=Further%2C%20the%20interest%20rate%20for,place%20by%20the%20Federal%20Reserve.
This says the interest rate is 3.4% under the financing tab and first pull down
FYI Duncan Agnew has a really great explainer here: https://evanstonroundtable.com/2022/12/21/lease-certificates-101-everything-to-know-about-funding-for-fifth-ward-school/
I saw this but I couldn't tell whether it was the interest rate or what Raymond James calls the "Effective Interest Rate" or the "All-in True Interest" rate. The latter one derives from the fact that the District can put the money (temporarily) into an interest bearing account and collect proceeds. Then they take this amount off the top. So I (think) the interest rate for the lease certificates is 5% but they're getting some of that back while the money sits in an account and collects interest (which is what it is doing now).
Fundamentally, this is a financial product the taxpayers of Evanston just purchased.
We (taxpayers) did at least luck out that they secured the product when they did to some extent. The rate would have been MUCH worse just a few months later, and especially now. Still not super "cheap" financing in the end, but saved millions over what the product would look like today. D65 got it just in time from a rate increase perspective.
The use case that D65 seemed to use in suggesting it's a legitimate funding source was Sunset Ridge. That's the only other district in the area that I'm aware of that's used lease certificates in building a new school (they built a new school literally adjacent to the prior school and then tore it down afterward; so it was a brand new school but in the exact same site/property as the existing one).
You are right. This is the subject of a future story but because of the investment strategy, there's actually more cash ($41m) in the lease certificate account than they took out because they took the money at low rates and now it is high rates. D65 running a little hedge fund I guess; Northwestern would be proud!