I want to point out another Horton lie that was true then and is true now - the lease certificates were never meant to cover the full cost of construction. They can only be used on “hard construction costs” which means all the other stuff - interest, architects and consultant fees, third party reports, legal fees and the fixtures and furnishings in the school - have to be paid for with outside funds. This amounts to $7 million on the latest budget. It’s something that really bugs me bc no one ever questioned it then and we allowed this guy to just run his mouth and tell lies. It also serves to show the lack of financial oversight this board and admin have provided. This money will likely be funded with the 2017 referendum funds or at least what’s left of it. That’s $7 million that could help balance the budget. $7 million that was levied on taxpayers to NOT build a school. That was not part of the plan. I am furious that referendum proceeds are being used to build a school that should only be constructed had a new referendum been passed. It’s all so sleazy and should be illegal and is a major reason the school should not be built.
Yeah, this is still the case. If you look at the current budget for Foster School:
$42 million in the lease certificate is pretty much the money that they need to do physical construction of the building.
They need $6 million for stuff in the building. Not clear where that money is going to come from. The reserves, I guess? Even the Bessie Rhodes property isn't going to sell for a few years.
Other Districts, like Skokie, when they built Lincoln Middle School took out two financings: a lease certificate for construction and regular general obligation bonds for the stuff in the school. We only did the first part and to date, nobody has really thought through the second part.
And to your point, the whole thing is a shady loophole anyway to avoid the specific language of a referendum.
There are certainly lies-a-plenty in the lease certificates and indeed in the entire process of getting this project going. But that was what Horton needed to get the next, bigger, better job, so here we are.
There will be no complaints from the investors who at least nominally are the victims of the fraud - they are still going to get paid. The real victims in this will be an entire generation of D65 students who will have $3M+ less each year while the lease certificates are being paid from operating funds that should be used to provide a quality education because the bus savings was fiction. The other set of victims will be the teachers and staff who are going to lose their jobs due to cuts to make up for the utter financial malpractice of the last several years, of which this fiasco is only a part. The list could go on ....
There is a saying that if it seems to good to be true, it probably is. The fact that no one gave this scheme serious scrutiny before greenlighting it is a crying shame. This community will be paying dearly for the Boards failure to do so for a long time.
I am so angry at this town I could scream. When people raised this shady 💩 —years ago (bc guess what —it was all there to see if you were willing to see it) we were called racists, “whyte supremacists”, and more. Existing BOE members sat by and did NOTHING while this was happening, except for pat themselves on the back, accept lies from Horton & his cronies, and apparently fill their stomachs with Grecian Chicken, Panera and more —all while kids and vulnerable families in this town got screwed.
I am so furious. And believe me it doesn’t feel good to say “I told you so.” Evanston kids, generations of them, are getting kicked to the curb. They can’t read at grade level —many aren’t even close. Same with math. They’re set up for failure at ETHS and most Evanstonians shrug their shoulders and get on with their day. And yet….here we are screaming into the damn wind, hoping and praying that something changes; that people finally wake up. Sad, sad times —and it’s only going to get worse.
You would not believe how many Evanstonians, when I tell them these stories just say, "Well, yeah, D65 sucks and always has. Just gotta get your kid through long enough to make it to ETHS." - this attitude drives me absolutely bonkers. Almost every other school district in America would *kill* for the per pupil financing (>$23,000 / head) that D65 has and we just piss it all away and shrug.
I grew up in Troy Michigan, a town which has one of the best public school districts in America, a well paid union teacher base, very diverse student body, and modern buildings. 99% of my graduating class went to college. The per pupil funding? $12,680 / head.
I think a lot of the anger here comes from transplants like me, who grew up in suburban districts with vastly lower funding and a higher quality of education and are shocked at the mess that is Evanston public schools.
Discouraging to read over snd over how the BOE lacked the courage to listen to honest questions of concerned citizens. I wonder if these travesties might be a call for state intervention.
Take aways from watching the recording of the board meeting at 1.25x...
-Dr. Grossi confirmed it was "odd" that the books were cooked in this manner two years in a row, but was hesitant to say the practice itself was illegal
-one of the board members (I think maybe Joey?) seemed to want to dig more on how the bus savings jumped from $500k to $3 million. Kind of strange to suggest getting to the bottom of that so long after the fact, but I guess it is part of the overall deficit picture that's looking pretty grim. Maybe he's a reader of this substack! He did add something along the lines of "that didn't seem to come from Raymond James"
-seems like a few board members were willing to admit they were duped, but all acknowledged they wouldn't have known where to look or what questions to ask. Maybe we need a BOE with more diverse skill sets and backgrounds? If only an acoountant would run for board sometime...
-there were a few instances where someone (again I think Joey) expressed concern if anybody responsible was still involved the admin/organization. Uh, yeah... Anyone on the board responsible for hiring Horton is responsible for his actions and decisions as a superintendent, which also extends to people he hired. If that cripples the district, you can't just scapegoat the departed.
If the board wants to know what is going on in the central office, and who made what transactions when, they should order Turner to issue an RFP for a forensic auditor (not something Grossi does). Seems important since there are no internal financial controls if they are finding out now about transactions that old. Seems important and the situation requires more than what Grossi can provide to the district. If I was a board member, I would not take Turner and Grossi’s word for it because the problem is that big. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Turner should resign, board should resign. Replace them with financially competent individuals. This should be primary focus at this point. The vast majority of the current board had their opportunity and 100% blew it. They can claim ignorance but they oversaw and gave a green light to an administration that hired unqualified friends, spent a HALF MILLION dollars on unnecessary security, spent tens of thousands of dollars on “lunches”, let the former superintendent go delinquent on his payments back to the taxpayers of this community and have overseen a historic level of enrollment decline in the district (including my own family) due to a focus on social justice instead of teaching kids how to read and do math. The board claims they were duped. Give me a break…where’s the Tylenol?!
Eh. Her role was different before. Was there something specific she did in her previous role (during Horton regime) you take issue with? It is also hard to argue that someone in an interim role can operate the same way as a superintendent with a longer, three-year runway. If she inherited a mess that was largely not of her own doing, she should be afforded some time to right the ship.
The thing I take the biggest issue is with nobody (including bother Dr. Turner and Ms. Mitchell) was willing to say everything is on the table, including reevaluating the plan to build a new fifth ward school. Is there anything legally holding us back from abandoning that plan to build it, paying back the lease certificate funds early/in full, and instead addressing the bussing issue via SAP3 with ideas based on today's budgets instead of yesterday's (deliberately misleading and flawed) ones that have been used to jam this through?
I can really only judge her on how she's performing now, which honestly I think she's doing OK. I think the board should've done a more open process in hiring her but and required her to live here, but other than that, I don't have many complaints.
Fun and depressing to see the March 2022 story about the lease certificates.
Take a look at the comments from the RoundTable readers. They basically predicted exactly what happened and immediately recognized the dodgy nature of the financing scheme.
In the article Biz claims the lease certificates were discussed in July 2021. Was that the meeting that has no audio on the archive? Very convenient, Biz!
If the RoundTable peanut gallery could figure out the District was getting fleeced, why couldn’t the board?!?!
Yeah I actually didn't know about that meeting in July 2021 until this morning when I was watching the footage from the March 2022 meeting. Then I went back and found that slide and all that older stuff and it put a lot of the pieces together for me. How'd that number go from $2m -> $3m?
Hilarious that someone in that comment section pointed out Dr. Horton's bankruptcies because, this is not all that different. In the pre-2007 era, he bought dodgy properties on the south side, refinanced them within weeks and then filed for bankruptcy a year later. Second bankruptcy was for failing to maintain those properties and building up too many fees from the City.
I always come back to the Horton hire as the board’s original sin. The first thing that I did when his name was released was google him and the first hit was the NBC story about how he owed Chicago tens of thousands of dollars.
I immediately thought, ‘this isn’t going to end well.’
To this day, I don't understand why the Board continues to do this as a closed process. I just don't see any upside to doing this or things like SAP3 behind closed doors. All this transparency and openness stuff is designed to protect the board and shield them from exactly this kind of criticism.
Thank you for this Tom-that timeline is really helpful! I also want to bring up that Horton added an incredible number of admin/central office positions-and though Dr. Turner talked about “reimagining positions” I don’t see any real reductions in the number of those positions.
Am I correct about the fact that a huge part of what pushed the 10 million dollar whole in the budget for 2024 was the huge spending on temp workers and the fact that superintendent Turners own sister is in charge of that department? If my understanding is accurate this seems seriously unethical and problematic at the least and possibly criminal if it involves kickbacks or any of the usual graft.
I know Mr Grossi sounds like a light shining in the darkness of bad financial news but his description of “ declining enrollment as a positive opportunity” because now the board has options i e closing more school buildings ( read here Willard, Orrington, Lincolnwood) is unreal
If you think enrollment has declined just wait till that happens.
Is that potentially a part of our problem though too?
D65 clearly does NOT care about attracting and retaining families. As of this week that now includes my family that made the heart breaking decision to leave D65 this year. If revenue was more closely tied to enrollments, perhaps that would change the incentive structure?
I think this is actually one of the biggest problems - administration has no incentive to consider the community, broadly speaking as a stakeholder. Like, even Dr. Horton brought this up a few times - like, who cares if a kid leaves for private school? If anything, it makes their lives easier without seriously impacting funding.
Sorry to hear that about your family - is there anything specific that would bring you back in, knowing that it's already a big change/decision to leave in the first place?
Thanks Pablo. Assuming all goes well this year, we’ll be really hard pressed to make him move again.
We moved to Evanston for the schools. And then realized we needed more space right as we got near school age so we urgently bought an old home and then spent 3 LONG years rehabbing it… primarily with the goal of making a stable home and school for the family. So it truly was heartbreaking to give up on what we’d spent so long working to achieve.
Tom, you seem to have reached out to the board before...have you ever asked if there are any concrete plans to attempt to improve the % of D65 aged/eligible children that actually attend D65 schools?
As far as I know the private schools still have room. I think St. A's has a waiting list (don't quote me on that) but most of the other ones still have room.
Apologies, I was too vague...I wasn't wondering if there's room for a few kids at some area private schools, but rather if there was still capacity to accommodate the supposed mass exodus being implied as a reaction to school closures.
My understanding is they are at/near capacity. Especially as you get to the middle school ages. That is far from anything official though, and just based on brief comments from the schools we applied to, and hearsay from other parents.
If that is the case, I don't think it's as simple as "well, if they close our current school, we'll just go private". Our public school district's mess needs to be cleaned up regardless.
Watching tonight’s meeting and just trying to keep my blood pressure under control. These people are pathetic. If you made a drinking game out of hearing “systems, processes and structures”, you would be under the table by now.
Stay tuned, I thought it was a good meeting and I'm having it transcribed. I think systems, processes and structures are better than what they have now which is basically a free for all
Am I reading this correctly? The D65 budget says the total spend on transportation in 2024 was $10M, yet this scheme was supposed to save $2, then $3, then $5M per year? Did they really believe they would save between 20 and 50% of the entire annual transportation budget? And that doesn’t even factor in the additional overhead costs of operating a new school. Surely I must be missing something…?
Yeah and back then it wasn’t $10 million or even close. When Sergio said $5m, it was more than the whole budget at that point. The blowup in transportation costs has nothing to do with the fifth ward kids, the bussing price there has remained relatively constant and a very small part of the overall bus costs. Vast majority of transportation costs are for special ed kids, intraday taxis, etc. Story coming out mid week on this subject.
I think everyone knew. It was always the elephant in the room.
You know those neighbors you have with lake houses, fancy cars, European vacations and you wonder how they do it? Then you see them in foreclosure? Everyone knew. And if they didn’t know they should have. Spending and spending and lying and spending and losing twenty percent. Come on.
I haven't seen anything yet but I'll drive by tomorrow and take a look, I was there a few weeks ago and it was still empty except for some flocks of Canadian geese shitting everywhere
To answer your question with another question: how is it NOT fraud? And I have another question: where are the board members now that all this is coming out? Are they offering their side?
You could make an argument that it was just incompetence and nobody had any idea what they were doing and just spit-balled the bus savings number without doing any research.
Yeah at some point I should publish all the emails that concerned citizens sent board members in April 2022 that were ignored, or worse responded to with condescension.
Well, if you look at the Roundtable article linked above from 9 March 2022, Biz says they didn't want to do a referendum because it "would price more people out of Evanston."
The real reason, of course, is that they knew a referendum wouldn't pass. In fact, just a week or so before that meeting, Horton told an industry conference that they were using lease certificates to explicitly avoid a referendum. Absolutely no mention of increasing the tax burden. The video is crazy to see. Horton says so many lies. He claims the 5th ward is 96% African American. He also says the transportation budget at the time was $4 million when I think it was $6 million and that they would only recoup $2.8 million from avoiding 5th Ward busing.
I highly doubt Biz will run for reelection. The whole board is responsible, but she was one of the leading cheerleaders and the first to discount any criticism as "racist" or "masculinist."
But if she happens to be on a future board when they come to voters asking for a repeat of the 2017 operating referendum, please remind her of her statements in 2022.
In fact, if people are going to public comments in the coming weeks, it might be helpful to remind them of this statement when we are asking how they intend to get out of this mess that they constructed.
This is the problem when boards and administrators refuse to ask questions on topics they lack the expertise to make decisions about without sufficient information. Additionally, when staff do not present objective pros and cons alongside a project, it raises concerns. The first red flag is when whoever is presenting the plan fails to provide both pros and cons, instead painting an overly optimistic picture. The second red flag is when questions are discouraged, and the third is when they obligate taxpayers to tens of millions of dollars of financial commitment without a referendum, bypassing what they know will be tough accountability questions from the public. This is completely irresponsible and a disservice to the children in our system and all taxpayers because District 65 and District 202 take about 70% of every tax bill.
Back in 2020-2022, I think there were a few Board members who had a "by any means necessary" approach to equity topics, especially the Foster School (and special education - stay tuned) and no desire to really think through the operational aspects of it. Like, they didn't even take out enough money *at the time* to both build and put things in the school.
In Horton's "Exit Interview," he says "the board gave me some priorities prior to me starting that they really wanted to lean into and I was finding a way, number one, to identify a source to fund a school in the Fifth Ward."
He is talking about the first half of 2020. If we are to believe Horton, building the school was already a priority in the Winter and Spring of 2020. Had the board EVER discussed this in public at that time?
For clarity, I think your timeline should start in 2020 with this admission.
I don't know - I'm going to have to go back through meeting minutes. Before summer 2021, it wasn't D65 that was doing the work on this, it was a project within the Evanston Community Foundation (ECF) and part of the STEM schools initiative, I think.
I better make sure I save that exit interview video for long term storage.
I want to point out another Horton lie that was true then and is true now - the lease certificates were never meant to cover the full cost of construction. They can only be used on “hard construction costs” which means all the other stuff - interest, architects and consultant fees, third party reports, legal fees and the fixtures and furnishings in the school - have to be paid for with outside funds. This amounts to $7 million on the latest budget. It’s something that really bugs me bc no one ever questioned it then and we allowed this guy to just run his mouth and tell lies. It also serves to show the lack of financial oversight this board and admin have provided. This money will likely be funded with the 2017 referendum funds or at least what’s left of it. That’s $7 million that could help balance the budget. $7 million that was levied on taxpayers to NOT build a school. That was not part of the plan. I am furious that referendum proceeds are being used to build a school that should only be constructed had a new referendum been passed. It’s all so sleazy and should be illegal and is a major reason the school should not be built.
Yeah, this is still the case. If you look at the current budget for Foster School:
$42 million in the lease certificate is pretty much the money that they need to do physical construction of the building.
They need $6 million for stuff in the building. Not clear where that money is going to come from. The reserves, I guess? Even the Bessie Rhodes property isn't going to sell for a few years.
Other Districts, like Skokie, when they built Lincoln Middle School took out two financings: a lease certificate for construction and regular general obligation bonds for the stuff in the school. We only did the first part and to date, nobody has really thought through the second part.
And to your point, the whole thing is a shady loophole anyway to avoid the specific language of a referendum.
There are certainly lies-a-plenty in the lease certificates and indeed in the entire process of getting this project going. But that was what Horton needed to get the next, bigger, better job, so here we are.
There will be no complaints from the investors who at least nominally are the victims of the fraud - they are still going to get paid. The real victims in this will be an entire generation of D65 students who will have $3M+ less each year while the lease certificates are being paid from operating funds that should be used to provide a quality education because the bus savings was fiction. The other set of victims will be the teachers and staff who are going to lose their jobs due to cuts to make up for the utter financial malpractice of the last several years, of which this fiasco is only a part. The list could go on ....
There is a saying that if it seems to good to be true, it probably is. The fact that no one gave this scheme serious scrutiny before greenlighting it is a crying shame. This community will be paying dearly for the Boards failure to do so for a long time.
I am so angry at this town I could scream. When people raised this shady 💩 —years ago (bc guess what —it was all there to see if you were willing to see it) we were called racists, “whyte supremacists”, and more. Existing BOE members sat by and did NOTHING while this was happening, except for pat themselves on the back, accept lies from Horton & his cronies, and apparently fill their stomachs with Grecian Chicken, Panera and more —all while kids and vulnerable families in this town got screwed.
I am so furious. And believe me it doesn’t feel good to say “I told you so.” Evanston kids, generations of them, are getting kicked to the curb. They can’t read at grade level —many aren’t even close. Same with math. They’re set up for failure at ETHS and most Evanstonians shrug their shoulders and get on with their day. And yet….here we are screaming into the damn wind, hoping and praying that something changes; that people finally wake up. Sad, sad times —and it’s only going to get worse.
You would not believe how many Evanstonians, when I tell them these stories just say, "Well, yeah, D65 sucks and always has. Just gotta get your kid through long enough to make it to ETHS." - this attitude drives me absolutely bonkers. Almost every other school district in America would *kill* for the per pupil financing (>$23,000 / head) that D65 has and we just piss it all away and shrug.
I grew up in Troy Michigan, a town which has one of the best public school districts in America, a well paid union teacher base, very diverse student body, and modern buildings. 99% of my graduating class went to college. The per pupil funding? $12,680 / head.
I think a lot of the anger here comes from transplants like me, who grew up in suburban districts with vastly lower funding and a higher quality of education and are shocked at the mess that is Evanston public schools.
Discouraging to read over snd over how the BOE lacked the courage to listen to honest questions of concerned citizens. I wonder if these travesties might be a call for state intervention.
Take aways from watching the recording of the board meeting at 1.25x...
-Dr. Grossi confirmed it was "odd" that the books were cooked in this manner two years in a row, but was hesitant to say the practice itself was illegal
-one of the board members (I think maybe Joey?) seemed to want to dig more on how the bus savings jumped from $500k to $3 million. Kind of strange to suggest getting to the bottom of that so long after the fact, but I guess it is part of the overall deficit picture that's looking pretty grim. Maybe he's a reader of this substack! He did add something along the lines of "that didn't seem to come from Raymond James"
-seems like a few board members were willing to admit they were duped, but all acknowledged they wouldn't have known where to look or what questions to ask. Maybe we need a BOE with more diverse skill sets and backgrounds? If only an acoountant would run for board sometime...
-there were a few instances where someone (again I think Joey) expressed concern if anybody responsible was still involved the admin/organization. Uh, yeah... Anyone on the board responsible for hiring Horton is responsible for his actions and decisions as a superintendent, which also extends to people he hired. If that cripples the district, you can't just scapegoat the departed.
Stay tuned - I'm having the whole meeting from last night transcribed because I want to get it right.
BTW this is what your donations go towards! Costs me $100 bones to get this bad boy transcribed
If the board wants to know what is going on in the central office, and who made what transactions when, they should order Turner to issue an RFP for a forensic auditor (not something Grossi does). Seems important since there are no internal financial controls if they are finding out now about transactions that old. Seems important and the situation requires more than what Grossi can provide to the district. If I was a board member, I would not take Turner and Grossi’s word for it because the problem is that big. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Turner should resign, board should resign. Replace them with financially competent individuals. This should be primary focus at this point. The vast majority of the current board had their opportunity and 100% blew it. They can claim ignorance but they oversaw and gave a green light to an administration that hired unqualified friends, spent a HALF MILLION dollars on unnecessary security, spent tens of thousands of dollars on “lunches”, let the former superintendent go delinquent on his payments back to the taxpayers of this community and have overseen a historic level of enrollment decline in the district (including my own family) due to a focus on social justice instead of teaching kids how to read and do math. The board claims they were duped. Give me a break…where’s the Tylenol?!
Turner was part of the Horton regime though she keeps trying to act like she is still “new”.
Eh. Her role was different before. Was there something specific she did in her previous role (during Horton regime) you take issue with? It is also hard to argue that someone in an interim role can operate the same way as a superintendent with a longer, three-year runway. If she inherited a mess that was largely not of her own doing, she should be afforded some time to right the ship.
The thing I take the biggest issue is with nobody (including bother Dr. Turner and Ms. Mitchell) was willing to say everything is on the table, including reevaluating the plan to build a new fifth ward school. Is there anything legally holding us back from abandoning that plan to build it, paying back the lease certificate funds early/in full, and instead addressing the bussing issue via SAP3 with ideas based on today's budgets instead of yesterday's (deliberately misleading and flawed) ones that have been used to jam this through?
I can really only judge her on how she's performing now, which honestly I think she's doing OK. I think the board should've done a more open process in hiring her but and required her to live here, but other than that, I don't have many complaints.
Fun and depressing to see the March 2022 story about the lease certificates.
Take a look at the comments from the RoundTable readers. They basically predicted exactly what happened and immediately recognized the dodgy nature of the financing scheme.
In the article Biz claims the lease certificates were discussed in July 2021. Was that the meeting that has no audio on the archive? Very convenient, Biz!
If the RoundTable peanut gallery could figure out the District was getting fleeced, why couldn’t the board?!?!
https://evanstonroundtable.com/2022/03/09/district-65-looks-at-lease-certificates-to-pay-for-new-fifth-ward-school/
Yeah I actually didn't know about that meeting in July 2021 until this morning when I was watching the footage from the March 2022 meeting. Then I went back and found that slide and all that older stuff and it put a lot of the pieces together for me. How'd that number go from $2m -> $3m?
Hilarious that someone in that comment section pointed out Dr. Horton's bankruptcies because, this is not all that different. In the pre-2007 era, he bought dodgy properties on the south side, refinanced them within weeks and then filed for bankruptcy a year later. Second bankruptcy was for failing to maintain those properties and building up too many fees from the City.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17AONCBkdWQm0ihmxCnhy8zmWbONBg6IRbBmcykDRLd0/edit?usp=drive_link
I always come back to the Horton hire as the board’s original sin. The first thing that I did when his name was released was google him and the first hit was the NBC story about how he owed Chicago tens of thousands of dollars.
I immediately thought, ‘this isn’t going to end well.’
To this day, I don't understand why the Board continues to do this as a closed process. I just don't see any upside to doing this or things like SAP3 behind closed doors. All this transparency and openness stuff is designed to protect the board and shield them from exactly this kind of criticism.
I just went back and read these comments. I cannot believe how spot on they were.
Thank you for this Tom-that timeline is really helpful! I also want to bring up that Horton added an incredible number of admin/central office positions-and though Dr. Turner talked about “reimagining positions” I don’t see any real reductions in the number of those positions.
Am I correct about the fact that a huge part of what pushed the 10 million dollar whole in the budget for 2024 was the huge spending on temp workers and the fact that superintendent Turners own sister is in charge of that department? If my understanding is accurate this seems seriously unethical and problematic at the least and possibly criminal if it involves kickbacks or any of the usual graft.
Stay tuned, part of my story this week!!
I know Mr Grossi sounds like a light shining in the darkness of bad financial news but his description of “ declining enrollment as a positive opportunity” because now the board has options i e closing more school buildings ( read here Willard, Orrington, Lincolnwood) is unreal
If you think enrollment has declined just wait till that happens.
Well, D65 is very very lucky that like 90% of funding is not tied to enrollment. This is very unusual nationally.
Is that potentially a part of our problem though too?
D65 clearly does NOT care about attracting and retaining families. As of this week that now includes my family that made the heart breaking decision to leave D65 this year. If revenue was more closely tied to enrollments, perhaps that would change the incentive structure?
I think this is actually one of the biggest problems - administration has no incentive to consider the community, broadly speaking as a stakeholder. Like, even Dr. Horton brought this up a few times - like, who cares if a kid leaves for private school? If anything, it makes their lives easier without seriously impacting funding.
Sorry to hear that about your family - is there anything specific that would bring you back in, knowing that it's already a big change/decision to leave in the first place?
Thanks Pablo. Assuming all goes well this year, we’ll be really hard pressed to make him move again.
We moved to Evanston for the schools. And then realized we needed more space right as we got near school age so we urgently bought an old home and then spent 3 LONG years rehabbing it… primarily with the goal of making a stable home and school for the family. So it truly was heartbreaking to give up on what we’d spent so long working to achieve.
How much more space do private schools have??
Tom, you seem to have reached out to the board before...have you ever asked if there are any concrete plans to attempt to improve the % of D65 aged/eligible children that actually attend D65 schools?
As far as I know the private schools still have room. I think St. A's has a waiting list (don't quote me on that) but most of the other ones still have room.
Apologies, I was too vague...I wasn't wondering if there's room for a few kids at some area private schools, but rather if there was still capacity to accommodate the supposed mass exodus being implied as a reaction to school closures.
My understanding is they are at/near capacity. Especially as you get to the middle school ages. That is far from anything official though, and just based on brief comments from the schools we applied to, and hearsay from other parents.
If that is the case, I don't think it's as simple as "well, if they close our current school, we'll just go private". Our public school district's mess needs to be cleaned up regardless.
Watching tonight’s meeting and just trying to keep my blood pressure under control. These people are pathetic. If you made a drinking game out of hearing “systems, processes and structures”, you would be under the table by now.
Stay tuned, I thought it was a good meeting and I'm having it transcribed. I think systems, processes and structures are better than what they have now which is basically a free for all
Am I reading this correctly? The D65 budget says the total spend on transportation in 2024 was $10M, yet this scheme was supposed to save $2, then $3, then $5M per year? Did they really believe they would save between 20 and 50% of the entire annual transportation budget? And that doesn’t even factor in the additional overhead costs of operating a new school. Surely I must be missing something…?
https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1723833923/district65net/jmidffohgnu3n3gnwdj1/FY25TentativeBudget.pdf
Yeah and back then it wasn’t $10 million or even close. When Sergio said $5m, it was more than the whole budget at that point. The blowup in transportation costs has nothing to do with the fifth ward kids, the bussing price there has remained relatively constant and a very small part of the overall bus costs. Vast majority of transportation costs are for special ed kids, intraday taxis, etc. Story coming out mid week on this subject.
I think everyone knew. It was always the elephant in the room.
You know those neighbors you have with lake houses, fancy cars, European vacations and you wonder how they do it? Then you see them in foreclosure? Everyone knew. And if they didn’t know they should have. Spending and spending and lying and spending and losing twenty percent. Come on.
Bookmarking this page. I am anticipating you will have to add to it as there will inevitably be more ‘surprises.’
Have they actually done any construction yet? The Bid they accepted last month said site prep would start in July.
I haven't seen anything yet but I'll drive by tomorrow and take a look, I was there a few weeks ago and it was still empty except for some flocks of Canadian geese shitting everywhere
To answer your question with another question: how is it NOT fraud? And I have another question: where are the board members now that all this is coming out? Are they offering their side?
You could make an argument that it was just incompetence and nobody had any idea what they were doing and just spit-balled the bus savings number without doing any research.
But millions of dollars in bus savings is absurd ? People were laughing on day one of The Great Bus Savings (“GBS”).
Yeah at some point I should publish all the emails that concerned citizens sent board members in April 2022 that were ignored, or worse responded to with condescension.
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Are there any prudent man/person/investor/fiduciary laws here that would tilt it at some point from merely incompetence to criminal negligence?
I think they would be hard pressed to argue mere negligence??
Classic Trumpian defense: I'm not scheming, I'm just a blowhard
Well, if you look at the Roundtable article linked above from 9 March 2022, Biz says they didn't want to do a referendum because it "would price more people out of Evanston."
The real reason, of course, is that they knew a referendum wouldn't pass. In fact, just a week or so before that meeting, Horton told an industry conference that they were using lease certificates to explicitly avoid a referendum. Absolutely no mention of increasing the tax burden. The video is crazy to see. Horton says so many lies. He claims the 5th ward is 96% African American. He also says the transportation budget at the time was $4 million when I think it was $6 million and that they would only recoup $2.8 million from avoiding 5th Ward busing.
https://youtu.be/20HiDO17g1o?t=1524
I highly doubt Biz will run for reelection. The whole board is responsible, but she was one of the leading cheerleaders and the first to discount any criticism as "racist" or "masculinist."
But if she happens to be on a future board when they come to voters asking for a repeat of the 2017 operating referendum, please remind her of her statements in 2022.
In fact, if people are going to public comments in the coming weeks, it might be helpful to remind them of this statement when we are asking how they intend to get out of this mess that they constructed.
Downloaded this video for the foiagras archives too.
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This is the problem when boards and administrators refuse to ask questions on topics they lack the expertise to make decisions about without sufficient information. Additionally, when staff do not present objective pros and cons alongside a project, it raises concerns. The first red flag is when whoever is presenting the plan fails to provide both pros and cons, instead painting an overly optimistic picture. The second red flag is when questions are discouraged, and the third is when they obligate taxpayers to tens of millions of dollars of financial commitment without a referendum, bypassing what they know will be tough accountability questions from the public. This is completely irresponsible and a disservice to the children in our system and all taxpayers because District 65 and District 202 take about 70% of every tax bill.
Back in 2020-2022, I think there were a few Board members who had a "by any means necessary" approach to equity topics, especially the Foster School (and special education - stay tuned) and no desire to really think through the operational aspects of it. Like, they didn't even take out enough money *at the time* to both build and put things in the school.
In Horton's "Exit Interview," he says "the board gave me some priorities prior to me starting that they really wanted to lean into and I was finding a way, number one, to identify a source to fund a school in the Fifth Ward."
He is talking about the first half of 2020. If we are to believe Horton, building the school was already a priority in the Winter and Spring of 2020. Had the board EVER discussed this in public at that time?
For clarity, I think your timeline should start in 2020 with this admission.
https://youtu.be/7dBQf4tunFM?t=199
I don't know - I'm going to have to go back through meeting minutes. Before summer 2021, it wasn't D65 that was doing the work on this, it was a project within the Evanston Community Foundation (ECF) and part of the STEM schools initiative, I think.
I better make sure I save that exit interview video for long term storage.
Side note: has anyone gotten an answer as to why the camera was turned off for the first portion of the last Board meeting?
I never got a reply from Adeela Qureshi when I emailed her on August 6th, asking if the full meeting video could be uploaded...
Given all the support people they RIF'ed in the last few months, it's totally possible that there was nobody to turn on the feed
The feed was on for the short “special” meeting that preceded the main one; all they had to do was leave the camera on.