District 65 needs new leadership in Performance Management & Accountability and curriculum design. We need more of a focus on differentiated instruction and to not be afraid of grouping kids according to their current learning stage. Teachers need to be able to focus on specific learning stages so kids can thoroughly learn each skill before moving on to the next one. And kids need grades to build accountability. Support teachers and direct financial resources towards teaching fundamental skills followed by advanced skills. Money should not go to construction and consultants- make classroom instruction and academic excellence the priority.
I'm increasingly reaching the view that the entire administrative apparatus needs to be replaced (via consolidation or firing everyone). The Board is the one with all the statutory power here and the IASB will say their job is to 1) set the goal and 2) hire a superintendent.
If the Board's goal is "equity" and the performance gap in math is more than 60% between black and white kids and is not improving, they need to hold people accountable.
(Update: this is kind of harsh and I wonder if this is actually what the board thought when they hired Horton - like he was this outsider that was gonna break up all the things and fix this problem. That is the vision he sells, even though the implementation is mostly nonsense)
I think it falls on all the folks in the Administration with titles like "Assistant Superintendent of Literacy/Math". Like, for the last 8 years the entire guiding philosophy of D65 has been equity. If your job is "Assistant Superintendent of Math" (for example) and the racial gap is 60% and continues to grow, you're not doing a good job. I'm sorry.
That is a very good question! Let me do some research and see what I can come back with - I know some folks at NU SESP that may be able to help with that quesiton
You are absolutely right…. And she also leaks info straight to the Equity Army Bully Saquad as she is married to a key member of it. It is well known throughout town.
I noticed the Evanston Now article on this week's board meeting that they reported that District staff met with the real estate firm JLL regarding proposals to sell or lease District property.
The staff members were the CFO and Beardsley who (according to the DIstrict 65 org chart) works as something called the "Assistant Superintendent of Performance Management & Accountability." I have no idea what the title means, but my understanding was that Beardsley dealt with curriculum.
So the question I have is why is she meeting with big real estate firms? It seems weird especially given the fact that her spouse has a stake in at least one very expensive AirBnb in town.
1) I am told she was in a curriculum job and got moved to move of a buildings role, after Turner did a re-org this year. I don't think there's anything sus about that.
2) I can't stand JLL for reasons involving city stuff
3) I assume they're trying to sell the Bessie Rhodes property
I bet there is a strong relationship between preschool education regarding test score gaps. If D65 could find a way bridge the gap for access to quality preschool I would bet we could improve these gaps. Otherwise it is a hope and a prayer.
The quality of education recieved at the PreK level is not the issue. The issue is pushing down developmentally inappropriate standards and curriculum for our youngest and most vulnerable learners to manage. 3 to 5 year olds need social/emotional learning, which involves learning self regulation. K standards are not reasonable benchmarks for PreK, yet year after year that is what is being done. Academic learning beyond rote knowledge cannot be achieved without that highly important self regulation piece. The gold standard of Early Childhood Education is children learn best through play. PreK has become the new 1st grade in many ways. It is highly irresponsible to continue to push down unattainable benchmarks for children who are still learning how to use the toilet.
Equity. Their definition strives to provide all kids in D65 a disappointing education. No progress for our minority students while dragging the whole district down with their mismanagement. Then papering it over with opaque benchmarking.
How can so much be spent to deliver so little? Agreed Tom that full disclosure of all financial reports and information is an absolute must. They have no earned the right to bury information.
The first row of future enrollment number chart is very interesting. The 4th grade is the class that was asked to begin K in virtual school. That was a lot to ask of kids and parents and nationwide, you see that grade low in public schools in lots of places. Then you see enrollment pick up in the next 2 grades that start when schools return to in person, and then drop dramatically. That you don’t see that drop as many other places. That is not birth rates. Those are families making different, permanent choices about schools and secondary, for some, where to live because of dissatisfaction.
My kid is in 4th - so many people left. He lost about half his buds while D65 all yelled at everyone - kids of all races bounced. CPS was open before us!
Good points, I didn't think of that re: 4th grade. The thing that annoys me to no end is how little acknowledgement there is for our ability to AFFECT enrollment. If you don't think of retaining and growing enrollment as a goal (yes, I know there's a cost per pupil), you can be perfectly complacent in any perceived need to attract people to want to raise a family here -- or for those who are here, to want to utilize the schools and have some skin in the game.
Enrollment increase should absolutely be a Superintendent goal - it alleviates some of the budget issues by bringing in more state funding, especially for special education students. Obviously, some of it is exogenous and depends on housing market stuff - but the Superintendent should be working closely with other local governments. It's a political and an educational job, that's why they make $250k+. Sergio wants to talk about solving affordable housing but like, the City has the resources to actually do this. And the City needs stability in the public schools and a Superintendent needs to be that partner.
Every corporate board in America puts "growth" broadly speaking into the requirements for their CEO and this should be no different.
Not sure if she was scouring the comments in the afternoon or what, but I nearly fell out of my chair watching the meeting recording when Biz acknowledged (finally) there being a set of factors they CAN influence to address enrollment and that other ones they have less influence over are present but unproductive to dwell on. It led to a genuine conversation about the latter acknowledging this aspect of people opting out and some ways to try to tackle it.
Other more pressing issues are overshadowing this one right now, but it'll resurface when the new demographic projections come out over the next month and we see updated numbers with the current 2026-27 boundaries factored in, and we can't lose sight of it. I hope the data collected is shared publicly so we can track progress and focus around it.
Remember how Horton said it was just fine for families to leave for private school? At that time he and the board were happy to see families leave for private school. He obviously had no idea how that would change funding especially towards special education. I would think state funding tied to enrollment would be superintendent 101, but I guess not.
I think you're giving him too much benefit of the doubt in suggesting he acted that way because of a knowledge gap. I think it was more of a "f*cks given" gap. I don't think he worried a whole lot about expenses vs. budget.
Oh for sure. He and the board had/has so much disdain for those families who jumped ship. However, it all comes back around to funding in the end. Again, no one can see the forest through the trees.
I worked for the NYC Public Schools under Bloomberg & Klein. There are a lot of things from that era that were not perfect, but they had a whole marketing & advertising campaign about elementary school enrollment as part of their agenda. The media criticized them like crazy for spending but it worked- parents came back and many of our schools were overenrolled until COVID.
After watching tonight’s meeting I have to conclude that these are not serious people. The post-presentation discussion was mind-boggling; they don’t even seem to know what the hell they are asking for!!! I will give kudos to Sergio for shutting down any conversation of the Board being involved with any of the consultants by basically saying that it would be a disaster because nobody trusts them. What a mess.
Just to clarify, I think that was Joey, not Sergio. IMO Joey is reasonably self-aware, while Sergio is basically an old CD with scratches on it that keeps skipping back to essentially the same talking points regardless of the conversation.
Just wanted to confirm that you are correct, Pablo. That was Joey that said "we can't do this work because nobody trusts us" [that is not a verbatim quote]
Also if I had to guess, I'd say that at some point around the time that Turner was rolling out the framework for the SDRP, someone said "we're going to need some insulation from these decisions so we can suggest they're someone else's that we're resigned to approving since we need to make cuts somewhere.
Based on that meeting, my takeaway was that they're going to very aggressively cut staffing as a means to try and close the $13.2M gap for FY26, and then they're going to try and find an additional $7-10M+ in reductions -- mainly through school closures -- that would impact FY27, since they have that extra $6M or whatever earmarked for finishing the new school. Tom, do you know if the operating costs for Bessie Rhodes have already been factored into projected expenses for FY27 since that closure already was approved?
Sorry to bring up again what I wrote last year in these comments but it absolutely bears repeating.
I say this as a former teacher of 30 years in a public school district almost identical to Evanston (where I live). What we're experiencing here in D65 and to some extent ETHS - none of this surprises me, none of it. In my opinion we continue to miss (ignore?) the bigger (biggest?) issue overlaying this topic:
It’s time to reassert the fundamental purpose of our schools, a purpose which has become increasingly muddled, leaving many students unable to fully reach their learning potential. Our schools’ mission has moved well beyond prioritizing academic growth and now frequently includes the task of remedying many of society’s most complicated and controversial social, moral and cultural issues.
The insertion of highly complex and invariably political issues into our schools has begun to crowd out the focus on academics. Major topics no doubt important to the collective and civic health of Evanston (and our country) are now increasingly being contested in the classroom and boardroom - for example, attempts to eliminate divergent academic performance outcomes between racial and socioeconomic groups; determining the parameters of speech; and prescribing moral and social codes. From my experience, expecting schools to take on, let alone fix, such a complicated and expanding set of expectations has been largely unsuccessful. Unsuccessful not because our administrators, teachers and students haven’t been deeply engaged in their resolution. Instead, it’s because our schools are not experts at nor fundamentally capable of effectively impacting the economic, cultural, and, ultimately, familial forces that actually determine one’s foundational development and classroom success. It’s worth noting that children are in our learning spaces for only a third of each day and only 180 days a year. We face an inconvenient truth: the skills needed for academic growth are due almost exclusively to causes and forces outside of school.
BTW I agree that getting excellent teachers into the classroom is a plus but that only takes kids so far. Our schools' mission needs to be laser focused and our families and communities need to bring to the school door everyday children who are ready to learn.
I think there's some grey area you're missing. I agree, it's not a school district's problem to solve systemic socioeconomic problems but it is a school district's problem to address a 60% achievement gap in their student math achievement. You can't just shrug your shoulders at a gap like this and be like "meh, nothing to see here, it's just 'familial forces'!" whatever that means.
I could (would like to) agree with you but after looking at the black/white and hispanic/white achievement gaps (at ETHS ) since 2005 (so 18 years or so!) it's clear that the needle has not moved. That 60% has fluctuated but only by a few percentage points; and when it goes up one year, it declines again the next. Most importantly, this is after extensive resources - financial, staffing, curriculum, policy, etc. - have been poured into addressing this problem. I would also argue that no one is just "shrugging their shoulders" at the gap, if anything we've been doing the opposite - I'd make that case and defend our schools to anyone. What can't be ignored, however, after all of these years of trying is the "inconvenient truth" I wrote about: the school's can't fix this problem...no matter how hard they try. Communities and families fix this problem.
And, to clarify, by "familial forces" I mean the adult(s) who a child spends the bulk of their time with AWAY from school. It's these thousands and thousands of interactions, large and small, over many years (from birth) that form one's personality, behavior, values, etc.
This is what I saw in my years in the classroom. Those students who did well (= achieved and grew both academically and as people), NO MATTER their racial, social, or family make up/background came from lived experiences like this.
So you say to Black parents, “Sorry your kids are performing vastly lower than white kids - consider forming families in my specific way”?
I hear what you’re saying but from a legal and ethical standpoint, you cant just abandon 41% of D65’s kids because you think their family structures are failing them in some non-specific way. It is the role of the community (not individual teachers) to lift up all the kids in a public district, regardless of their home lives or your opinion, thereof.
Yes D65 has thrown insane resources at this issue but my complaint is that they’re held exactly 0 people, except maybe Goren accountable for the problem. Even the folks, like Horton, brought here to tackle this were basically held to zero accountability while he blew out the budget in the name of equity.
I argued that the best approach is to hire the top talent and get them in front of those kids and you don’t even agree with that! So what is your solution if not “shrug it off” ?
1) Nowhere in my response do I tell any group what/how they should define their family makeup (other than "the adult(s) who a child spends the bulk of their time with AWAY from school"). My comment does not single out any racial or other subgroup or imply such. And that was very intentional on my part. In fact, I wrote: "Those students who did well ..., NO MATTER their racial, social, or family make up/background, came from lived experiences like this".
2) You said that I "don't even agree with"... "the best approach is to hire the top talent and get them in front of those kids". However, in my opening post I wrote: "BTW I agree that getting excellent teachers into the classroom is a plus but that only takes kids so far."
3) and my solution to fixing the gap:
First, schools should make it unequivocally clear that their foremost purpose is to provide for and support the exploration of academic knowledge. Additionally, schools should make it clear that the study of knowledge occurs fundamentally between teacher and student and primarily in the classroom – a school’s “sacred space”.
Second, treat every person who enters a school, and especially its students, as individuals first. See them as possessing a free and open mind, always capable of academic growth and personal improvement. Promote a mindset that prioritizes the individual over, but not exclusive of, the group.
Third, honor that we all naturally identify with others. Our group affiliations are linked by many attributes – personality, class, culture, race, geography, language, hobbies, shared histories, etc. Yes, belonging to a group is an essential element of our humanity - it brings us happiness and a sense of being part of something greater than ourselves. But group identity is a complex formulation and it should therefore be up to the individual student to freely decide with whom they choose to associate.
Fourth, require school administrators to teach with regularity. Theoretically, members of a school’s leadership went into education because they liked young people, were highly knowledgeable about a specific subject and enjoyed the unique opportunities that a classroom affords. If we agree that a classroom is at the core of one’s learning experience then school leaders (superintendent, principal, director of instruction, etc.) should be there too, actively demonstrating their love of teaching, modeling best pedagogical practices and participating directly in the growth of students and faculty. They will be better informed and more effective at prioritizing learning as a result.
Fifth, hire teachers who in addition to their proven scholarly interest are well rounded and highly capable. Search out those who believe in the common good; who support fundamental democratic values – equality, the rule of law, free speech, etc.; who endorse a diverse and upwardly mobile society; who are compassionate, team players and socially confident. Find these individuals and then free them up to focus on delivering the greatest instructional and personal impact on the academic journey of all children.
Mark - everything you have said sounds good, but with regard to the unacceptable level of achievement gap, what should 'equity' within the D65 schools and school budget look like to address this, dealing with the sociodemographic cards D65 has been dealt by society, etc.? Tom mentions a ton of D65 resources being applied to address this, but my perception is that these resources have been grossly misapplied, such as to trendy programs and consultants and bodyguards instead of being applied to fundaments such as what would have the most impact on improving math, reading and language skills for the lowest performing 20% of students. As a former LD student myself and as a parent of a LD student, what I see works is large amounts of individual tutoring and placement in classes with a teaching assistant. To me, proper 'equity' within the school budget would be to start budgeting with maximizing the amount of one-on-one and small group support being provided to the bottom performing students. And then only if funds are left over after a proper level of direct academic support for those on the bottom tiers , spend on whatever else, shiny objects, etc., after also meeting whatever is determined to be the solid baseline needs of the students who perform at grade level or higher.
To me the only downside of differentiated classes taught at the level a student is at (and with much more support given for the slower classes) is that the LD students would inevitably be subjected to a higher concentration of BD students as well in the slower classes (which I know first-hand is a major inequity, but not one that justifies holding back higher performing kids just to be able to share the pain).
And needless to say (but needing to be said in D65 it appears), lessoning the achievement gap is of course only worth achieving if it is done by bringing up those at the bottom, not by holding back those at the top of the learning curve. The issue is that students are left behind below grade level, not that someone else is doing better due to unfair advantages of wealth and home life.
It is parental malpractice to keep your overachieving child in D65 if they are not getting placed in a math class level that will appropriately challenge their abilities. And when liberal parents see their own child being hurt by a school's misguided so-called 'progressive' policies and practices, that is usually where a limit is drawn and they leave, politely telling their friends merely that the school district was not a good fit for their child. That is how D65 loses more middle-class families and/or families with parents who value education (families of all ethnicities) and can afford to leave D65 to get it.
I really hope you're in touch with a lot of teachers. Along with the points made here re: retention & mentoring, teacher hiring, egregious lack of professional development (egregious being my word!), and curriculum, there is also the gross lack of other supports for teachers. Support in terms of paras, differentiating instruction, social workers, and behavior issues. I don't know a single teacher in the district who couldn't write a book about the behavior they're supposed to manage on their own - while still teaching the 20 other kids in the classroom. While admin is floating the idea of exit surveys for families, it would be nice to get data on why we continue to bleed teachers. Teachers know, but without data ....
KO, you’re spot on here. I think it is relevant to point out that there is a clear disconnect between incompetent board members and the actual ONLY people that the district’s brick and mortar exists for: teachers and their students. The community and its elected board need to recognize that every single person involved in D65 and outside of the classroom are support personnel to those teachers so that they can do their job. The jobs that they hold professional degrees for. When board members weakly try to weaponize the statement that “we must do what is best for students” yet ignore (or, based on the embarrassingly clueless/corrupt/complicit/incompetent performance of the the board) the necessities of teaching, they are the problem. It’s not the teachers that have failed our young scholars, it’s is the board and administration. It is clear that this is hard for power grabbing egos to grapple with, but the board exists for the teachers and only through teachers can they do “what is best for the students” of D65. Stop ignoring their needs. Perhaps start with an actual contract and ask teachers how you can support them. Or, clearly you don’t really want to know the answer about what’s wrong with D65. Finally, why is enrollment down in Evanston? It’s not birthrates, it’s because the Lighthouse District has become the Gaslight District.
I know it’s bad practice to comment on one’s own comment, so please consider this an extension of my previous comment.
Imagine you have a pediatric patient lying on the operating table ready, willing and able to have their previously scheduled open heart surgery. Scrubbed in, gowned, goggled and gloved, is the surgeon, poised and ready at the patient’s side to do what years of training and experience of previous surgeries have prepared them to do. Their singular goal, their “why”, to ensure the success of the surgery and the future life of the patient.
Scattered around the operating room, machines of surgery wait for their operators to arrive. The perfusionist sits nearby staring blankly at the cardio bypass tubes slowly draining the patient’s blood, wondering what the squeezy according thingy does while it clicks, hums and whirs. The anesthesiologist helplessly tries to untangle all the knotted tubes connecting the patient to relief from the pain and discomfort forced upon them, while secretly mumbling under their mask that they wished they paid more attention in math class so they know how much propofol this little body needs to keep it from screaming. The nurses: cardiac, operating room, instrument and anesthetist, when not on their phones playing candy crush, fidget with a myriad of specific and daunting tools they know they don’t understand how to use. Meanwhile, the ekg peeps unnoticed and unmonitored.
They’re all not particularly worried though, because according to them, it is the surgeon’s job to make sure the patient not only survives but appreciates all of the help they received from the operating room. The roles of all and the success of the surgery has fallen on their shoulders.
Meanwhile, to the distracted excitement of everyone in the operating room, except for the surgeon and patient, of course, who are both in absolute shock of the lack of understanding how surgeries occur and tools to be used, the hospital administrator barges in, unscrubbed, infecting all that is touched and starts demanding more unnecessary surgery on the patient while removing the necessary equipment and stashing it in their garage.
Despite the best efforts of the surgeon and without being able to remove the ineptitude that they’re surrounded by, the patient suffers and ultimately finds another more competent hospital. Everyone is upset and investigates the surgeon, while the next patient is prepped for surgery.
Feel free to swap out the roles for D65. Seems pretty obvious who’s who.
I talk to a lot of teachers! I don't do this anymore, but I used to look on LinkedIn and when I saw people would leave, I'd reach out to get news tips. I don't need to do that anymore, thankfully!
The 5Essentials surveys have some good data on this stuff too, I'll write on that sometime
The 5Es does provide some good info; however, the questions do not differentiate between building admin (principal, AP) and JEH. It's possible (and I did) to have a good principal hamstrung by district admin.
I wish more parents realize what these charts mean as to the "bottom line" of the stability of the school district and the erosion of a quality education on their taxes!
I think the cuts for two years out have to be more than $6M because I would assume there's an inflationary effect on our operating expenses. I don't think the annual tax levy -- which they rubber stamp for the full 5% every damn time -- fully offsets that but could be wrong.
Also the new consultant said that June is typically when a district will announce school closing plans. As in keep people in the dark as long as possible and have just enough time for the three public hearings to be held and then hold the hearings when people are more likely to be on vacation or disconnected because school is not in session. How I wish school board elections were today instead of April.
They did acknowledge that "goal" isn't necessarily the right number and we should revisit whether it should be less. Also have to consider that the more schools they propose closing in one swoop, the heavier the counterpunches will be. Three schools plus Bessie Rhodes...yikes. On the plus side, PEP will be selling tickets to the tailgate in the JEH parking lot on board meeting days.
Even if they aim for 90 percent that's still 2.5 schools too many before factoring in decreasing enrollment. And those numbers of course don't include King Arts. How that school consistently goes under the radar is beyond me. Not to throw them under the bus but if everything really is on the chopping block then they ought to be thrown in with the rest of us.
I don't think they aim to land at 90% now. I think they aim to be a bit closer to that, but if you aim at 90% now, you have NO leeway if somehow you see an uptick the next couple of years in enrollment. Not suggesting there are indicators pointing to a rebound, but it's not out of the range of outcomes.
You CANNOT claim to be centered on equity, justice, antiracism —all while pushing through kids, especially the marginalized and minoritized, that can’t read, write and do math at grade level (& in the case of d65 not even close to grade level).
The hypocrisy here is astounding. It’s actually criminal.
I didn’t appreciate how bad those numbers are trending. It would be one thing if all the focus on equity worked but it seems to have no or negative impact.
At the last meeting, one board member (if memory serves-Kim) berated the community for asking to return to fiscal responsibility and getting back to academic responsibility. She said these things are compatible with the equity goals. I personally feel strongly that you can and should be fiscally responsible, improve academics for all and improve equity. It does not need to be an if/or. However, these academic numbers and the dire financial situation show that this board is incapable of ANY of the three.
This is playing out all over the country —in schools, colleges, corporations…very little has actually improved with these initiatives—and in fact in most scenarios things have gotten worse.
And to think there were Board candidates who saw the writing on the wall. To think there were people who questioned the removal of advanced math, for example. We were told it was racist and inequitable and that’s why it was eliminated. The equity warriors patted themselves and Horton in the back for their brilliance; for figuring it out. And yet —the immediate question that should have been asked: what are you doing to address why there weren’t enough students of color in the advanced math pipeline to begin with? But of course no one asked that. And it was never addressed. This wasn’t actually about lifting kids up. It was about pushing them down. This is the Evanston way. It’s always about the immediate headline.
And then the best part? The best part is that the Evanston mob called anyone who dared to question this, racists, Kkk and whyte supremacists. It begs the question now: who is the actual racist?
Here's an example from a couple parents I've heard: If you wanted your kid to skip a grade, you had to fill out a bunch of papers and your kid had to take some tests. One of the forms they had to fill out had a question that was something like "Is there another kid in your child's class performing at or above your child's level?"
If you answered YES, then I guess D65 denied the grade skip. I wanted to punch myself but it's such an obviously clear case of "Hey who is that other kid doing well?" and promote both of them. But not what happened on the ground.
I have so many examples of this across a wide array of D65 stuff
Yes not just tests but tests proctored by Northwestern proctors with stern admonishments that parents can’t be present and you can’t use outside materials or you will be disqualified. Then if you passed the test multiple meetings with the school psychologist to take more tests (during recess of course)! With prying questions because you know can you really handle a whole extra level of math????! Emotionally? Is your family life stable? Are you stable? This apparently all relates to the Pythagorean Theorem.
It sounds like some principals no longer follow this insane regimen but it seems some still do……
Oh and if you qualify and are in 5th grade you take a bus to the middle school. This will cause kids to miss their specials (art, music, coding)…..
I think part of the problem is that in so many of our systems, in order to fix this problem we were pretty big changes and people to do extra work. In this case above, someone needed to take ownership and be like "Yes, I am the person responsible for this and going to identify other high performing kids and work to advocate for them" .. and maybe there are lots of people in the administration who want to do that (or maybe there aren't). But good leaders find way to empower staff to make things better and take risks.
The leadership approach here has been: shove all the staff and teachers into a couple of hours of questionably effective training, write some six figure checks to consultants, and check off the box.
I’d think that the head of curriculum, if even slightly decent at their job, could have a huge influence here. All of these administrators —and there are so many of them — get paid a lot of money….and for what? How are they measured year in and year out in terms of objectives & deliverables? How do you end up with numbers like this and still have a job? By hoping no one notices? By counting on the fact that the community is in a zombie like state?
The problem is that there is often a gap before kids even enter kindergarten, so teachers are desperately trying to close the gap from day one. More money needs to be put into birth to pre-k services. Also, it is my experience that most of these students who want to skip grades aren't necessarily ready - just because you are a fast learner doesn't mean you don't need the content and standards that are being taught at that grade level. I don't know why so many parents are obsessed with having their kids skip grades.
Finally someone mentions the immeasurable impact of GOOD early childhood education! This would help close the gap and yet nothing substantial has been done in this area, a real missed opportunity here.
They need to focus on literacy instruction with evidence based strategies in the early grades. Once kids are behind in reading, everything else falls behind as well.
That's what they are supposedly doing now. Fingers crossed this is THE thing that will fix all the problems. I am forever hopeful when the newest thing comes around...
Here is the link to tonight's Board Meeting currently streaming on YouTube. Currently 52 people watching online plus those in person at the Board Meeting.
This administration does not understand or care about the district's financials or our children's education. Two examples from last night's board meeting. When a board member asked about the vendor contract 'Smart Pass', a member of the administration that was asked did not know if the annual cost of the contract was $995 or $99,500. This was followed by laughter in the room. A few minutes later in the board meeting, Dr. Turner stated the cost for another vendor 'Stivers Staffing Agency' was budgeted for $115 Million annually. Then the CFO Tamara Mitchell, said "No it was actually budgeted for $1.5 Million." Seconds later, Tamara corrected herself saying "No that was a clerical error. It is $225,000." Once again laughter.
Parents in this school district do a better job of teaching their children how to manage money at a Summer lemonade stand than our Superintendent or CFO do managing the money they have been trusted with for our children's education (Annual salary of Dr. Turner: $250,000 plus benefits; Annual salary of Tamara Mitchell: $199,000 plus benefits).
Come June 2025, I expect Dr. Turner and her team will flee town (which will be easy since they waived the requirement for the Superintendent to reside in Evanston) all while laughing at the financial and academic mess they left in their wake. Our children will be left to use their lemonade stand money to finance their own education.
If you'd like to hear the laughter and financial mismanagement for yourself, listen to the recording of last night's board meeting starting at 3:38 (that's 3 hours and 38 minutes into the meeting).
Last night at the meeting they talked about outreach to the community. I have a 4 year old when we went to Joseph E. Hill Early Childhood Center building to look into preschool we were blown off with just applying and we will get back to you in summer . My wife was born and raised here in Evanston went to school here and now she is even talking about private schools. I personally would prefer moving.
Maybe the problem needs to be redefined. A large body of research has found a significant correlation between socio-economic status and academic achievement. On the other hand, research on and about racial groups is confounded by problems of definition. Most people who define themselves as African American are really mixed race, for example, and no academic researcher who values his/her job will focus on racial differences anyway. The topic is too emotionally loaded. The mere mention of a bell shaped curve can get a researcher in trouble. On the other hand, many African American kids are high achievers who complete honors and AP classes successfully and attend selective colleges. But they are usually middle or upper middle class with all the advantages of their class, and my hunch is that the children who are struggling academically in District 65 are from families that are struggling economically. Should the Evanston schools be expected to solve the problems of social disparity that have stumped the city of Evanston? The old guideline for teachers was to accept children where you find them and take them (each of them) as far as they can go. What does that have to do with closing the gap between racial groups?
I think the District deliberately avoided looking into any this in an empirical way when pushing for the new school. From Horton to the BOard it was entirely: "We need a Fifth Ward School to Right a Historical Wrong from 50 years ago."
The thing they didn't ask is, "does bussing create EDUCATIONAL disparities for students?"
From my search of the academic literature there is basically zero evidence of differences in academic performance for bussed kids when socioeconomic and demographic factors are taken into account.
The District knows the test scores for all of the students in the district. There are plenty of kids of color and lower income kids who are not bussed to neighborhood schools. Are the test scores for bussed kids lower than those for the neighborhood school kids?
No evidence as simple as this was ever presented, which leads me to believe that there is likely no difference. So the ONLY rationale for spending $40 million dollars is to Make The Fifth Ward Great Again and fulfill the nostalgic desires of a small number of long time residents who don't like the increasing diversity they are seeing in the neighborhood.
I get what you're saying, but I think if we looked at it through purely socioeconomic factors, the gap would just be even more pronounced than it already is and wouldn't really put us in a drastically different position.
I think the difficult thing is people don't have a consensus on what "as far as they can go" means. For instance, you seem to imply that certain kids have a lower ceiling than others, and thus we should only take them so far. Some would argue that only leads to those kids aiming lower, exacerbating the problem.
No, Evanston schools ALONE shouldn't be expected to solve the problems of social disparity. They should be expected to do what they can to try to alleviate them though.
This isn't my personal prediction of how this plays out, but what if...
-Foster School proceeds and opens on time
-Kids in that area whose families stick around benefit from getting to go to a superior facility and experience elementary school immersed with people of similar socioeconomic backgrounds so they don't feel like an outsider. Per Tom's previous recommendations, we send our best educators there.
-between the three-legged stool of Foster, Fleetwood, and Family Focus, the surrounding community gets a richer continuum of needs met, helping parents/caregivers who are struggling, and thus their kids
-we add Pre-school/EC programs at Foster to pull in kids earlier and help them better prepare for Kindergarten transition, therefore giving the district some added early interventions
-reading specialists and interventionists are re-prioritized
-D65 sees downstream positive benefits of kids who are better supported early on leading to lower incidence of IES
Again, this isn't my prediction, because we've seen so many swings and misses, but it's also not completely implausible that some of the above could happen if our budgets hadn't been absolutely torpedoed (new school or not).
Redefining the problem along socioeconomic lines would not reduce the extent of the problem, but it might change the way we look at the issues involved. It might reduce the onus on the teachers and administrators who struggle mightily with issues of student achievement only to be attacked over and over by a community that doesn’t understand that student performance is individual rather than collective. The goal of taking each child as far as he/she can go means just what it says and doesn’t imply a ceiling. The ceiling metaphor is not very useful, anyway. Human behavior is highly differentiated and our gifts differ. We can’t all be theoretical physicists or accomplished musicians, but we can develop the talents that we have and contribute to the life of our communities.
I came across an article in the July 1992 Evanston Review about the need to close the achievement gap. So that’s 32 years at least. I do think it’s an insult to all our teachers to suggest that we need to train, recruit, and retain the best teachers. So what you are saying is that the poor quality of our teachers is the reason for the gap Why do the Black students at Pope John 23, St Joan of Arc school, St A s , Roycemore, etc do so well? No it’s not because of wealth disparity. It’s because the parent or parents instill discipline, high expectations and follow the students progress every day. Homework is done and checked every night, reading is fostered all the time , the teachers are held in high esteem. The family and their role in raising the child are key
That is not what I am saying - the teachers we have are great but in 2022 and again in 2023 we lost between 50-70 teachers. That kind of turnover is bad!
The reality is that the community is *not* investing in our teachers - they still don't have a contract, for instance. Most teachers are making less in 2024 than they made in 2023!
Why would any teacher want to work for D65, when they can make more, have better hours, and get more administrative support in nearby districts?
What are you suggesting about Black families, exactly?
All that turnover leads to a large group of very young teachers with no mentors. When I started in D65 in 1992, the schools were full of veteran staff (over 20 years experience was not uncommon) and I was assigned a mentor that I could go to regarding curriculum, policies, etc. Now, with all the burnout and veteran teachers taking the District’s early retirement incentives, these new teachers are thrown in the deep end and just given a few district-mandated meetings to attend. Add to all that, with everyone knowing that massive cuts are coming, any prospective new teacher already knows that they will likely be looking for a new job in a year.
A consultant has no connection to the school; my mentor was a veteran teacher in my school and in my department. The answer is making the job worth staying in and valuing your staff. The incentives to leave offered in the last contract made it clear to many of us that we were considered a burden because of our salaries and that we were easily replaceable.
Hah, sorry, my sarcasm didn't come through clearly there. It was a mediocre dig at our overreliance on consultants.
I'm in agreement with you that the lack of mentors is a massive problem and think you made a great point. Really concerned about some of the younger teachers seeing less examples of people making it a 20-30 year career and deciding to pivot early.
The experience issue is really problematic. Our eldest has had a couple of rookies and they have been nice and well meaning, but relatively ineffective in demanding quality from our kid. My sense is that these teachers were kind of thrown in and just trying to keep their head above water so they would let things slide and rely on apps for teaching exercises, etc...
The veterans that we have had have been SOOO much better.
Yikes. The implication you're making here is pretty awful. Question: is there something different that the kids with a "parent or parents [who] instill discipline, high expectations and follow the students progress every day" did to earn having that support at home that these other kids did not?
Since you left your last thought open-ended, I'll finish it for you. The family and their role in raising the child are key to their childhood. In situations where children are given less support at home, they need to be given a disproportionate amount of support outside of it, primarily through the school system.
The point here wasn't the one you made. It was that we're not seeing much of any progress, for all the efforts that have been made to raise up the bottom performers.
And the teachers, who are being increasingly commoditized by an administration unwilling to let them go the extra mile or off script are being put in a tough inflexible situation to help these kids. If the administration wants to do all that work to lift up those kids, fine, but they have to actually do it.
It is funny that your "Bad News" headline from yesterday was followed by a spam email from The Good Doctor Turner "Celebrating Student Growth on D65's Illinois State Report Card."
She even signed it "Yours in Education"! (Is getting creative with your valediction a CPS thing? What is wrong with "Sincerely")?
District 65 needs new leadership in Performance Management & Accountability and curriculum design. We need more of a focus on differentiated instruction and to not be afraid of grouping kids according to their current learning stage. Teachers need to be able to focus on specific learning stages so kids can thoroughly learn each skill before moving on to the next one. And kids need grades to build accountability. Support teachers and direct financial resources towards teaching fundamental skills followed by advanced skills. Money should not go to construction and consultants- make classroom instruction and academic excellence the priority.
I'm increasingly reaching the view that the entire administrative apparatus needs to be replaced (via consolidation or firing everyone). The Board is the one with all the statutory power here and the IASB will say their job is to 1) set the goal and 2) hire a superintendent.
If the Board's goal is "equity" and the performance gap in math is more than 60% between black and white kids and is not improving, they need to hold people accountable.
(Update: this is kind of harsh and I wonder if this is actually what the board thought when they hired Horton - like he was this outsider that was gonna break up all the things and fix this problem. That is the vision he sells, even though the implementation is mostly nonsense)
Who do you believe should be held accountable for this gap?
I think it falls on all the folks in the Administration with titles like "Assistant Superintendent of Literacy/Math". Like, for the last 8 years the entire guiding philosophy of D65 has been equity. If your job is "Assistant Superintendent of Math" (for example) and the racial gap is 60% and continues to grow, you're not doing a good job. I'm sorry.
It is so so complicated. I wonder if there are other districts like ours who have successfully closed (or decreased) the gap?
That is a very good question! Let me do some research and see what I can come back with - I know some folks at NU SESP that may be able to help with that quesiton
I would love to read what you find out! My google search doesn't come up with much...
Curriculum and instruction should be held responsible.
Beardsley has got to go.
The whole admin needs to go. Including the higher ups dictating to her. She's not made decisions in a vacuum.
You are absolutely right…. And she also leaks info straight to the Equity Army Bully Saquad as she is married to a key member of it. It is well known throughout town.
I noticed the Evanston Now article on this week's board meeting that they reported that District staff met with the real estate firm JLL regarding proposals to sell or lease District property.
The staff members were the CFO and Beardsley who (according to the DIstrict 65 org chart) works as something called the "Assistant Superintendent of Performance Management & Accountability." I have no idea what the title means, but my understanding was that Beardsley dealt with curriculum.
So the question I have is why is she meeting with big real estate firms? It seems weird especially given the fact that her spouse has a stake in at least one very expensive AirBnb in town.
https://evanstonnow.com/real-estate-broker-eyeing-d-65-sites/
1) I am told she was in a curriculum job and got moved to move of a buildings role, after Turner did a re-org this year. I don't think there's anything sus about that.
2) I can't stand JLL for reasons involving city stuff
3) I assume they're trying to sell the Bessie Rhodes property
This needs a much closer inquiry.
What on earth would she be doing meeting with a realtor on behalf of the district as Associate Dean of Curriculum?
I smell a very stinky story here.
I bet there is a strong relationship between preschool education regarding test score gaps. If D65 could find a way bridge the gap for access to quality preschool I would bet we could improve these gaps. Otherwise it is a hope and a prayer.
The quality of education recieved at the PreK level is not the issue. The issue is pushing down developmentally inappropriate standards and curriculum for our youngest and most vulnerable learners to manage. 3 to 5 year olds need social/emotional learning, which involves learning self regulation. K standards are not reasonable benchmarks for PreK, yet year after year that is what is being done. Academic learning beyond rote knowledge cannot be achieved without that highly important self regulation piece. The gold standard of Early Childhood Education is children learn best through play. PreK has become the new 1st grade in many ways. It is highly irresponsible to continue to push down unattainable benchmarks for children who are still learning how to use the toilet.
Tracking kids or grouping them by ability has been shown to increase inequities.
All the district is doing now is hiding learning differences. That’s not helpful. Meeting kids where they are at is how you get them to the next step.
Are you a teacher?
Keeping all the different abilities together has done a good job reducing inequities, nobody is allowed to overachieve.
So much pressure on these kids to overachieve. They are all going to burn out before high school is over.
Equity. Their definition strives to provide all kids in D65 a disappointing education. No progress for our minority students while dragging the whole district down with their mismanagement. Then papering it over with opaque benchmarking.
How can so much be spent to deliver so little? Agreed Tom that full disclosure of all financial reports and information is an absolute must. They have no earned the right to bury information.
The first row of future enrollment number chart is very interesting. The 4th grade is the class that was asked to begin K in virtual school. That was a lot to ask of kids and parents and nationwide, you see that grade low in public schools in lots of places. Then you see enrollment pick up in the next 2 grades that start when schools return to in person, and then drop dramatically. That you don’t see that drop as many other places. That is not birth rates. Those are families making different, permanent choices about schools and secondary, for some, where to live because of dissatisfaction.
My kid is in 4th - so many people left. He lost about half his buds while D65 all yelled at everyone - kids of all races bounced. CPS was open before us!
Good points, I didn't think of that re: 4th grade. The thing that annoys me to no end is how little acknowledgement there is for our ability to AFFECT enrollment. If you don't think of retaining and growing enrollment as a goal (yes, I know there's a cost per pupil), you can be perfectly complacent in any perceived need to attract people to want to raise a family here -- or for those who are here, to want to utilize the schools and have some skin in the game.
Enrollment increase should absolutely be a Superintendent goal - it alleviates some of the budget issues by bringing in more state funding, especially for special education students. Obviously, some of it is exogenous and depends on housing market stuff - but the Superintendent should be working closely with other local governments. It's a political and an educational job, that's why they make $250k+. Sergio wants to talk about solving affordable housing but like, the City has the resources to actually do this. And the City needs stability in the public schools and a Superintendent needs to be that partner.
Every corporate board in America puts "growth" broadly speaking into the requirements for their CEO and this should be no different.
Not sure if she was scouring the comments in the afternoon or what, but I nearly fell out of my chair watching the meeting recording when Biz acknowledged (finally) there being a set of factors they CAN influence to address enrollment and that other ones they have less influence over are present but unproductive to dwell on. It led to a genuine conversation about the latter acknowledging this aspect of people opting out and some ways to try to tackle it.
Other more pressing issues are overshadowing this one right now, but it'll resurface when the new demographic projections come out over the next month and we see updated numbers with the current 2026-27 boundaries factored in, and we can't lose sight of it. I hope the data collected is shared publicly so we can track progress and focus around it.
Turner gets paid more than the frickin Prime Minster of the UK. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-48497953
Remember how Horton said it was just fine for families to leave for private school? At that time he and the board were happy to see families leave for private school. He obviously had no idea how that would change funding especially towards special education. I would think state funding tied to enrollment would be superintendent 101, but I guess not.
I think you're giving him too much benefit of the doubt in suggesting he acted that way because of a knowledge gap. I think it was more of a "f*cks given" gap. I don't think he worried a whole lot about expenses vs. budget.
Oh for sure. He and the board had/has so much disdain for those families who jumped ship. However, it all comes back around to funding in the end. Again, no one can see the forest through the trees.
I worked for the NYC Public Schools under Bloomberg & Klein. There are a lot of things from that era that were not perfect, but they had a whole marketing & advertising campaign about elementary school enrollment as part of their agenda. The media criticized them like crazy for spending but it worked- parents came back and many of our schools were overenrolled until COVID.
Hold the ad campaign until the board is new and problems are fixed.
After watching tonight’s meeting I have to conclude that these are not serious people. The post-presentation discussion was mind-boggling; they don’t even seem to know what the hell they are asking for!!! I will give kudos to Sergio for shutting down any conversation of the Board being involved with any of the consultants by basically saying that it would be a disaster because nobody trusts them. What a mess.
Just to clarify, I think that was Joey, not Sergio. IMO Joey is reasonably self-aware, while Sergio is basically an old CD with scratches on it that keeps skipping back to essentially the same talking points regardless of the conversation.
Just wanted to confirm that you are correct, Pablo. That was Joey that said "we can't do this work because nobody trusts us" [that is not a verbatim quote]
Also if I had to guess, I'd say that at some point around the time that Turner was rolling out the framework for the SDRP, someone said "we're going to need some insulation from these decisions so we can suggest they're someone else's that we're resigned to approving since we need to make cuts somewhere.
Based on that meeting, my takeaway was that they're going to very aggressively cut staffing as a means to try and close the $13.2M gap for FY26, and then they're going to try and find an additional $7-10M+ in reductions -- mainly through school closures -- that would impact FY27, since they have that extra $6M or whatever earmarked for finishing the new school. Tom, do you know if the operating costs for Bessie Rhodes have already been factored into projected expenses for FY27 since that closure already was approved?
Folks,
Sorry to bring up again what I wrote last year in these comments but it absolutely bears repeating.
I say this as a former teacher of 30 years in a public school district almost identical to Evanston (where I live). What we're experiencing here in D65 and to some extent ETHS - none of this surprises me, none of it. In my opinion we continue to miss (ignore?) the bigger (biggest?) issue overlaying this topic:
It’s time to reassert the fundamental purpose of our schools, a purpose which has become increasingly muddled, leaving many students unable to fully reach their learning potential. Our schools’ mission has moved well beyond prioritizing academic growth and now frequently includes the task of remedying many of society’s most complicated and controversial social, moral and cultural issues.
The insertion of highly complex and invariably political issues into our schools has begun to crowd out the focus on academics. Major topics no doubt important to the collective and civic health of Evanston (and our country) are now increasingly being contested in the classroom and boardroom - for example, attempts to eliminate divergent academic performance outcomes between racial and socioeconomic groups; determining the parameters of speech; and prescribing moral and social codes. From my experience, expecting schools to take on, let alone fix, such a complicated and expanding set of expectations has been largely unsuccessful. Unsuccessful not because our administrators, teachers and students haven’t been deeply engaged in their resolution. Instead, it’s because our schools are not experts at nor fundamentally capable of effectively impacting the economic, cultural, and, ultimately, familial forces that actually determine one’s foundational development and classroom success. It’s worth noting that children are in our learning spaces for only a third of each day and only 180 days a year. We face an inconvenient truth: the skills needed for academic growth are due almost exclusively to causes and forces outside of school.
BTW I agree that getting excellent teachers into the classroom is a plus but that only takes kids so far. Our schools' mission needs to be laser focused and our families and communities need to bring to the school door everyday children who are ready to learn.
I think there's some grey area you're missing. I agree, it's not a school district's problem to solve systemic socioeconomic problems but it is a school district's problem to address a 60% achievement gap in their student math achievement. You can't just shrug your shoulders at a gap like this and be like "meh, nothing to see here, it's just 'familial forces'!" whatever that means.
Tom,
I could (would like to) agree with you but after looking at the black/white and hispanic/white achievement gaps (at ETHS ) since 2005 (so 18 years or so!) it's clear that the needle has not moved. That 60% has fluctuated but only by a few percentage points; and when it goes up one year, it declines again the next. Most importantly, this is after extensive resources - financial, staffing, curriculum, policy, etc. - have been poured into addressing this problem. I would also argue that no one is just "shrugging their shoulders" at the gap, if anything we've been doing the opposite - I'd make that case and defend our schools to anyone. What can't be ignored, however, after all of these years of trying is the "inconvenient truth" I wrote about: the school's can't fix this problem...no matter how hard they try. Communities and families fix this problem.
And, to clarify, by "familial forces" I mean the adult(s) who a child spends the bulk of their time with AWAY from school. It's these thousands and thousands of interactions, large and small, over many years (from birth) that form one's personality, behavior, values, etc.
This is what I saw in my years in the classroom. Those students who did well (= achieved and grew both academically and as people), NO MATTER their racial, social, or family make up/background came from lived experiences like this.
So you say to Black parents, “Sorry your kids are performing vastly lower than white kids - consider forming families in my specific way”?
I hear what you’re saying but from a legal and ethical standpoint, you cant just abandon 41% of D65’s kids because you think their family structures are failing them in some non-specific way. It is the role of the community (not individual teachers) to lift up all the kids in a public district, regardless of their home lives or your opinion, thereof.
Yes D65 has thrown insane resources at this issue but my complaint is that they’re held exactly 0 people, except maybe Goren accountable for the problem. Even the folks, like Horton, brought here to tackle this were basically held to zero accountability while he blew out the budget in the name of equity.
I argued that the best approach is to hire the top talent and get them in front of those kids and you don’t even agree with that! So what is your solution if not “shrug it off” ?
Tom,
1) Nowhere in my response do I tell any group what/how they should define their family makeup (other than "the adult(s) who a child spends the bulk of their time with AWAY from school"). My comment does not single out any racial or other subgroup or imply such. And that was very intentional on my part. In fact, I wrote: "Those students who did well ..., NO MATTER their racial, social, or family make up/background, came from lived experiences like this".
2) You said that I "don't even agree with"... "the best approach is to hire the top talent and get them in front of those kids". However, in my opening post I wrote: "BTW I agree that getting excellent teachers into the classroom is a plus but that only takes kids so far."
3) and my solution to fixing the gap:
First, schools should make it unequivocally clear that their foremost purpose is to provide for and support the exploration of academic knowledge. Additionally, schools should make it clear that the study of knowledge occurs fundamentally between teacher and student and primarily in the classroom – a school’s “sacred space”.
Second, treat every person who enters a school, and especially its students, as individuals first. See them as possessing a free and open mind, always capable of academic growth and personal improvement. Promote a mindset that prioritizes the individual over, but not exclusive of, the group.
Third, honor that we all naturally identify with others. Our group affiliations are linked by many attributes – personality, class, culture, race, geography, language, hobbies, shared histories, etc. Yes, belonging to a group is an essential element of our humanity - it brings us happiness and a sense of being part of something greater than ourselves. But group identity is a complex formulation and it should therefore be up to the individual student to freely decide with whom they choose to associate.
Fourth, require school administrators to teach with regularity. Theoretically, members of a school’s leadership went into education because they liked young people, were highly knowledgeable about a specific subject and enjoyed the unique opportunities that a classroom affords. If we agree that a classroom is at the core of one’s learning experience then school leaders (superintendent, principal, director of instruction, etc.) should be there too, actively demonstrating their love of teaching, modeling best pedagogical practices and participating directly in the growth of students and faculty. They will be better informed and more effective at prioritizing learning as a result.
Fifth, hire teachers who in addition to their proven scholarly interest are well rounded and highly capable. Search out those who believe in the common good; who support fundamental democratic values – equality, the rule of law, free speech, etc.; who endorse a diverse and upwardly mobile society; who are compassionate, team players and socially confident. Find these individuals and then free them up to focus on delivering the greatest instructional and personal impact on the academic journey of all children.
Mark - everything you have said sounds good, but with regard to the unacceptable level of achievement gap, what should 'equity' within the D65 schools and school budget look like to address this, dealing with the sociodemographic cards D65 has been dealt by society, etc.? Tom mentions a ton of D65 resources being applied to address this, but my perception is that these resources have been grossly misapplied, such as to trendy programs and consultants and bodyguards instead of being applied to fundaments such as what would have the most impact on improving math, reading and language skills for the lowest performing 20% of students. As a former LD student myself and as a parent of a LD student, what I see works is large amounts of individual tutoring and placement in classes with a teaching assistant. To me, proper 'equity' within the school budget would be to start budgeting with maximizing the amount of one-on-one and small group support being provided to the bottom performing students. And then only if funds are left over after a proper level of direct academic support for those on the bottom tiers , spend on whatever else, shiny objects, etc., after also meeting whatever is determined to be the solid baseline needs of the students who perform at grade level or higher.
To me the only downside of differentiated classes taught at the level a student is at (and with much more support given for the slower classes) is that the LD students would inevitably be subjected to a higher concentration of BD students as well in the slower classes (which I know first-hand is a major inequity, but not one that justifies holding back higher performing kids just to be able to share the pain).
And needless to say (but needing to be said in D65 it appears), lessoning the achievement gap is of course only worth achieving if it is done by bringing up those at the bottom, not by holding back those at the top of the learning curve. The issue is that students are left behind below grade level, not that someone else is doing better due to unfair advantages of wealth and home life.
It is parental malpractice to keep your overachieving child in D65 if they are not getting placed in a math class level that will appropriately challenge their abilities. And when liberal parents see their own child being hurt by a school's misguided so-called 'progressive' policies and practices, that is usually where a limit is drawn and they leave, politely telling their friends merely that the school district was not a good fit for their child. That is how D65 loses more middle-class families and/or families with parents who value education (families of all ethnicities) and can afford to leave D65 to get it.
I really hope you're in touch with a lot of teachers. Along with the points made here re: retention & mentoring, teacher hiring, egregious lack of professional development (egregious being my word!), and curriculum, there is also the gross lack of other supports for teachers. Support in terms of paras, differentiating instruction, social workers, and behavior issues. I don't know a single teacher in the district who couldn't write a book about the behavior they're supposed to manage on their own - while still teaching the 20 other kids in the classroom. While admin is floating the idea of exit surveys for families, it would be nice to get data on why we continue to bleed teachers. Teachers know, but without data ....
KO, you’re spot on here. I think it is relevant to point out that there is a clear disconnect between incompetent board members and the actual ONLY people that the district’s brick and mortar exists for: teachers and their students. The community and its elected board need to recognize that every single person involved in D65 and outside of the classroom are support personnel to those teachers so that they can do their job. The jobs that they hold professional degrees for. When board members weakly try to weaponize the statement that “we must do what is best for students” yet ignore (or, based on the embarrassingly clueless/corrupt/complicit/incompetent performance of the the board) the necessities of teaching, they are the problem. It’s not the teachers that have failed our young scholars, it’s is the board and administration. It is clear that this is hard for power grabbing egos to grapple with, but the board exists for the teachers and only through teachers can they do “what is best for the students” of D65. Stop ignoring their needs. Perhaps start with an actual contract and ask teachers how you can support them. Or, clearly you don’t really want to know the answer about what’s wrong with D65. Finally, why is enrollment down in Evanston? It’s not birthrates, it’s because the Lighthouse District has become the Gaslight District.
I could like this a 1000x and it still wouldn't accurately show how much I agree!
I know it’s bad practice to comment on one’s own comment, so please consider this an extension of my previous comment.
Imagine you have a pediatric patient lying on the operating table ready, willing and able to have their previously scheduled open heart surgery. Scrubbed in, gowned, goggled and gloved, is the surgeon, poised and ready at the patient’s side to do what years of training and experience of previous surgeries have prepared them to do. Their singular goal, their “why”, to ensure the success of the surgery and the future life of the patient.
Scattered around the operating room, machines of surgery wait for their operators to arrive. The perfusionist sits nearby staring blankly at the cardio bypass tubes slowly draining the patient’s blood, wondering what the squeezy according thingy does while it clicks, hums and whirs. The anesthesiologist helplessly tries to untangle all the knotted tubes connecting the patient to relief from the pain and discomfort forced upon them, while secretly mumbling under their mask that they wished they paid more attention in math class so they know how much propofol this little body needs to keep it from screaming. The nurses: cardiac, operating room, instrument and anesthetist, when not on their phones playing candy crush, fidget with a myriad of specific and daunting tools they know they don’t understand how to use. Meanwhile, the ekg peeps unnoticed and unmonitored.
They’re all not particularly worried though, because according to them, it is the surgeon’s job to make sure the patient not only survives but appreciates all of the help they received from the operating room. The roles of all and the success of the surgery has fallen on their shoulders.
Meanwhile, to the distracted excitement of everyone in the operating room, except for the surgeon and patient, of course, who are both in absolute shock of the lack of understanding how surgeries occur and tools to be used, the hospital administrator barges in, unscrubbed, infecting all that is touched and starts demanding more unnecessary surgery on the patient while removing the necessary equipment and stashing it in their garage.
Despite the best efforts of the surgeon and without being able to remove the ineptitude that they’re surrounded by, the patient suffers and ultimately finds another more competent hospital. Everyone is upset and investigates the surgeon, while the next patient is prepped for surgery.
Feel free to swap out the roles for D65. Seems pretty obvious who’s who.
A million times THIS.
I talk to a lot of teachers! I don't do this anymore, but I used to look on LinkedIn and when I saw people would leave, I'd reach out to get news tips. I don't need to do that anymore, thankfully!
The 5Essentials surveys have some good data on this stuff too, I'll write on that sometime
The 5Es does provide some good info; however, the questions do not differentiate between building admin (principal, AP) and JEH. It's possible (and I did) to have a good principal hamstrung by district admin.
I wish more parents realize what these charts mean as to the "bottom line" of the stability of the school district and the erosion of a quality education on their taxes!
Parents be alert, they are “preparing the ground”. This is from this morning’s Evanston Now article:
Board member Omar Salem said “I think entire departments might be gone. We have to make large cuts.”
Yeah, if they're going to continue with Foster School, which seems like the case, then they need to find:
- $13 million dollars of cuts for FY2024, potentially more for FY2025+
- $6 million dollars in FY2025 to pay for non-construction costs of the school
- $?? additional capital funds for other building repairs, etc
$13 million is just below 10% of the District's annual budget. Currently the public has no idea where that money is going to come from.
We fucked around. Now we're about to find out.
I think the cuts for two years out have to be more than $6M because I would assume there's an inflationary effect on our operating expenses. I don't think the annual tax levy -- which they rubber stamp for the full 5% every damn time -- fully offsets that but could be wrong.
Quick edit -- aren't we currently in FY25?
Oh youre right oops I am one year off
Also the new consultant said that June is typically when a district will announce school closing plans. As in keep people in the dark as long as possible and have just enough time for the three public hearings to be held and then hold the hearings when people are more likely to be on vacation or disconnected because school is not in session. How I wish school board elections were today instead of April.
And if they're aiming for 95 percent occupancy for the buildings that's going to mean closing three schools.
They did acknowledge that "goal" isn't necessarily the right number and we should revisit whether it should be less. Also have to consider that the more schools they propose closing in one swoop, the heavier the counterpunches will be. Three schools plus Bessie Rhodes...yikes. On the plus side, PEP will be selling tickets to the tailgate in the JEH parking lot on board meeting days.
Ha! That'd a fundraiser I could get behind!
Even if they aim for 90 percent that's still 2.5 schools too many before factoring in decreasing enrollment. And those numbers of course don't include King Arts. How that school consistently goes under the radar is beyond me. Not to throw them under the bus but if everything really is on the chopping block then they ought to be thrown in with the rest of us.
I don't think they aim to land at 90% now. I think they aim to be a bit closer to that, but if you aim at 90% now, you have NO leeway if somehow you see an uptick the next couple of years in enrollment. Not suggesting there are indicators pointing to a rebound, but it's not out of the range of outcomes.
You CANNOT claim to be centered on equity, justice, antiracism —all while pushing through kids, especially the marginalized and minoritized, that can’t read, write and do math at grade level (& in the case of d65 not even close to grade level).
The hypocrisy here is astounding. It’s actually criminal.
I didn’t appreciate how bad those numbers are trending. It would be one thing if all the focus on equity worked but it seems to have no or negative impact.
At the last meeting, one board member (if memory serves-Kim) berated the community for asking to return to fiscal responsibility and getting back to academic responsibility. She said these things are compatible with the equity goals. I personally feel strongly that you can and should be fiscally responsible, improve academics for all and improve equity. It does not need to be an if/or. However, these academic numbers and the dire financial situation show that this board is incapable of ANY of the three.
This is playing out all over the country —in schools, colleges, corporations…very little has actually improved with these initiatives—and in fact in most scenarios things have gotten worse.
And to think there were Board candidates who saw the writing on the wall. To think there were people who questioned the removal of advanced math, for example. We were told it was racist and inequitable and that’s why it was eliminated. The equity warriors patted themselves and Horton in the back for their brilliance; for figuring it out. And yet —the immediate question that should have been asked: what are you doing to address why there weren’t enough students of color in the advanced math pipeline to begin with? But of course no one asked that. And it was never addressed. This wasn’t actually about lifting kids up. It was about pushing them down. This is the Evanston way. It’s always about the immediate headline.
And then the best part? The best part is that the Evanston mob called anyone who dared to question this, racists, Kkk and whyte supremacists. It begs the question now: who is the actual racist?
Here's an example from a couple parents I've heard: If you wanted your kid to skip a grade, you had to fill out a bunch of papers and your kid had to take some tests. One of the forms they had to fill out had a question that was something like "Is there another kid in your child's class performing at or above your child's level?"
If you answered YES, then I guess D65 denied the grade skip. I wanted to punch myself but it's such an obviously clear case of "Hey who is that other kid doing well?" and promote both of them. But not what happened on the ground.
I have so many examples of this across a wide array of D65 stuff
Yes not just tests but tests proctored by Northwestern proctors with stern admonishments that parents can’t be present and you can’t use outside materials or you will be disqualified. Then if you passed the test multiple meetings with the school psychologist to take more tests (during recess of course)! With prying questions because you know can you really handle a whole extra level of math????! Emotionally? Is your family life stable? Are you stable? This apparently all relates to the Pythagorean Theorem.
It sounds like some principals no longer follow this insane regimen but it seems some still do……
Oh and if you qualify and are in 5th grade you take a bus to the middle school. This will cause kids to miss their specials (art, music, coding)…..
How would a parent even know if there was another kid in your child's class performing at or above grade level?
That’s crazy, Tom. And yet —par for the course.
I think part of the problem is that in so many of our systems, in order to fix this problem we were pretty big changes and people to do extra work. In this case above, someone needed to take ownership and be like "Yes, I am the person responsible for this and going to identify other high performing kids and work to advocate for them" .. and maybe there are lots of people in the administration who want to do that (or maybe there aren't). But good leaders find way to empower staff to make things better and take risks.
The leadership approach here has been: shove all the staff and teachers into a couple of hours of questionably effective training, write some six figure checks to consultants, and check off the box.
I’d think that the head of curriculum, if even slightly decent at their job, could have a huge influence here. All of these administrators —and there are so many of them — get paid a lot of money….and for what? How are they measured year in and year out in terms of objectives & deliverables? How do you end up with numbers like this and still have a job? By hoping no one notices? By counting on the fact that the community is in a zombie like state?
The problem is that there is often a gap before kids even enter kindergarten, so teachers are desperately trying to close the gap from day one. More money needs to be put into birth to pre-k services. Also, it is my experience that most of these students who want to skip grades aren't necessarily ready - just because you are a fast learner doesn't mean you don't need the content and standards that are being taught at that grade level. I don't know why so many parents are obsessed with having their kids skip grades.
Finally someone mentions the immeasurable impact of GOOD early childhood education! This would help close the gap and yet nothing substantial has been done in this area, a real missed opportunity here.
They need to focus on literacy instruction with evidence based strategies in the early grades. Once kids are behind in reading, everything else falls behind as well.
That's what they are supposedly doing now. Fingers crossed this is THE thing that will fix all the problems. I am forever hopeful when the newest thing comes around...
Here is the link to tonight's Board Meeting currently streaming on YouTube. Currently 52 people watching online plus those in person at the Board Meeting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3WrY5-EX60
Thank you Tom Hayden for continuing to enlighten our community on what is really going on in D65.
D65 Board meetings are the hottest event in town now! :)
I tell everyone I know in Evanston to read and subscribe to FOIA Gras.
This administration does not understand or care about the district's financials or our children's education. Two examples from last night's board meeting. When a board member asked about the vendor contract 'Smart Pass', a member of the administration that was asked did not know if the annual cost of the contract was $995 or $99,500. This was followed by laughter in the room. A few minutes later in the board meeting, Dr. Turner stated the cost for another vendor 'Stivers Staffing Agency' was budgeted for $115 Million annually. Then the CFO Tamara Mitchell, said "No it was actually budgeted for $1.5 Million." Seconds later, Tamara corrected herself saying "No that was a clerical error. It is $225,000." Once again laughter.
Parents in this school district do a better job of teaching their children how to manage money at a Summer lemonade stand than our Superintendent or CFO do managing the money they have been trusted with for our children's education (Annual salary of Dr. Turner: $250,000 plus benefits; Annual salary of Tamara Mitchell: $199,000 plus benefits).
Come June 2025, I expect Dr. Turner and her team will flee town (which will be easy since they waived the requirement for the Superintendent to reside in Evanston) all while laughing at the financial and academic mess they left in their wake. Our children will be left to use their lemonade stand money to finance their own education.
If you'd like to hear the laughter and financial mismanagement for yourself, listen to the recording of last night's board meeting starting at 3:38 (that's 3 hours and 38 minutes into the meeting).
Recording of last night's board meeting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3WrY5-EX60&t=1836s
Last night at the meeting they talked about outreach to the community. I have a 4 year old when we went to Joseph E. Hill Early Childhood Center building to look into preschool we were blown off with just applying and we will get back to you in summer . My wife was born and raised here in Evanston went to school here and now she is even talking about private schools. I personally would prefer moving.
Maybe the problem needs to be redefined. A large body of research has found a significant correlation between socio-economic status and academic achievement. On the other hand, research on and about racial groups is confounded by problems of definition. Most people who define themselves as African American are really mixed race, for example, and no academic researcher who values his/her job will focus on racial differences anyway. The topic is too emotionally loaded. The mere mention of a bell shaped curve can get a researcher in trouble. On the other hand, many African American kids are high achievers who complete honors and AP classes successfully and attend selective colleges. But they are usually middle or upper middle class with all the advantages of their class, and my hunch is that the children who are struggling academically in District 65 are from families that are struggling economically. Should the Evanston schools be expected to solve the problems of social disparity that have stumped the city of Evanston? The old guideline for teachers was to accept children where you find them and take them (each of them) as far as they can go. What does that have to do with closing the gap between racial groups?
I think the District deliberately avoided looking into any this in an empirical way when pushing for the new school. From Horton to the BOard it was entirely: "We need a Fifth Ward School to Right a Historical Wrong from 50 years ago."
The thing they didn't ask is, "does bussing create EDUCATIONAL disparities for students?"
From my search of the academic literature there is basically zero evidence of differences in academic performance for bussed kids when socioeconomic and demographic factors are taken into account.
The District knows the test scores for all of the students in the district. There are plenty of kids of color and lower income kids who are not bussed to neighborhood schools. Are the test scores for bussed kids lower than those for the neighborhood school kids?
No evidence as simple as this was ever presented, which leads me to believe that there is likely no difference. So the ONLY rationale for spending $40 million dollars is to Make The Fifth Ward Great Again and fulfill the nostalgic desires of a small number of long time residents who don't like the increasing diversity they are seeing in the neighborhood.
I get what you're saying, but I think if we looked at it through purely socioeconomic factors, the gap would just be even more pronounced than it already is and wouldn't really put us in a drastically different position.
I think the difficult thing is people don't have a consensus on what "as far as they can go" means. For instance, you seem to imply that certain kids have a lower ceiling than others, and thus we should only take them so far. Some would argue that only leads to those kids aiming lower, exacerbating the problem.
No, Evanston schools ALONE shouldn't be expected to solve the problems of social disparity. They should be expected to do what they can to try to alleviate them though.
This isn't my personal prediction of how this plays out, but what if...
-Foster School proceeds and opens on time
-Kids in that area whose families stick around benefit from getting to go to a superior facility and experience elementary school immersed with people of similar socioeconomic backgrounds so they don't feel like an outsider. Per Tom's previous recommendations, we send our best educators there.
-between the three-legged stool of Foster, Fleetwood, and Family Focus, the surrounding community gets a richer continuum of needs met, helping parents/caregivers who are struggling, and thus their kids
-we add Pre-school/EC programs at Foster to pull in kids earlier and help them better prepare for Kindergarten transition, therefore giving the district some added early interventions
-reading specialists and interventionists are re-prioritized
-D65 sees downstream positive benefits of kids who are better supported early on leading to lower incidence of IES
Again, this isn't my prediction, because we've seen so many swings and misses, but it's also not completely implausible that some of the above could happen if our budgets hadn't been absolutely torpedoed (new school or not).
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Redefining the problem along socioeconomic lines would not reduce the extent of the problem, but it might change the way we look at the issues involved. It might reduce the onus on the teachers and administrators who struggle mightily with issues of student achievement only to be attacked over and over by a community that doesn’t understand that student performance is individual rather than collective. The goal of taking each child as far as he/she can go means just what it says and doesn’t imply a ceiling. The ceiling metaphor is not very useful, anyway. Human behavior is highly differentiated and our gifts differ. We can’t all be theoretical physicists or accomplished musicians, but we can develop the talents that we have and contribute to the life of our communities.
Pablo for School Board!
I came across an article in the July 1992 Evanston Review about the need to close the achievement gap. So that’s 32 years at least. I do think it’s an insult to all our teachers to suggest that we need to train, recruit, and retain the best teachers. So what you are saying is that the poor quality of our teachers is the reason for the gap Why do the Black students at Pope John 23, St Joan of Arc school, St A s , Roycemore, etc do so well? No it’s not because of wealth disparity. It’s because the parent or parents instill discipline, high expectations and follow the students progress every day. Homework is done and checked every night, reading is fostered all the time , the teachers are held in high esteem. The family and their role in raising the child are key
That is not what I am saying - the teachers we have are great but in 2022 and again in 2023 we lost between 50-70 teachers. That kind of turnover is bad!
The reality is that the community is *not* investing in our teachers - they still don't have a contract, for instance. Most teachers are making less in 2024 than they made in 2023!
Why would any teacher want to work for D65, when they can make more, have better hours, and get more administrative support in nearby districts?
What are you suggesting about Black families, exactly?
All that turnover leads to a large group of very young teachers with no mentors. When I started in D65 in 1992, the schools were full of veteran staff (over 20 years experience was not uncommon) and I was assigned a mentor that I could go to regarding curriculum, policies, etc. Now, with all the burnout and veteran teachers taking the District’s early retirement incentives, these new teachers are thrown in the deep end and just given a few district-mandated meetings to attend. Add to all that, with everyone knowing that massive cuts are coming, any prospective new teacher already knows that they will likely be looking for a new job in a year.
Great point. Given that, we should definitely outsource the mentorship via some consultants...
A consultant has no connection to the school; my mentor was a veteran teacher in my school and in my department. The answer is making the job worth staying in and valuing your staff. The incentives to leave offered in the last contract made it clear to many of us that we were considered a burden because of our salaries and that we were easily replaceable.
Hah, sorry, my sarcasm didn't come through clearly there. It was a mediocre dig at our overreliance on consultants.
I'm in agreement with you that the lack of mentors is a massive problem and think you made a great point. Really concerned about some of the younger teachers seeing less examples of people making it a 20-30 year career and deciding to pivot early.
The experience issue is really problematic. Our eldest has had a couple of rookies and they have been nice and well meaning, but relatively ineffective in demanding quality from our kid. My sense is that these teachers were kind of thrown in and just trying to keep their head above water so they would let things slide and rely on apps for teaching exercises, etc...
The veterans that we have had have been SOOO much better.
They all have to start somewhere. You can't have experienced teachers without rookies.
Yikes. The implication you're making here is pretty awful. Question: is there something different that the kids with a "parent or parents [who] instill discipline, high expectations and follow the students progress every day" did to earn having that support at home that these other kids did not?
Since you left your last thought open-ended, I'll finish it for you. The family and their role in raising the child are key to their childhood. In situations where children are given less support at home, they need to be given a disproportionate amount of support outside of it, primarily through the school system.
The point here wasn't the one you made. It was that we're not seeing much of any progress, for all the efforts that have been made to raise up the bottom performers.
And the teachers, who are being increasingly commoditized by an administration unwilling to let them go the extra mile or off script are being put in a tough inflexible situation to help these kids. If the administration wants to do all that work to lift up those kids, fine, but they have to actually do it.
It is funny that your "Bad News" headline from yesterday was followed by a spam email from The Good Doctor Turner "Celebrating Student Growth on D65's Illinois State Report Card."
She even signed it "Yours in Education"! (Is getting creative with your valediction a CPS thing? What is wrong with "Sincerely")?
No mention of the "equity" numbers!
Shout out to the PR team if they are trolling me, I respect a good troll
I am very curious what the crb data looks like by grade cohort.
CRB?
Sorry the college readiness benchmark data