District 65 Administrative Growth Over Time

A Legion of Data Nerds analysis of how D65’s administrative footprint has evolved, what it costs today, and how right sizing can save $8M.

Frequently Asked Questions — answers to common questions about how administrators are counted, what data sources are used, and what the numbers mean.

Update (October 16, 2026). The District has published its SY2026-27 compensation reports, provided an updated staffing count, and proposed a new budget plan that says administrators have been cut 36%. We have added an October 2026 update that checks that claim against the District’s own counts and compares the new plan with the District’s April list of admin cuts. Apart from the correction below, the original analysis (SY2015-16 through SY2025-26) is unchanged; the savings comparison chart also now includes the District’s October 2026 figures.

Correction (October 16, 2026). An earlier version of this page counted six administrators twice in SY2025-26 (and seven in SY2023-24), because they were listed on both the state administrator report and the IMRF report. Counting each person once, higher-paid admin headcount grew from 75 to 88 (+17%, not +25%), and admin density rose from 10.2 to 15.6 per 1,000 students (+54%, not +64%). The Legion right-sizing scenarios shrink accordingly (now $0.9M–$4.0M a year). The TRS Admin trend (11 → 24), the AFR dollar pool and every per-pupil spending figure are unaffected. Details in Correction: people listed twice below.

Correction (September 27, 2026). An earlier version of this page overstated the AFR admin compensation pool. The build script summed ISBE’s rolled-up function totals for General Administration (2300) and Business Services (2500), which bundle in non-administrative subfunctions — food services, and the pension contributions for custodial/O&M, transportation and internal-services staff, plus risk-management/tort. The corrected script sums only the administrative subfunctions. This lowers the FY25 pool from $19.99M to $17.48M but, because the excluded base was roughly flat over time, raises the real growth rate (total pool +21% → +24%; per-pupil +55% → +59%). Headcount findings are unaffected. Details in Correction: the admin pool subcategories below.

Correction (August 2, 2026). An earlier version of this page reported a 25% enrollment decline. That figure paired two different student populations and has been corrected to 24%, with the full enrollment series rebuilt on a single consistent measure. Details in Correction: the enrollment series below.

+54% 2× +59%
Admin-to-student ratio increase Certificated central-office admins (TRS) Per-pupil admin spending rise
10.2 → 15.6 per 1,000 students 11 → 24 administrators $1,915 → $3,041
SY2015–16 to SY2025–26 SY2015–16 to SY2025–26 FY16 to FY25 · inflation-adjusted

Key Findings

Between SY2015-16 and SY2025-26, K-8 enrollment fell from 7,371 to 5,630 students — a 24% decline. Over the same period:

  • The total admin compensation pool grew 24% in real (inflation-adjusted) dollars, from $14.11M to $17.48M.
  • General Administration nearly doubled (+99%), from $2.40M to $4.77M. This category includes the superintendent, assistant superintendents, and curriculum directors/coordinators.
  • Per-student admin spending rose 59% after inflation, from $1,915 to $3,041 per pupil.
  • Higher-paid admin headcount grew 17% (75 to 88), and per-1,000-student admin density rose 54% (10.2 to 15.6). (Corrected October 16, 2026; previously 94, +25% and 16.7, +64%. See the correction.)
  • Certificated central-office administrators (TRS Admin) more than doubled, from 11 to 24.
  • Per-person compensation has roughly tracked inflation. The cost growth is driven by adding more positions, not paying existing administrators more.
  • Right-sizing the administration could save $8.3M+ annually based on the District’s own April 2026 proposal. The cuts can be phased, with $0.9M to $4.0M in immediate annual savings under three Legion scenarios.

All dollar figures on this page are in 2026 dollars (inflation-adjusted using BLS CPI-U). The analysis uses two independent public data sources — the District’s Annual Financial Report (AFR) and state public-disclosure reports — detailed in the methodology sections below.

What Could Right-Sizing Save?

The chart below puts recent enacted and proposed cuts (dark grey) next to the District’s own admin-cut proposal (orange) and three Legion right-sizing scenarios (red shades) — all expressed both in dollars and as a percentage of the FY25 AFR admin compensation pool. These proposals can be used to gradually move the district to the Admin’s proposed $8m in cuts.

Even on the most conservative basis the Legion can construct, several million dollars in annual admin savings are accessible — and the District itself has identified $8.3M. The detailed comparison below documents the source and methodology behind each bar.

Chart updated October 16, 2026: closure bars now use the District’s October 13, 2026 estimates; Bessie Rhodes (closed), Dewey and Lincolnwood (proposed) and the proposed child-care and Head Start changes are added; and the light-orange bar shows the administrator positions in the District’s October 13 plan. See the October 2026 update.

October 2026 Update: SY2026-27 Data and the District’s New Plan

Added October 16, 2026. The rest of this page is the original analysis (with its dated corrections), covering SY2015-16 through SY2025-26. This section adds three new sources and says where each fits: the District’s SY2026-27 compensation reports, its October 2026 count of staff by employee category, and its October 13, 2026 budget plan, “A Sustainable Path Forward.”

In brief

  • The District now says administrators were cut 36%. Its own staffing counts show 20–25%, and none of it this year. The District counts 51 administrator FTE in both SY2025-26 and SY2026-27. Its 140-students-per-administrator figure would take about 39–42 administrators. Details below.
  • On this report’s measure, the number of higher-paid administrators and support staff rose. It went from 88 in SY2025-26 to 94 in SY2026-27 (92 if the pay line is raised for another year of inflation).
  • The certificated central-office list fell from 24 names to 13, but mostly because of how people are reported. Eight of the 24 positions are still filled and now appear on other state lists. Four are on no list. Counted the same way as last year, there are about 21.
  • The new plan cuts 8 administrator positions. In April, the District listed 22 administrators (and 42 non-union support positions) worth $8.3M. At the District’s own per-position figure, the October plan’s 8 administrators are worth about $1.0M, an eighth of the April list.

Checking the District’s “36% fewer admins” claim

What the District says. Slide 27 of the October 13, 2026 deck (FOIA Gras doc 24535), “Administrator & Central Office Staffing Ratios,” reads “Reduced by 36%” under the heading “Fewer admins over time,” showing students per administrator rising from 90:1 (2024) to 112:1 (2025) to 140:1 (2026, projected). It adds “Central Office reduced by 37% over the past three years,” with central office defined in a footnote as “JEH second floor administrators and staff.”

What the District’s own counts say. The District reports administrator FTE (the ADMIN, ADMIN SCHOOL, CABINET and SUPT categories) every year:

  FY24 (SY23-24) FY25 (SY24-25) FY26 (SY25-26) FY27 (SY26-27)
Administrator FTE 68 64 51 51
Central-office administrators (ADMIN, CABINET, SUPT) — — 23 20
School administrators (ADMIN SCHOOL) — — 28 31

FY24–FY26 from District data published by Larry Gavin in the Evanston RoundTable (Nov. 2, 2025, Tables 1 and 2); FY27 from the District’s “FTEs by Employee Category” file, October 2026. Category counts for years before FY26 have not been published.

  • Administrators fell 25% from their FY24 peak (68 to 51), or 20% over the two years the deck charts (64 to 51). None of it happened this year: the District’s file shows 51 in both SY2025-26 and SY2026-27.
  • The deck’s first two ratios roughly match the District’s counts; the third does not. With 64 administrators and 5,748 students in SY2024-25, the ratio is about 90:1. With 51 and 5,630 in SY2025-26, it is about 110:1. But for SY2026-27, 140:1 would take about 39 to 42 administrators (at 5,462 to 5,941 students, depending on which enrollment count is used). The District’s own file, prepared the same month as the deck, lists 51, which works out to roughly 107:1 to 116:1.
  • “36%” is the change in a ratio (1 − 90/140), not a count of people. A students-per-administrator ratio also rises when enrollment falls, so it isn’t a direct measure of administrators cut.
  • The 37% central-office figure can’t be checked. “JEH second floor administrators and staff” matches no category the District reports. In the one year where categories are published, central-office administrators went from 23 to 20 (−13%). The state certificated-administrator list tells a similar story: about 24 to 21 positions (see below).
  • The starting year inflates any decline. FY24 is the year the District changed its employee-category definitions: total FTE jumped by 142 and “other” staff by 103 in one year. On the state lists, certificated central-office administrators went 23 → 45 → 23 over FY23–FY25, which this page has treated as a reclassification since it was first published. A three-year comparison that starts in FY24 starts from that peak.

None of this changes the long-run picture above. District administrator FTE in SY2026-27 (51) is about where it was in SY2018-19 (50), while enrollment is down about a quarter.

What the SY2026-27 compensation reports show

The District’s three annual state compensation reports for SY2026-27 (PA 96-0434 administrators, PA 97-0256 administrators and teachers, PA 97-0609 IMRF $75K+) are now in the combined dataset. Counted exactly as in the rest of this page:

Measure SY2025-26 SY2026-27
TRS Admin (PA 96-0434, excluding principals) 24 13
Principals and assistant principals 28 30
IMRF staff on the $75K list (all) 101 121
IMRF staff above the inflation-indexed line (not also on the administrator report) 36 51
Higher-paid admin/support above the inflation-indexed line 88 94 (92)
Per 1,000 students 15.6 17.2 (16.8)

The indexed pay line for SY2026-27 uses the SY2025-26 line ($102,966) because 2027 inflation data isn’t available yet. Figures in parentheses raise the line by another year of inflation at 2.2% (about $105,200). Per-1,000 for SY2026-27 uses the fall 2026 enrollment on the District’s data dashboard (5,462, pulled September 23, 2026). It is preliminary until the District’s November enrollment memo.

  • The higher-paid count rose. Fewer people are on the certificated administrator list, but more are above the line on the IMRF list. That is the same back-and-forth between the two lists this page has noted since it was first published.
  • Six people moved between lists. In SY2025-26 the Executive Chiefs of Human Relations and Communications, and the Directors of Strategic Projects, Human Relations, Buildings & Grounds, and Climate & Safety were listed on both the certificated administrator report and the IMRF report. In SY2026-27 they appear only on the IMRF report. This page counts each person once (see the correction prompted by this).
  • The 11 → 13 view is not a fair comparison. TRS Admin is the cleanest series on this page because the law requires every certificated administrator to be reported. But in SY2026-27 a number of the same jobs moved from that report to others, so the drop from 24 to 13 is mostly a change in which report a person appears on:
SY2025-26 TRS Admin position SY2026-27
Superintendent Interim Superintendent (TRS list)¹
Chief Financial Officer New CFO (TRS list)
Asst. Superintendent of Accountability Same (TRS list)
Asst. Superintendent of Academics New holder (TRS list)
Director of Schools Management New holder, formerly Director of MTSS & SEL (TRS list)
Director of Student Specialized Services Same (TRS list)
Director of Early Childhood Programs New holder (TRS list)
Executive Director of Technology Same (TRS list)
Director of Multilingual Services New holder (TRS list)
Director of Humanities Same (TRS list)
Director of STEAM Same (TRS list)
Director of Programs & Partnerships Same (TRS list)
Executive Chief of Human Relations Same person, now IMRF list only
Executive Chief of Communications Same person, now IMRF list only
Director of Strategic Projects Same person, now IMRF list only
Director of Human Relations Same person, now IMRF list only
Director of Buildings, Grounds & Transportation Same person, now IMRF list only
Director of Climate & Safety Same person, now IMRF list only
Director of Finance New holder, IMRF list only
Health Services Director Retitled Senior Manager of Health Services, PA 97-0256 list only
Director of MTSS & SEL Not on any SY2026-27 list
Executive Director of RAAD Not on any SY2026-27 list
Manager of Student Specialized Services Not on any SY2026-27 list
Asst. Director of Teaching & Learning Not on any SY2026-27 list (previous holder is now a principal)
(new title) Asst. Director of Student Services TRS list

¹ The interim superintendent is a retired educator working under a contract limited to 120 paid days (amended contract), so the position’s SY2026-27 pay ($138,000 base) isn’t comparable to a full-time superintendent’s.

Twenty of the 24 SY2025-26 positions are still filled, plus one new title: about 21 positions on a like-for-like basis, down from 24. “Not on any list” does not prove a position was eliminated, since it may simply have been vacant on the reporting date. The District has not said which administrator positions it eliminated.

  • Principals and assistant principals rose from 28 to 30 even though Kingsley and Bessie Rhodes closed. The District’s FTE file shows the same thing (school administrators 28 → 31).

The new plan vs. the District’s April list

This page’s headline figure, $8.3M, is the District’s own: slide 13 of its April 20, 2026 deck listed 22 administrators and 42 non-union support positions as “Items for Analysis – Potential Additional Personnel Reduction Considerations.” That list was a set of options, not a decision, and it still stands as the District’s own estimate of what is available. The October 13 plan is the first full package the administration has proposed since, and the Board is scheduled to act on it November 9. The two compare as follows:

  April 20, 2026 list October 13, 2026 plan
Administrator positions 22 8 FTE (6 from school closures and staffing consolidation, 2 from ending non-mandated programs)
Non-union / classified support 42 non-union positions 129 classified FTE, mostly from closures, child care (SACC) and Head Start; the deck does not say whether any are the non-union central positions from April
Teachers and other certified staff — 88.8 FTE
Dollars $8.29M for 64 positions $11.3M “Staffing and Compensation” line; the deck does not price the administrator positions separately
Administrators as a share of the cut 22 of 64 (34%) 8 of 225.8 (3.5%)

Source: October 13, 2026 deck, slides 9 and 28 (FOIA Gras doc 24535).

  • The plan cuts about as many administrators as the Legion’s most modest scenario, and far fewer than the others. Eight positions, valued at the District’s own April average of $129,489, come to about $1.04M a year. The Legion’s “return to the 2016–19 baseline” scenario is about 7 positions ($0.91M); matching the peer median is about 20 ($2.65M) and matching D65’s own 2016 ratio about 31 ($3.98M). The April list was $8.3M.
  • Some of the 8 may be school-based. Six fall under “school closures and staffing consolidation,” and two more schools would close under the plan. If those six include the closing schools’ principals and assistant principals, the reduction in central-office administration is smaller still. The deck doesn’t say which positions they are.
  • The plan’s cuts fall mostly on schools and families. Two more school closures (Lincolnwood and Dewey, about $2.9M), ending the District-run SACC child-care program ($400K) and giving up Head Start and Early Head Start ($1.5M) together save more than the administrator cuts. Those measures are now in the comparison chart.

Questions the District hasn’t answered: Which 8 administrator positions are in the plan? Why did the administrator count stay at 51 this year, with central office down 3 and school administrators up 3 after two schools closed? Of the 22 administrators on the April list, which are still under consideration? And what count of administrators is behind the “36%” and “140:1”?

Sources for this update: District 65 PA 96-0434, PA 97-0256 and PA 97-0609 reports for FY 2026-27 (linked above; parsed by convert_pa_pdfs.py); District 65 “FTEs by Employee Category” (October 2026, provided to the Legion) and District FTE data published in Larry Gavin, “Guest Essay: District 65 has more employees now than in 2018-19,” Evanston RoundTable, Nov. 2, 2025 (both in data/d65_admin_fte.csv); “A Sustainable Path Forward,” D65 Committee of the Whole, Oct. 13, 2026 (FOIA Gras doc 24535); Hope Perry and William Karr, “Eric Witherspoon named District 65 interim superintendent,” Evanston RoundTable, June 23, 2026.

Implications

This page presents the data without prescribing a specific policy response, but a few observations follow naturally:

  1. The buildup is real on every defensible measure. Two independent data sources — AFR official ISBE filings and PA public-disclosure reports — both show substantial real-dollar growth in admin spending and headcount over a period of significant enrollment decline. The trend is not an artifact of the $75,000 PA threshold (all admin salaries above 75K need reported – see more below); it survives every methodological adjustment we have applied.

  2. General Administration (function 2300) is the most concentrated growth area. It nearly doubled in real terms over the decade (+99% since FY16, +142% since FY12). This function captures the superintendent, assistant superintendents, executive directors, curriculum directors, and content-area coordinators.

  3. Per-person compensation has tracked or slightly lagged inflation. When total real comp is up 24%–44% but per-person real comp is roughly flat, the math forces the conclusion that the cost growth is overwhelmingly driven by adding more positions, not by paying existing administrators more.

  4. The District’s current cost-cutting focus is heavily on student-facing services (counselors, librarians, school buildings) while the central-administration buildup of the past decade has received much less scrutiny. The District’s own April 20, 2026 deck identified $8.3M in admin cuts available — but presented the proposal 19 days after the contractual deadline that would have made it actionable for FY27, deferring those cuts to FY28 at the earliest.

  5. Comparable K-8 districts operate with substantially leaner administrative structures. Larry Gavin’s Evanston RoundTable reporting notes that D65’s −25% enrollment decline since FY 2019 is the steepest among 21 nearby K-8 districts; the next-largest decline was 14.3%. Meanwhile, D65 spends substantially more per pupil on central administration than peer districts.

  6. Achievement has not improved. D65 math proficiency on the IAR went from 44.8% meeting benchmark in 2018 to 42.3% in 2024 (per Gavin’s March 2026 RoundTable analysis). Whatever the administrative buildup has produced, it has not produced the academic outcomes its hiring case would have presumably promised.

The Legion of Data Nerds publishes this data to inform public discussion. We encourage residents, board members, and District leadership to consider it alongside other operational and educational priorities. Additional D65 source documents are available on the D65 BoardBook archive and the D65 Data Dashboard. Independent journalism is available in the Evanston RoundTable.

Admin Growth in Detail

The AFR Admin Pool Over Time

This chart shows D65’s total compensation paid to administrators across all four major admin function codes, in real (2026) dollars, from FY2012 through FY2025. No salary threshold is applied — every employee whose salary or benefits hit these function codes is counted.

The trend is unambiguous:

  • The pool grew from $12.74M (FY12) to $17.48M (FY25), a +37% real increase over a period when enrollment fell roughly 24% (SY2015-16 to SY2025-26).
  • General Administration (2300) more than doubled in real terms, from $1.97M to $4.77M (+142%). This function code captures the superintendent’s office, assistant superintendents, executive directors, and curriculum directors / coordinators.
  • The biggest single-year jumps are visible in FY17 (early Strategic Plan / new initiatives) and FY23 (Devon Horton’s first full year as superintendent) — both represent moments when the administrative buildup accelerated.
  • School Administration (2400) has been roughly flat in real terms over the decade and Business Services (2500) has drifted down slightly. Central Support (2600) — which includes IT, planning, and data processing — grew about 28% in real terms, partly reflecting the technology buildup discussed below.

Per-Pupil Admin Spending

Normalized by enrollment, the picture is more dramatic. As enrollment fell, per-student admin spending rose substantially even after adjusting for inflation.

Real per-pupil admin spending grew from approximately $1,915 to $3,041 (+59%) between FY16 and FY25. Excluding principals (which are largely school-level operations), per-pupil central-office and support spending grew from approximately $940 to $1,736 (+85%) over the same period.

Higher-Paid Admin Headcount Over Time (CPI-Indexed)

The AFR gives us the dollar story but does not break out individual employees. For year-by-year headcount trends we use the PA disclosures, applying a CPI-indexed threshold so the comparison is apples-to-apples across years.

Higher-paid admin headcount rose from 75 in SY2015-16 to 88 in SY2025-26 — a 17% increase over a decade in which K-8 enrollment fell 24%. (Corrected October 16, 2026: an earlier version said 94 and 25%, counting six people twice. See the correction.) Most of the year-to-year volatility between TRS Admin and IMRF Support Staff reflects positions being reclassified between funding sources rather than net hires or losses (the SY22-23 → SY23-24 transition is the largest example: about 11 IMRF Support Staff were reclassified into TRS Admin that year). TRS Admin doubled from 11 to 24 — a clean signal that doesn’t depend on the threshold framework, because TRS Admin is reported in full under PA 96-0434 regardless of the $75K rule.

Higher-Paid Admin per 1,000 Students

This is the most consequential headcount chart on the page. Even under the strict CPI-indexed apples-to-apples comparison, per-pupil admin density rose from 10.2 to 15.6 per 1,000 students between 2016 and 2026 — a 54% increase (corrected October 16, 2026; previously 16.7 and 64%). Peer K-8 districts in the surrounding area cluster around 12 per 1,000 students.

Average Compensation per Administrator

This chart plots each role-class’s average compensation in 2026 dollars against a dotted horizontal line at the 2016 real-dollar baseline. Most lines stay near or below their 2016 baseline — meaning per-person compensation has, on average, kept pace with inflation or slightly lost ground. Administrators are not, on average, getting big raises that outstrip the cost of living. Combined with the AFR pool growth, the math is forcing: total real cost grew because D65 added more administrators, not because it paid existing administrators more.

Right-Sizing vs. the District’s Other Cost-Cutting Measures

In recent months, the District has enacted or proposed a series of reductions targeting student-facing services: middle-school counselors, middle-school librarians, and school closures. The chart below (reproduced from the summary at the top of this page) puts the estimated annual savings of these measures next to two scenarios for right-sizing the central administration instead, plus the District’s own April 20, 2026 admin-cut proposal.

Updated October 16, 2026. The chart now uses the District’s October 13, 2026 estimates. Kingsley (closed) is $1.56M, down from $1.66M; Lincolnwood is now proposed, at $1.42M. It also adds Bessie Rhodes (closed, $1.44M), Dewey (proposed, $1.48M), ending District-run SACC ($400K), relinquishing Head Start and Early Head Start ($1.5M), and the 8 administrator FTE in the October 13 plan. The notes below describe the chart as originally published; see the October 2026 update for what changed.

What’s actually happened or been proposed (with sources)

The school-closure savings figures use the District’s Dec 1, 2025 revised SDRP III financial model (foiagras doc 12033), not the higher Sept 29, 2025 numbers.

  • Layoff of 2 middle-school counselors (April 2026) — On April 9, 2026, the Superintendent informed nine middle-school counselors they would lose their jobs at the end of the school year. After public outcry, on April 14, 2026 the Board curtailed the action and approved layoffs of only 2 of the 9 positions. Estimated annual savings: ~$200K. (Source: FOIA Gras post 264, April 18, 2026; D65 Board action April 14, 2026.)

  • Reassignment of middle-school librarians (April 2026) — The Superintendent announced “reassignment” of the middle-school librarians at all three middle schools (Chute, Haven, Nichols). Because the staff are being reassigned to classroom positions rather than terminated, the direct salary savings are up to approximately $270,000 only if coupled with firing additional teachers; otherwise zero. Did not require a Board vote. (Source: FOIA Gras post 264 and post 267, April 2026.)

  • Kingsley Elementary closure — Resolution adopted January 9, 2026. Three statutorily-required public hearings underway; intended closure end of SY25-26. Modeled recurring annual savings ≈ $1.66M (Scenario 1A). (Source: D65 Resolution of Closure 1/9/2026, foiagras doc 13846; SDRP III revised model 12.1.25, foiagras doc 12033; D65 SDRP Phase III School Closures Hub.)

  • Lincolnwood Elementary (conditional trigger) — The January 2026 resolution states: “If by October 2026 the District has not achieved financial sustainability and the district-wide average K-5 building utilization rate is below 75%, the Board will recognize the need to propose the closure of Lincolnwood Elementary School.” Not yet voted; estimated incremental annual savings ≈ $1.57M (Scenario 2D minus Scenario 1A: $3,235,277 − $1,662,529). (Source: foiagras doc 13846; SDRP III revised model 12.1.25, foiagras doc 12033.)

  • 2-school closure scenario (revised) — Kingsley + Lincolnwood together (Scenario 2D). Total recurring annual savings: ~$3.24M.

  • Decline iPad/keyboard purchase (March 2026, one-time) — On March 23, 2026 the Board approved a $528,279 purchase of 1,231 iPads and 1,295 keyboard cases for SY26-27, ignoring a Screen Sense Evanston petition with 1,200+ signatures urging less screen time. Declining the purchase would have produced a one-time $528,279 savings (shown on the chart at full value, not annual recurring). The District’s parallel four-year operational lease (approved Dec 2024) runs $750,966 / 4 years = ~$200K/year on a separate stream. (Source: FOIA Gras post 249, post 255, post 262, post 264; D65 Board action March 23, 2026.)

  • Choose lowest bidder for special ed transport (KalaJu over BriteLift) — On December 15, 2025 the Board awarded the special ed transportation contract to BriteLift in a 6-1 vote (Maria Opdycke opposed) at $2.04M annual for 55 routes. KalaJu Elite Fleet’s headline bid was approximately $1M lower at $1.04M but only priced 30 of the 55 routes needed — CFO Tamara Mitchell stated KalaJu’s bid reflected their existing fleet capacity, not the 55 routes required. Tom Hayden’s analysis notes nothing in the KalaJu bid explicitly stated this limitation. The chart shows the headline $1M figure as reported; defensible savings range is ~$143K (linear extrapolation of per-route cost across 55 routes) to ~$1M (headline bid difference). (Source: FOIA Gras post 253; D65 Board action December 15, 2025.)

The District’s own April 20, 2026 admin-cut proposal — and the missed deadline. At the April 20, 2026 SDRP Phase III board meeting, the administration’s deck identified an additional $8,287,312 in potential annual savings from eliminating 22 administrators and 42 non-union support positions (slide 13: “Items for Analysis – Potential Additional Personnel Reduction Considerations”). The same slide explicitly notes a contractual deadline of “April 1, 2026 for admin to go into effect for FY27.” The proposal was presented 19 days after the deadline that would have made it actionable for FY27; as a result, these cuts are deferred to FY28 at the earliest. The dollar figure is the District’s own — sized at $129,489 per position (the FY26 average admin compensation) × 64 positions. The District’s $8.3M proposal is 47% of the FY25 AFR admin compensation pool ($17.48M). (Source: D65 Expenditure Reduction Plan: SDRP Phase 3 Reductions, presented April 20, 2026, slide 13.)

What right-sizing the admin would save (Legion scenarios)

Three reference scenarios, all computed using the District’s own per-cut average ($129K) so the Legion and District proposals are directly comparable. Headcount targets are based on the CPI-indexed PA-disclosed roster (88 administrators in 2026; corrected October 16, 2026 from 94, see the correction):

  • Moderate — return higher-paid admin/support to 2016–2019 baseline (~81 admin, ~7 cuts). Estimated annual savings: $0.91M = 5.2% of the FY25 AFR admin pool. This is the lowest-controversy scenario and ties directly to D65’s own pre-buildup baseline.
  • Match peer K-8 median (~12/1k students; ~68 admin, ~20 cuts). Estimated annual savings: $2.65M = 15.1% of the FY25 AFR admin pool.
  • Match D65’s own SY2015-16 ratio (~10.2/1k students; ~57 admin, ~31 cuts). Estimated annual savings: $3.98M = 22.8% of the FY25 AFR admin pool.
  • District’s own April 20, 2026 proposal: $8.29M = 47.4% of the FY25 AFR admin pool.

All three Legion scenarios are smaller than the District’s own April 20 proposal. That is not a contradiction — the District is willing to propose a larger cut than the Legion is calling for. The empirical takeaway: even on the most conservative apples-to-apples basis the Legion can construct, several million dollars in annual admin savings remain accessible — and the District itself has identified $8.3M.

Putting these in perspective

The two-counselor layoff saves roughly the cost of a single mid-level administrator position. The librarian reassignments save effectively nothing in dollars. Closing Kingsley saves ~$1.66M annually; adding Lincolnwood (Scenario 2D) brings the total to ~$3.24M — more than the Legion’s peer-median right-sizing scenario ($2.65M). Even the District’s own April 20 proposal is bigger than every closure measure combined.

This isn’t an argument that the school closures are wrong — there are legitimate facility-utilization and capital-cost reasons to close under-utilized buildings. It is an argument that the District’s current cost-cutting efforts focus heavily on student-facing services while a substantial admin-side savings pool exists, the District itself has identified $8.3M of it, and even on the most conservative apples-to-apples measurement the Legion can construct, several million dollars in annual savings remain accessible.

IMRF Support Staff: Who’s in This Category?

The chart breaks the indexed-eligible IMRF Support Staff count down into broad role categories for the two most recent reporting years (SY24-25 and SY25-26). Earlier years are excluded because their IMRF reports either lacked Position strings or used inconsistent terminology that resists reliable bucketing. The “Directors / Managers / Coordinators” bucket is the most administrative-feeling subset of IMRF; the rest are operational support functions like custodians, IT, nurses, and SACC.

What Roles Have Been Added?

The TRS Admin roster in SY25-26 includes a number of senior positions that did not exist in the SY15-16 organization, among them:

  • Executive Chief of Communications
  • Executive Chief of Human Relations
  • Executive Director of RAAD (Research, Assessment, Accountability, and Data)
  • Executive Director of Technology
  • Director of MTSS & SEL (Multi-Tiered System of Supports & Social-Emotional Learning)
  • Director of STEAM (formerly Director of STEM)
  • Director of Multilingual Services (formerly Bilingual Coordinator)
  • Director of Climate & Safety
  • Director of Strategic Projects
  • Director of Programs & Partnerships
  • Director of Schools Management
  • Director of Humanities
  • Director of College and Career
  • Director of Science
  • Asst Director of Teaching & Learning
  • Diverse Learning Supervisor / Coordinator
  • Talent Development Coordinator
  • Special Assistant to Cabinet
  • Manager of Student Specialized Services

On the IMRF side, the SY25-26 roster includes newer specialized roles such as Sustainability Coordinator, Wellness Coordinator, Network & Cybersecurity Manager, Substitute Staffing Specialist, Family Center Managing Director, Senior Manager of HR Operations, Culture and Climate Manager, and a Science & Sustainability Education Coordinator.

Were these additions justified?

This is the harder question. The Legion of Data Nerds doesn’t have a definitive answer. In his November 2025 RoundTable essay (cited in the External Validation section below), Larry Gavin flagged several specific role-clusters as candidates for review without endorsement: the 9 IES Coordinators, multiple positions in the Human Relations department, a cluster of director-level roles created in recent years (Strategic Projects, Workforce Analytics, Communications), and assistant principals in small elementary schools with 300–370 students. We don’t have an independent basis for naming specific positions, but we agree these clusters warrant scrutiny.

Several questions would help the public — and the Board — evaluate whether these roles are essential, useful, or expendable:

  1. Was each new role created with a documented business case that included measurable outcomes the role was supposed to deliver?
  2. Are those outcomes being measured today, and what do the results show? For example, after creating an Executive Director of RAAD several years ago, has the District’s research/assessment/accountability/data work measurably improved? Has student achievement responded?
  3. For roles created during a specific initiative (e.g., Director of Multilingual Services, Director of MTSS & SEL), what is the evidence that the function would deteriorate if the role were eliminated and the work absorbed elsewhere?
  4. For directors and coordinators whose work is largely internal coordination, what concrete deliverables changed or new programs launched in the past year that would not have happened without them?
  5. Which of these roles have been previously eliminated and re-created, and what does that history tell us about whether the function is essential?

The District has not made comprehensive answers to these questions publicly available.

Why Two Data Sources?

The PA public-disclosure reports and the District’s AFR each have strengths and limitations. Using both makes the analysis bulletproof.

  • PA disclosures (96-0434 + 97-0609) give us headcount. They list every individual administrator and IMRF-participating support staff member above the $75,000 statutory threshold, with their position title and total compensation. This is the only public source for year-by-year admin headcount. But the $75,000 threshold has not been indexed to inflation since the statute took effect — it understates the true workforce in early years and overstates growth in recent years. We address this by applying a CPI-indexed threshold (anchored at $75,000 in 2016, equivalent to approximately $103,000 in 2026), so each year’s count includes only employees whose comp meets or exceeds the year-specific real-dollar equivalent of $75K-2016. This delivers an apples-to-apples headcount comparison across years.

  • The AFR (Annual Financial Report) gives us total dollar pool. Each year D65 files an AFR with ISBE that reports expenditure totals by function code. Functions 2300 (General Administration), 2400 (School Administration), 2500 (Business Services), and 2600 (Central Support) capture admin compensation across every employee in those functions, regardless of salary — including admin support staff who make less than $75,000 (school office secretaries, lower-tier coordinators, admin assistants). The AFR does not break out individual employees, only function-level dollar totals. So we use it for the dollar pool and the right-sizing denominator.

The two sources are independent and measure overlapping but different populations, so they do not produce an identical dollar figure. The PA disclosures count individuals — every administrator plus every IMRF employee above the threshold, which includes some operational support staff (food-service and custodial supervisors, senior IT) who clear the pay line — and total about $19.02M in FY26 (147 people; an earlier version counted six people twice and reported $20.04M). The AFR admin pool counts functions and, after excluding the operational subfunctions, is a tighter $17.48M in FY25. The AFR figure sitting a few million below the individual-based PA total is exactly what the narrower, function-defined definition should produce. What matters is that both sources — built from entirely different source documents — show the same decade-long upward trend in real terms.

Why this matters for the cost-cutting case. A common critique of any single threshold (whether $75,000 fixed or $103,000 inflation-indexed) is that it excludes some real D65 admin employees. The AFR sidesteps that critique entirely: it captures every admin-function employee. The District’s own April 20, 2026 proposal also uses this approach implicitly — the $8.3M figure is sized at workforce average compensation ($129K per position × 64 positions), not at the $75K threshold subset. Our right-sizing scenarios on this page use the same methodology the District itself applied, anchored to the same AFR pool the District actually budgets against.

Categories Used

D65 admin compensation is reported under two complementary disclosure regimes, plus the AFR functional breakdown.

State public-disclosure (PA) categories — used for headcount trend

  • TRS Admin (red) — Certificated administrators reported under PA 96-0434: superintendent, assistant superintendents, executive directors, directors (Curriculum & Instruction, MTSS & SEL, STEAM, Multilingual Services, Climate & Safety, Programs & Partnerships, etc.), and supervisors. Salaried under the Teachers’ Retirement System. TRS Admin compensation is reported in full regardless of the $75K threshold, so the TRS trend is essentially identical between the unindexed and CPI-indexed views.

  • IMRF Support Staff (blue) — Non-certificated, IMRF-participating administrative and support staff whose compensation package (salary plus benefits) exceeds the year-specific indexed threshold. PA 97-0609 only requires reporting of IMRF members above $75,000 to begin with; this page additionally applies the CPI-indexed threshold for trend rigor.

  • Principals (green) — Principals and assistant principals (extracted from the same PA 96-0434 reports as TRS Admin but tracked separately because they fill a distinctly school-level operational role).

  • Not included. Paraprofessionals (~200 D65 staff, comp typically below $30,000), counselors, librarians, classroom teachers, and support staff below the indexed threshold are not in the PA-disclosed pool.

AFR function categories — used for the dollar pool

  • 2300 — General Administration (Supt., Asst Supts, board, executive admin, curriculum directors and coordinators)
  • 2400 — School Administration (principals, asst principals, school office staff: secretaries, attendance clerks)
  • 2500 — Business Services (CFO, fiscal services, payroll, business; excludes 2540 O&M and 2550 Pupil Transport)
  • 2600 — Central Support Services (planning/research, IT, staff services, data processing)

The AFR captures every employee in these functions regardless of compensation level, including sub-$75K admin support staff that the PA disclosures omit.

All compensation figures on this page are inflation-adjusted to 2026 dollars using the BLS CPI-U All Urban Consumers index (US city average). Total compensation includes base salary, retirement (TRS) contribution, bonus, health/dental/life/vision insurance, car allowance, retirement annuities, and sick/vacation payouts. AFR figures additionally include MR/SS pension contributions allocated by function.

External Validation

Two pieces of independent journalism by Larry Gavin in the Evanston RoundTable corroborate the trends documented on this page:

  • Gavin, Larry. “Analysis and Viewpoint: District 65 Has 25% Fewer Students but 10% More Staff. Why?” Evanston RoundTable, March 22, 2026
    • D65’s −25% enrollment decline since FY 2019 is the steepest among 21 nearby K-8 districts; next-largest decline 14.3%
    • Total district FTEs increased by approximately 130 (+10%) over the same period
    • Math IAR proficiency declined from 44.8% (2018) to 42.3% (2024) despite the staffing buildup
    • Cross-referencing all three state disclosure lists yields 62 administrators for FY26 — 10 higher than the 52 the District reported under PA 96-0434 alone — raising the question of how many employees are performing administrative functions without being formally classified as administrators
  • Gavin, Larry. “Guest Essay: District 65 Employees and Enrollment.” Evanston RoundTable, November 2, 2025
    • Earlier independent analysis of the staff-to-enrollment ratio problem
    • Identified specific role-clusters (9 IES Coordinators, Human Relations layers, recent director-level positions, assistant principals in small schools) as candidates for review

The District has separately conceded the magnitude of the available admin savings: the April 20, 2026 SDRP Phase III deck identified $8,287,312 in additional admin/support cuts as available — roughly 41% of the AFR admin pool — but presented the proposal 19 days after the contractual deadline that would have made it actionable for FY27.

A reader who wants to verify our data has at least three convergent sources to cross-check: this page, Gavin’s RoundTable analyses, and the District’s own April 20 admission, all backed by underlying D65 board documents on FOIA Gras.

Correction: people listed twice

Updated October 16, 2026. The headcount charts and figures on this page counted listings on the state compensation reports, not people. In two years, some administrators appeared on both the PA 96-0434 administrator report and the PA 97-0609 IMRF report, with the same pay, and were counted once in each:

  • SY2025-26 (6 people): the Executive Chief of Human Relations, the Executive Chief of Communications, and the Directors of Strategic Projects, Human Relations, Buildings & Grounds, and Climate & Safety.
  • SY2023-24 (7 people): the Executive Director of HR, the Chief Communications Officer, the Chief Human Resources Officer, and the Directors of College and Career, Buildings & Grounds, and Student Assignments, plus the Multilingual Coordinator.

No other year has a duplicate, including the SY2015-16 baseline. The FAQ already reported 147 unique people for SY2025-26 with these six removed, but the 94 headline and the charts did not apply the same step.

How we found it. Adding the SY2026-27 reports, we noticed that the same six people now appear only on the IMRF report. Checking every year for people listed twice turned up the two years above.

What changed. Each person is now counted once. We keep the administrator-report listing, so the TRS Admin series is untouched, and drop the duplicate IMRF listing (build_admin_growth_final_charts.py). The underlying data file still lists every report row.

Measure Before Corrected
Higher-paid admin/support, SY2025-26 94 88
Growth since SY2015-16 (75) +25% +17%
Admin per 1,000 students, SY2025-26 16.7 (+64% vs 10.2) 15.6 (+54%)
Compared with the ~12 per 1,000 peer median ~40% above ~30% above
IMRF above the indexed line, SY2025-26 42 36
Higher-paid admin/support, SY2023-24 109 102
PA-disclosed total compensation, FY26 (nominal) $20.04M $19.02M
“Return to 2016–19 baseline” scenario ~13 cuts, $1.68M (9.6% of pool) ~7 cuts, $0.91M (5.2%)
“Match peer median” scenario ~26 cuts, $3.42M (19.6%) ~20 cuts, $2.65M (15.1%)
“Match 2016 ratio” scenario ~37 cuts, $4.75M (27.2%) ~31 cuts, $3.98M (22.8%)

What did not change: the TRS Admin trend (11 → 24), principals (34 → 28), the AFR admin pool ($14.11M → $17.48M, +24%), per-pupil admin spending (+59%; +85% excluding principals), the enrollment series, the finding that per-person pay has tracked inflation, and the District’s own $8.3M figure.

What it means for the finding. The correction makes the headcount growth smaller, and we want to say so plainly. It does not reverse it: D65 still had more higher-paid administrators and support staff in SY2025-26 than in SY2015-16 (+17%) while enrollment fell 24%, and about 54% more per student. The dollar findings, which come from the District’s AFR filings rather than the PA lists, are unaffected.

Correction: the admin pool subcategories

Updated September 27, 2026. An earlier version of this page overstated the AFR admin compensation pool by roughly $2.4M per year. The dollar pool is built from the District’s Annual Financial Reports by summing four administrative function codes — 2300 (General Administration), 2400 (School Administration), 2500 (Business Services) and 2600 (Central Support). The original build script took ISBE’s rolled-up total row for each. For 2400 and 2600 that is correct, because they contain only administrative subfunctions. But the 2300 and 2500 totals also roll in non-administrative subfunctions that were being counted as admin:

  • Business Services (2500): food-services salaries and benefits (booked in the Educational Fund), plus the MR/SS pension contributions for custodial/O&M, transportation, food-service and internal-services staff. The O&M and transportation salaries were already excluded (they sit in separate funds), but the food-service salaries and the operational pension were riding inside the 2500 total — about $2.1–2.5M/year.
  • General Administration (2300): the MR/SS pension for risk-management/tort staff, whose salaries are paid from the Tort Fund (already excluded) — about $94–107K/year in FY23–25.

The corrected script sums only the administrative subfunctions (2310/2320/2330; 2410/2490; 2510/2520; 2610/2620/2630/2640/2660) plus their own MR/SS pension.

Who caught it. Hope Perry of the Evanston RoundTable replicated the AFR pool from the source files, compared it against our published figures, and flagged the discrepancy. We are grateful for the check.

What changed — and why it strengthens the finding. The correction lowers the absolute pool about 13%, but because the excluded food/custodial base was roughly flat in real terms, removing it raises every growth rate:

Measure Before (published) Corrected
Total admin pool $16.56M → $19.99M (+21%) $14.11M → $17.48M (+24%)
Excluding principals $9.37M → $12.49M (+33%) $6.93M → $9.98M (+44%)
General Administration (2300) $2.40M → $4.88M (+103%) $2.40M → $4.77M (+99%)
Per-pupil admin spending $2,247 → $3,478 (+55%) $1,915 → $3,041 (+59%)
Per-pupil excl. principals $1,272 → $2,173 (+71%) $940 → $1,736 (+85%)
FY12 → FY25 pool $15.36M → $19.99M (+30%) $12.74M → $17.48M (+37%)

The headcount findings (higher-paid admin 75 → 94, since corrected to 75 → 88 on October 16, 2026; TRS Admin 11 → 24) and the right-sizing dollar savings (headcount × the District’s own $129K per-position figure) are unaffected; only their expression as a percentage of the pool changes. The corrected pool is in data/afr_admin_pool_summary.csv; the build logic is in build_afr_admin_pool.py.

Correction: the enrollment series

Updated August 2, 2026. An earlier version of this page reported that K-8 enrollment fell 25% between SY2015-16 and SY2025-26, from “approximately 7,500” to 5,625 students. That comparison paired two different student populations. The corrected figure is 24% (7,371 → 5,630), and the entire enrollment series has been rebuilt on one consistent measure.

What was wrong. The SY2015-16 endpoint came from the line in the District’s Opening of Schools report labeled “Pre-K (w/ IEP) – Gr. 8 (served, excludes JEH- w/out IEP and High School Age students)” — 7,523 students. Despite the label, that population includes students at Park School, the Rice Children’s Center, and pre-K students with IEPs at JEH, because the District is legally required to serve them. The SY2025-26 endpoint (5,625, taken from the District’s Data Dashboard) excluded all of those groups. Comparing the broader 2016 count against the narrower 2026 count overstated the decline by roughly a point and a half.

Why the original number was chosen. The Opening of Schools report is the District’s authoritative annual enrollment publication, and the “Pre-K (w/ IEP) – Gr. 8” line is the figure it leads with — it is the number the District itself headlines. The report was the best available source for the pre-2021 years, since ISBE State Report Cards for those years were not indexed on FOIA Gras at the time. For SY2025-26 no ISBE Report Card had yet been published, so the Data Dashboard was used. The mismatch was not deliberate; it came from taking each year’s number from whichever source was available without verifying that the underlying definitions matched.

Who caught it. Hope Perry of the Evanston RoundTable raised the question while reviewing this analysis, and supplied the District’s November 2025 final enrollment memo showing 5,630 K-8 students excluding Park, Rice and JEH. We are grateful for the check.

What changed. Every year in the series now uses the same measure — K-8 students in regular District 65 schools, excluding Park, Rice and JEH — sourced entirely from District documents. This also replaced the SY2020-21 through SY2024-25 values, which had been drawn from ISBE State Report Cards and represented a third definition again. The full series and its per-year sources are in data/d65_enrollment_history.csv.

  SY15-16 SY25-26 Change
K-8 excl. Park/Rice/JEH (now used) 7,371 5,630 −23.6%
Total Served / ISBE Fall Enrollment Counts 7,894 ~5,997 −24.0%
Previous version (mismatched) 7,523 5,625 −25.2%

What it changed in the analysis — and what it didn’t. The corrected denominator moves the enrollment headline and the admin-density figure. It does not move the spending findings, because those are ratios of ratios and the definitional difference cancels out:

Measure Previously published Corrected
Enrollment decline 25% 24%
Admin per 1,000 students 10.0 → 16.7 (+67%) 10.2 → 16.7 (+64%)
Per-pupil admin spending $2,201 → $3,401 (+55%) $2,247 → $3,478 (+55%)
Per-pupil excl. principals $1,246 → $2,125 (+71%) $1,272 → $2,173 (+71%)
Total admin pool (real) $16.56M → $19.99M (+21%) unchanged
TRS Admin headcount 11 → 24 unchanged
“Match 2016 ratio” scenario ~38 cuts, $4.91M ~37 cuts, $4.75M
“Match peer median” scenario ~26 cuts, $3.43M ~26 cuts, $3.42M

Note: the “Corrected” dollar figures in this table (per-pupil spending and the total admin pool) reflect only the enrollment correction. They were revised again on September 27, 2026 — see Correction: the admin pool subcategories above for the current figures ($1,915 → $3,041 per pupil; $14.11M → $17.48M pool). The headcount figures in this table (admin per 1,000 students and the two scenarios) were revised again on October 16, 2026 — see Correction: people listed twice for the current figures (10.2 → 15.6, +54%; ~20 cuts, $2.65M; ~31 cuts, $3.98M).

We chose the measure that produces the smallest decline and the lowest density growth of the available options. Note also that D65 enrollment on this measure peaked in SY2016-17 at 7,559, not in SY2015-16; measured from that peak the decline is 25.5%. We report from SY2015-16 because that is the first year of the compensation data this analysis rests on.

Methodology Notes

  • Data sources. Year-by-year admin headcount and individual-level compensation come from PA 96-0434 (TRS administrators) and PA 97-0609 (IMRF employees with comp packages over $75K), filed annually with ISBE and indexed in FOIA Gras. Total admin compensation pool comes from the District’s Annual Financial Report (AFR), which D65 also files annually with ISBE and which we obtained from districtvitals.com and our local archive at data/afr/.
  • Year labels show the ending school year (e.g., 2026 = SY2025-26 = FY26).
  • Total Compensation (PA disclosures) = Base Salary + TRS/Retirement contribution + Bonus + Health Insurance + Dental Insurance + Life Insurance + Vision Insurance (where reported) + Car Allowance + Retirement Annuity + Sick/Vacation Payout.
  • Total Compensation (AFR) = Salaries (object code 100) + Employee Benefits (object code 200) + MR/SS pension contributions allocated by function code (reported in the SUPPORT SERVICES (MR/SS) section of the Expenditures sheet).
  • CPI-indexed threshold for headcount. The threshold is anchored at $75,000 in 2016 and inflated each year using BLS CPI-U (US city average). In 2026 the threshold is approximately $103,000. Anchor choice is conservative — anchoring at the statute year (2011) would yield a higher 2016-equivalent threshold and make the apparent growth larger.
  • Inflation adjustment uses BLS CPI-U All Urban Consumers (US city average) annual averages, with 2026 as the base year. CPI values are stored in data/cpi_history.csv; the SY25-26 value is estimated from monthly Jan–Nov 2025 BLS data.
  • AFR functions counted as admin. 2300 (General Administration) + 2400 (School Administration) + 2500 (Business Services) + 2600 (Central Support Services). Operations-side functions (2540 O&M, 2550 Pupil Transport, 2560 Food Services) are explicitly excluded — they are operations, not admin.
  • Right-sizing per-cut comp ($129,489) is computed from the District’s own April 20, 2026 proposal: $8,287,312 ÷ 64 cuts. This is the District’s implicit average of the admin/support workforce they propose to cut from. Using the same per-cut figure for all Legion scenarios makes them directly comparable to the District’s number.
  • PA 097-0609 (IMRF) reports include only IMRF-participating employees whose compensation package (salary plus benefits) exceeds $75,000. This page’s CPI-indexed threshold is additionally applied on top of that legal threshold.
  • Some staff appear to move between TRS Admin and IMRF Support Staff categories across years as positions are reclassified for funding purposes. The SY22-23 → SY23-24 transition is the most prominent example.
  • Principals are tracked separately from TRS Admin even though they appear in the same PA 96-0434 reports.
  • The SY2020-21 PDF rendered the Health Insurance column as “#######” (an Excel column-too-narrow rendering artifact in the source PDF). This causes Total Comp to be slightly under-counted for that year only.
  • Enrollment uses a single measure for every year: students in grades K-8 at District 65’s regular schools, excluding Park School, the Rice Children’s Center, and the JEH/Family Center early-childhood programs. This is the District’s own long-running internal count — the November 2025 enrollment memo describes it as “a fixed methodology that has been applied for well over a decade.” Every year comes from a District document indexed on FOIA Gras: SY2015-16 from the Opening of Schools 2015-16 report (doc 7213); SY2016-17 through SY2019-20 from the Opening of Schools 2019-20 cross-year table (doc 4318); SY2020-21 from the 2020-21 Enrollment Update Memo (doc 3853); and SY2021-22 through SY2025-26 from Table 1 of the (Final) Enrollment Projections Memo presented November 3, 2025 (doc 248). The year-by-year series is in data/d65_enrollment_history.csv, with the component figures for each year in the note column. The SY2020-21 figure uses a September 14, 2020 count date rather than the usual September 30 / October 1 date, because that is what the District published that year.
  • Other enrollment measures. The same District documents report a broader “Total Served” (ISBE Fall Enrollment Counts) figure that adds Park, Rice, JEH and the early-childhood programs: 7,894 in SY2015-16 and approximately 5,997 in SY2025-26 (the November 2025 memo’s 5,630 plus the 367 students it lists at Family Center/JEC, Park and Rice, which it describes as bringing enrollment “to just above 6,000”). That measure yields a 24.0% decline — effectively identical to the 23.6% on the K-8 measure used here. Larry Gavin’s RoundTable analyses use the Total Served basis (he reports 5,941 for SY2025-26). Both measures are correct; this page uses the narrower one because it is the District’s own continuously-maintained series and because it is the more conservative choice for every claim made here.

Acknowledgements

This analysis was prepared by the Legion of Data Nerds with the assistance of Claude.ai (Anthropic), which helped with extracting and reconciling data across the multi-year PA compensation reports and AFR Expenditures sheets, building the visualization pipeline, and drafting this page. All source data is from public District 65 board meeting documents indexed on FOIA Gras and from publicly-filed ISBE Annual Financial Reports. All editorial decisions, methodology choices, and conclusions are the authors’.

Underlying CSV data is available at data/d65_admin_comp_combined.csv (PA disclosures) and data/afr_admin_pool_summary.csv (AFR pool). Source AFR Excel files are in data/afr/. Build scripts for the dataset and visualizations are in build_admin_growth_data.py, build_afr_admin_pool.py, and build_admin_growth_final_charts.py.