How the counts are made

Students in 2026 (the starting count). The district reports how many students are in each grade (October 1, 2026: 3,484 in K–5 and 1,931 in grades 6–8 across every D65 school, King Arts included) but not where they live. This page places them where the 2020 Census found children of the same age. For K–5, each of today's 10 attendance areas is first sized to the district's own count of students living in that area (the "area counts" in its utilization planning table), so areas where more families use D65 schools, or where enrollment held up, keep more students: about 94 of every 100 2020 children in Foster's area, 78 in Dawes', 71 in Oakton's and Washington's, 64 in Dewey's, 56 in Lincoln's and Lincolnwood's, 54 in Willard's, and 51 in Orrington's and Walker's. Within an area, students follow the 2020 children block by block. Grades 6–8 are scaled evenly (64 of every 100) because middle-school attendance areas were not available. Area totals are firmer than any single block. Switch Count to "Children 2020" to see the Census children instead.

Is the 2020 pattern still right? Families move, so we tested an alternative: age the 2020 Census forward to 2026 (children 0 to 4 in 2020 are this fall's grades 1 to 5) and adjust each census tract by how its children actually changed from the 2010 Census to the 2020 Census, which carries each neighborhood's net family moves (a method demographers call Hamilton-Perry). We had each version predict the district's count of students living in each attendance area. The 2020 pattern missed by 65 students per area on average; the aged version by 68; aging without the move adjustment by about 81. Moves matter, but the aged version was no better, so the map keeps the 2020 pattern. Neither fixes the largest misses, Foster (too low) and Walker (too high), which likely reflect where private-school families live. Sources: 2020 Census DHC and 2010 Census SF1, table P14, via data.census.gov.

Children come from the 2020 Census (Demographic and Housing Characteristics file, table P14, single year of age), counted on every census block inside District 65. Blocks are small in Evanston, usually one side of a street, so the edge error is a few children per area. Children who live in Wilmette, Chicago or another Skokie school district are left out entirely.

Elementary or middle. Elementary areas count ages 5 to 10 (K–5) around the 10 neighborhood elementary schools, and King Arts when it is turned on. Middle areas count ages 11 to 13 (grades 6–8) around Chute, Haven and Nichols, and King Arts when turned on, since it runs through 8th grade. King Arts' students and seats are split by grade: 274 K–5 students and about 401 seats in elementary view, 171 grade 6–8 students and about 250 seats in middle view.

Straight line or walking. Circles measure straight-line distance. Walking areas measure distance along streets, alleys and paths from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2023 road file for Cook County, leaving out expressways and ramps, plus the short walk from each block to its nearest street. The canal, rail lines, the golf course and campus have few crossings, so walking areas bend around them. A walking area is drawn as the streets within that distance plus the lots that face them.

How overlap is drawn. With "Every school nearby" or "Half to each," areas are translucent so overlaps blend their colors like a Venn diagram. With "The closer school," each circle keeps its round edge until it meets another circle; a home in two circles goes to the school whose circle it sits deepest inside: its distance divided by that school's radius. When circles are the same size, that is the closer school and the line is straight, halfway between the two. When you make one school's circle bigger, its line moves out and curves around the neighbor, so the neighbor keeps a smaller round area near its own building. Shrinking a school (by hand, or when it fills up) pulls its line back the same way. Choose "Always the closer school" to split every overlap at the halfway line instead. Walking areas are split the same way, block by block. With "Neither, show as shared," shared blocks are hatched gray. All areas are cut at the District 65 line.

Overlap and gaps. A child can live in two or three areas. "Homes near two or more schools" decides where those children go: the closer school, every school nearby (counts add up to more than the district), half to each, or neither, shown as shared. Children outside every circle or walking area are unassigned: they count toward no school and no seats, and the table lists them on their own row.

Removing schools. Any school can be taken off the map. Its children then count toward the remaining schools under the same rules, and expected seats and capacity flags update. King Arts starts on: it is the neighborhood school for a small area (roughly Dodge to the canal, Dempster to Church), though most of its students come from across the district. Turn it off to see the other schools alone.

One school's radius. The main slider sets every school's radius; tap a school in the table and use − and + to change just that one. When a school fills up shrinks a school's area to the distance where the children inside it, times how many of every 100 children attend, would fill that share of its seats, so a full school's area stops growing. The stop follows the overlap setting: with "closer school," only the children a school actually gets count toward its seats. When a school stops, children just past its edge go to the next closest school whose area reaches them, and those still beyond every area become unassigned, so you can see who is left without a seat nearby.

Capacity. Seats are each building's capacity: the smaller of the district's capacity table and the Cordogan Clark 2022 facility study (Dawes 432, Dewey 537, Foster 576, King Arts 651, Lincoln 576, Lincolnwood 432, Oakton 467, Orrington 432, Walker 432, Washington 530, Willard 533; Chute 792, Haven 936, Nichols 705). "Expected" multiplies the children counted for a school by how many of every 100 children attend, which starts at today's ratio of students at the neighborhood schools to resident children of that age and can be changed. Not every resident child attends D65 (private school, about 1 in 6) and the 2020 count is older than today's students, so treat expected seats as a planning estimate. A school is marked over capacity when today's students or expected students exceed its seats. Most of King Arts' students come from across the district, so its neighborhood count says little about its enrollment.

Oct 23 proposed areas are the district's revised FY28 boundaries (Google My Maps layer "Oct. 23, 2026 Proposed Boundaries"), drawn dashed over the map. They close Dewey and Lincolnwood; use "Take Dewey and Lincolnwood off the map" to see where those children fall under the circle rules. The mover counts beside the table are the district's, not ours: students now in grades K–4 who change schools because of the new lines (Boundary Impacts for LODN, Oct 28, 2026).

The district's seat target. The district says its boundary model pulls each building toward the middle of 75–90% of seats, with a penalty four times larger outside that range. The green band on each seat bar marks 75–90%, and "When a school is full" can stop circles at 82.5%, the middle of the band.

Sizing schools and Even out. Each school's slider sets its own radius (or walking distance), up to 2 miles. "Even out" tries sizes step by step: it shrinks schools above 90% of seats, grows schools below 75%, and keeps the version with the fewest schools outside 75–90% and the fewest students left outside every area. It is a search, not a guarantee; when the schools on the map have far more seats than students, some will stay under 75%. Saved setups are shared with everyone who can open this page; a viewer who can't edit saves in their own browser.

Child density spreads each block's children over the area around it (a smoothing distance of about 0.1 mile) and shows children per square mile.

Limits. Both counts rest on where children lived in April 2020; the 2026 count moves the totals to today's students but cannot see new housing or families who moved within an attendance area since then (see the test above). About 1 in 6 children in D65 attend private school, and immersion, magnet and transfer students attend outside their neighborhood. School locations are their street addresses.

Who attends. With the 2026 count, the rate starts at the share of D65 students at the schools on the map: 3,210 of 3,484 K–5 students attend the 10 neighborhood elementaries and 1,760 of 1,931 grade 6–8 students attend Chute, Haven and Nichols (about 92 and 91 of every 100); the other 274 and 171 attend King Arts. The 3,210 includes 683 two-way immersion students at Dawes, Dewey, Foster, Oakton and Washington, many of whom live in another school's area, so it counts students in neighborhood-school buildings, not students at their own neighborhood school. With the 2020 count, not every child goes to a D65 neighborhood school; some go to private school or a magnet. The rate starts at today's enrolled students divided by the 2020 children of the same age. It also folds in six years of falling enrollment since the 2020 count, and today's totals include immersion, STEP and transfer students who live elsewhere in the district.

Matching the counts. Children and students are always compared at the same level: ages 5–10 (5,494 in D65) against the 10 neighborhood elementary schools (3,210 students on October 1, 2026), or ages 11–13 (3,036) against Chute, Haven and Nichols (1,760); both work out to about 58 of every 100. Enrollment is each school's total on the district's dashboard as pulled on October 1, 2026, and matches the sum of its grade counts. King Arts counts 274 students in K–5 and 171 in grades 6–8. The block-by-block Census total for ages 5–10 (5,494) is 26 children below an earlier district-wide Census figure (5,520) because of how blocks on the district line are assigned.

Sources: District 65 enrollment by school and grade (dashboard pulled Oct 1, 2026) and attendance-area student counts (district utilization planning table), via the Legion of Nerds enrollment repository; U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census DHC, Illinois (table P14, census blocks), 2020 TIGER/Line census blocks and 2023 TIGER/Line roads and address ranges, Cook County; District 65 enrollment dashboard, Oct 1, 2026; District 65 2026–27 attendance areas and Oct 23, 2026 proposed areas (FY28 Proposed Boundaries map); District 65 Boundary Impacts for LODN sheet and boundary-model description, Oct 28, 2026; streets drawn from OpenStreetMap contributors.