Questions for September Stakeholder Engagement Sessions

The district (D65 administration/Superintendent Witherspoon) announced it intends to present a plan to the Board on October 13th, to recommend cutting $20M (10% of the budget) and closing at least two schools in the coming year. The administration is hosting three public engagement sessions related to these cuts at 6pm each night:

  • Tuesday, 9/22 at Chute
  • Wednesday, 9/23 at Haven
  • Thursday, 9/24 at Nichols

While contemplating the current D65 situation and in order to organize our thoughts, we developed this list of questions to discuss at the upcoming engagement sessions. As data nerds we can confirm that asking questions is a great way to collect data, and we believe that the questions merit serious consideration before crucial decisions affecting the future of our children’s education are made.

Community Engagement

  • What is the goal of stakeholder engagement if you already have a plan to present 10/13? In what concrete way will these sessions affect your plan, or is your plan already finalized?
  • What is your strategy on community engagement? How will you know that you have received adequate community engagement and a representative sample of stakeholders? During SDRP, no representative from TWI was engaged in any of the subcommittees, what are your thoughts on that exclusion?
  • How will input gathered at these three sessions be synthesized and reported back to the Board? Will you provide raw notes, a themed summary, or something else?
  • Will engagement sessions take place after the plan is presented to collect feedback?
  • The tradeoff listed for the comprehensive approach is “more significant and difficult decisions in a shorter period of time.” What guardrails exist to make sure that compressed timeline doesn’t shortchange community input relative to the phased approach?

Financial

  • How much money was saved by closing Kingsley and Bessie Rhodes? How much money do you anticipate saving by closing 2 more schools? How much of this projected savings comes from firing teachers?
  • What specifically changed between the Phase III sustainability estimate of $10-15M (first identified January 2025) and the ~$20M comprehensive target (identified 9/14/26)? How and why did the deficit grow? Where does $20M come from?
  • If you are able to reduce the deficit by $20M, how many years do you project the district will be out of the red?
  • Revenue is based (primarily) on property taxes and not student enrollment. Doesn’t declining enrollment mean more money per student to go around?
  • What revenue generating ideas is the district pursuing to fill the gap between costs that rise at a faster rate than tax revenue?
  • “Additional revenue sources” is listed as a lever, but with the least detail. What’s actually on the table: a referendum, fee changes, facility use/rental revenue, grants, something else?
  • Will the detailed FY28-32 financial model and underlying assumptions (the ones behind tonight’s projections) be published in full, or only the summary slides?

Educational Outcomes

  • How will closing schools impact classroom sizes?
  • How will closing schools improve educational outcomes, which are already quite poor?

School Community

  • What assurances can you give the community that your plan ensures that there won’t be a need to close more schools next year, again, or a few years from now?
  • The last time school closures were debated, school communities repeatedly stood up to defend their school and why it should stay open. How do you intend to build up the Evanston community to avoid neighborhood-based infighting, versus pitting school against school?
  • What steps will you take to mitigate the negative psychological impact on students whose schools close?

Job Cuts

  • Is a school closure a reduction in force (RIF) by another name? If so, why not say it?
  • The September 14 presentation cited compensation growth as a driver of the structural deficit. The District Educators Council Collective Bargaining Agreement (DEC CBA) is what governs the salary structure and was last ratified December 16, 2024. Is there an opportunity to renegotiate the CBA instead of closing schools and letting teachers go? Or are our teachers underpaid and it’s better to let the current agreement stand?
  • Does your plan include administrative right-sizing and cuts? If not, why not?

Data

  • On what data will you base these school closure decisions? Will you reuse the disputed SDRP 3 school evaluations to determine which schools to close? If so, will they be updated to reflect current school populations and proximities? Will the SDRP 3 methodology be improved or is the plan to rely on the same context and approach?
  • King Arts and JEH were not considered in the last round of cuts; will these be considered as part of the two schools to close? Why or why not?
  • You state you will realign expenses to peer districts. What are those districts, why were they selected as peers, and how will alignment happen?

Enrollment

  • Why do you present declining enrollment as a problem outside your control? ETHS is not declining in the same way. Does your plan include any strategy to understand why D65 enrollment has declined precipitously and disproportionately as compared to other school districts, in particular the high school?
  • If you do not understand why people are pulling their kids out of D65, only to re-enroll in D202, do you think you risk creating a two-tier education system in Evanston, with the wealthy families opting out of public school into private school?
  • What does building utilization have to do with student outcomes? What is your target building utilization rate, and how does that correlate with improved educational achievements?
  • What do you think is the ideal classroom size for K-5 and what is this number based on? Do school closures get us closer to this goal?

Future Property Usage

  • Are you thinking about the fact that once you sell a school it’s gone - you may have sold it to someone promising to build affordable housing, but once purchaser owns the property, they can do anything. The district may insert stipulations in the contract, but the purchase could be flipped and sold to a third party with no restrictions.
  • Did you hear that an AI school (Alpha School) wants to buy Roycemore? Are we going to be offloading D65 buildings to turn them into D65 competitors for those privileged to take their kids out of public school?

Transportation

  • What specifically counts as a “transportation efficiency” in this package beyond what was already cut in SDRP Phase II? Route consolidation, eligibility changes, vendor renegotiation?
  • Is transportation being evaluated jointly with the footprint/school-closure decision, since closing buildings changes routing needs?

Timeline

  • With sessions running Sept 22-24 and Board action targeted for November, when does the public see the actual draft package (not just categories) before the vote happens? Is Oct 13’s “Path Forward” presentation the first look, and is there a comment window after that before November?
  • When will the board vote on the recommendations presented October 13?