Let’s work together for Evanston students

10/27/25

We are writing to you as a group of parents with many years of data expertise representing 4 elementary and 2 middle schools from all over Evanston. We are speaking as one voice to urge you to build a system that best serves our community’s most important asset, our children. We also urge you to read carefully the Guest Essay: Why District 65 must slow down on school closures - Evanston RoundTable

This board is currently considering closing schools to relieve financial pressures. The district is reevaluating its facilities, operations, and services — decisions that will reshape the backbone of our community and the future of our children.

As applied scientists who value evidence-based decision-making, we’ve asked ourselves: Do the data actually support this plan? We believe caution is warranted, and not acceleration. We are not advocating for paralysis, but rather prudence, knowing that we share a commitment to our children, which must be the foundation for every decision we make.

The Scorecard Problem

To trust that the school rankings scorecard reflects reality, we need to fully understand how it was calculated. While analyzing a large volume of data can feel reassuring, for such transformative decisions we must be certain: 1) that it is good data, and 2) that it is the right data. The administration’s decision not to share a comprehensive description of its methods, data, and assumptions, directly prevents the community from validating its analysis.

A decision of this magnitude cannot be built on a black box. Scores that cannot be compared, cannot be trusted. Methodology documented in bits and pieces across the district website, does not build trust. A data hub website that constantly crashes for iPhone users – does not build trust.

We simply cannot trust a plan that the administration will not allow us to validate.

The Math Doesn’t Add Up

A quick look across the data sources on the SDRP website reveals a number of inconsistencies. For example, the enrollment numbers provided on the Phase III: School Closures Hub are different from the SDRP Data Hub. The SDRP Data Hub pulls information from a demography report, but the scoring omits any future enrollment forecast. Also, the scoring does not consider adjacent city-level initiatives that cite potential significant population increase. This is just one example.

Why does this matter?

Enrollment data are embedded in almost every non-facility/financial calculation. Worst case, inaccurate enrollment projections can lead to unanticipated future overcrowding, which is especially impactful in multi-school closure scenarios where there are limited options to absorb extra students.

Bigger picture, to account for data uncertainty, the board needs to consider the range of potential outcomes. Only then can an informed plan be made regarding closures.

We first need to understand the underlying data and assumptions, and then build a robust plan around it. The scorecards alone do not account for the complexities required for strategic planning.

What’s Missing from the Data is what should be centered: our students

Research tells us: school closures hurt kids and communities. They lower test scores, reduce attendance, and increase stress and anxiety — not just for the children who move, but for those at the receiving schools, too. This upheaval will reverberate across the district not only in the first year but for multiple years as students and staff work to build community together. The ways to mitigate this upheaval come from careful, thoughtful planning and support for students.

What the district has planned will cram multiple schools above their capacities with minimal attention to ADA accessibility with a hope to ‘figure it out later.’– per the district administration. We don’t know the real financial benefit, how teachers will be chosen to stay or go, or the cost and length of bus transportation. In 2013, Chicago Public Schools followed a similarly rushed timeline and administrators and teachers found that the process was chaotic, and that “None of the schools felt prepared for the transition.” (pg 32 of pdf). Furthermore, the study found that students felt alienated in their new schools and that Math NWEA Test Scores Were Negatively Affected for Students from Closed Schools, Even Four Years Later. (pg 55 of pdf)

**The current approach will have lasting effects on student wellbeing and academic performance. We must not optimize for classroom seats at the expense of our students. **

A Financial “Crisis” That Isn’t. A School Utilization “Crisis” That Isn’t. A Lack of Accountability That Is.

Let’s look at the numbers. District 65 reduced its FY26 budget deficit from $20 million to roughly $372 thousand in one year — a 98 percent improvement and practically a balanced budget. That’s a comeback story, not a crisis. We now have financial levers available to us such as a community engaged referendum, selling Bessie Rhodes, and administrative cuts that can make a meaningful impact to reducing our projected budget deficit and deferred maintenance backlog. The structural deficit is not a lump-sum payment and we can make plans to address it. Our focus should be on long-term success. Focusing on “optimizing for school utilization” reflects a narrow view of the problem and can hinder our chances for success. This narrow view does not take into account the impact on the community, teachers and student achievement. Low enrollment and declining birth rates IS NOT the problem. So what is the problem? It is years of financial negligence and lack of accountability. The data shows this.

We are not in free fall — we are finally finding our footing. We have time to focus on the horizon.

A Smarter, Fairer Way to Save

If this conversation is about money, then let’s follow the money. We must ask if this painful school closure process will even solve the long-term financial problem. Data from other school districts show they consistently underestimate the costs of closures and overestimate the potential savings, sometimes by as much as 60%. This is especially worrisome given that there’s no concrete plan for what to do with a school once it’s closed. We cannot risk harming our students for promised savings that may never materialize.

We looked at the 2024-2025 school year data available through the Illinois State Board of Education Salary Data Sets to compare D65 to 18 other peer districts. We categorized each position as either admin, principal, or teacher. D65 has more admin positions per student than every other district except for Glencoe (D35). D65 spends more on admin salaries than every district except for Northbrook (D28), Northbrook/Glenview (D30), and Glencoe (D35). We identified that if D65 were to adjust admin headcount per student to bring it in line with the average headcount per student across these peer districts, D65 could save over $1.4M annually, more than any other district.

Administrative restructuring and reductions would deliver major savings without harming classrooms or communities. We recognize the board is looking to make informed, data-driven decisions, but it is a conflict of interest for the administration to be the only source of that data, particularly when it comes to assessing the right-sizing of their own administration.

At the same time, we can think creatively: co-locating schools with other services, clustering grades, sharing administrative functions, or even considering a referendum.

The data show it clearly — our problem is administrative excess, and right-sizing our administration is preferable to harming our students through unnecessary school closures.

Trust, Transparency, and Independent Review

Transparency isn’t optional; it’s the foundation of public trust. The district must release its modeling code, input data, and financial assumptions for independent review. Code review is standard practice in every evidence-based organization, and many frameworks define transparency as essential for trustworthy decision systems. This is especially important when considering models that affect our children’s futures.

Transparency also means releasing the targets - what are the specific end goals here? What do we want to make sure doesn’t change - for example, how will we know if cuts start to negatively impact academic or social-emotional outcomes?

We must name the metrics defining our end state, the performance indicators telling us whether we are on the right track, and the data and methods for how all of these are calculated.

We cannot close schools in darkness and fear; only transparency can shine the light to build the trust this district needs to move forward. We don’t want to be taken advantage of again.

Slow Down to Get It Right

We’re not demanding inaction — we’re asking for an approach that leads with evidence, transparency, and compassion to prioritize the well-being and education of all kids in Evanston. We owe it to our kids to learn from the school consolidation that is already underway and to carefully evaluate what comes next.

We can pilot, measure, and adapt — all while pursuing independent audits, cutting administrative bloat, and exploring creative uses for our facilities. We recommend taking a look at administrative costs and projecting utilization and financial savings across closure scenarios.

District 65 is not just making budget choices; it’s also shaping our children and students – what many of us value the most – as well as defining what kind of community we are.

The current plans rush haphazardly to slash budgets and close a handful of schools in one fell swoop — without a clear picture of the financial situation, the most important metrics regarding success or best practices, or the knowledge and experience we will gain from focusing on opening Foster and closing one school (Bessie Rhodes) this year.

If nobody knows what the data says because of a lack of transparency or because of uncertainty in the data or analysis itself, then we can’t move forward and close schools!

Let’s fix what’s broken — not what’s working. Let’s build a district that earns trust through stewardship and keeps students at the center of every decision.

We simply can’t close our way to sustainability.

Let’s move together toward a stronger public school system, informed by evidence, responsive to our community, and supportive of every single student.

Signatories:

John Brady
John Brady holds a Bachelor Degree in Computer Engineering from Tufts University and has over 15 years of professional experience working with financial data.
john.brady.jr@gmail.com

Scot Campbell
Scot Campbell holds a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has 21 years of experience working with data at MIT and Airbus.
secampbe@gmail.com

Jean Clipperton
Jean Clipperton holds a PhD from the University of Michigan and has 19 years of professional experience working with data.
jean.clipperton@gmail.com

Jacob Karlin
Jacob Karlin works as a Senior Options Trader and has 17 years of professional experience working with data.
jacob.karlin@gmail.com

Alexis Lauricella
Alexis Lauricella has a PhD in Developmental Psychology and a Masters degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University. She has 20 years of using qualitative and quantitative data to inform policy and industry decisions related to children, learning, and technology.
alexislauricella@gmail.com

Kelly McCabe
Kelly McCabe holds an MSPH in Public Health and Tropical Medicine from Tulane University and has over 20 years of professional experience working with data as an epidemiologist focused on community health research.
mccabekelly322@gmail.com

Erin McCarville
Erin McCarville holds a Doctorate in Public Health from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has over 20 years of experience in the collection, analysis, and use of data for decision-making.
erinemccarville@gmail.com

Lauren McNamara
Lauren McNamara has an MS in Biostatistics from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has 20 years of professional experience working with data.
laurenmcnamara@gmail.com

Katy Paige
Katy Paige has an MBA from the University of Chicago. She is a Financial Economist at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and has 20 years of professional experience in data analysis.
@katymacswain@gmail.com

Esteban J. Quiñones
Esteban J. Quiñones holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has 20 years of professional experience working with data in global development for evidence-informed policymaking.
estebanjq@gmail.com

Dan Rey
Dan Rey has a PhD in computational physics from the University of California San Diego and has 20 years of professional experience working with data.
nadrey@gmail.com

Eric Shore
Eric Shore holds a BSE in Computer Science (University of Pennsylvania) and an MBA (UIUC). With 19 years of professional experience in business analytics and data-driven decision-making, he currently serves as Chief Innovation Officer at a technology company.
emshore@gmail.com