Meet Eric Witherspoon, the interim school superintendent of Evanston/Skokie School District 65. We only wish he were working for the Chicago Public Schools.
Witherspoon inherited a fiscal mess at the Evanston/Skokie school district, which overspent for years, created positions it could not afford to support and accumulated a hefty deficit even as it had to adjust for declining enrollment, meaning it was serving some 25% fewer students than was the case just eight years ago. The district also opened a new school, Foster School, that it didn’t really need but that the Black community in Evanston argued long had been promised to them.
The debate over the need for that school is moot. It’s open. Now Witherspoon has to sort out the finances.
So far, he is pulling no punches arguing that $20 million has to be excised from the District 65 budget.
His comprehensive plan, which he outlined at a public meeting of the school board on Monday, includes aligning staffing levels and compensation with peer districts (District 65 was out of whack), closing two under-enrolled schools, reducing “purchased services,” aggressively seeking efficiencies and seeking out new revenue opportunities. When faced with the inevitable opposition, especially since Witherspoon’s plan is building on prior cuts and budget reductions, he has pointed out that if these things are not done, District 65 simply will run out of cash. And then where will the district’s kids be?
Consider this quote from the board meeting, as reported in Evanston Now: “School districts cannot afford to operate buildings which are at 64% capacity.”
In Chicago, of course, taxpayers are paying for school buildings that can only dream of being at 64% capacity.
Witherspoon’s argument? Students are not served by wasting money on empty buildings and the ghosts of enrollments past when the resources are better spent on teaching and learning for the 5,900 students actually there for an education.
We could not agree more. We also could not agree more with his view that these kinds of money problems are best dealt with at one fiscal swoop, painful as it may be, allowing a school district to get out from under a long-lasting cloud to start and build anew on a sustainable path.
We hope the District 65 board, the community of Evanston and the served slither of Skokie see that Witherspoon is right. Evanston historically has been known for the quality of the public education it offers, but quality requires sustainability.
Chicago Public Schools should take note of what is happening in the famously liberal suburb just to the north. A wise head is in charge. At least on an interim basis. And he appears dedicated to ensuring that whoever follows him has a pathway forward.
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