Interim Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Superintendent Eric Witherspoon knew the grim news he was about to disclose about the district’s future would land like a gut punch to many dedicated school parents, so he broached the conversation delicately.
“I know that you’ve been involved in many discussions in the past, and I know that this is not a new topic here in District 65…to try to deal with our deficit. But we haven’t solved it,” Witherspoon voiced to a crowded Board room at the district’s Oct. 13 meeting.
“Ultimately, we’ll be asking you to support this proposal that will get us out of financial difficulty, this year, next year and for the foreseeable future.”
That proposal includes reducing the district’s 2028 fiscal year budget by about $20 million, and to many families’ chagrin, the closure of Lincolnwood Elementary School and Dewey Elementary School at the end of the 2026-27 academic year.
District leaders also floated the elimination of the before- and after-school child care program, called the School Age Child Care program (SACC), at the end of the current school year, and the relinquishing of Head Start and Early Head Start programming beginning July 2028.
District 65’s PreSchool for All program would remain intact under the restructuring plan, according to officials. Its services are funded through a state grant program.
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The before- and after-school child care, SACC, is estimated to cost about $1.95 million every year, and early childhood programming about $4.9 million. However, since parents also pay fees into those programs, the district would save only a little under $2 million from cutting both of them, per administrators.
“In its current state, we do not see a viable pathway to get the [SACC] program to break even, which is what District 65 would need to continue to offer the program,” said Assistant Superintendent Stacy Beardsley.
If the district were to retain the program, the price for students would rise by 35%, Beardsley noted, and it’s already “rare to find a district that runs its own childcare program.”
While the closure of both Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies and Kingsley Elementary in June resulted in an estimated $3 million in combined yearly savings and $57 million projected savings over the next 20 years, administrators said Tuesday more consolidations are needed to remain afloat.
Unlike the two prior school shutdowns, both the Dewey and Lincolnwood campuses would be retained as District 65 property moving forward and would not be sold, leased or repurposed after the end of the school year, Beardsley said.
“Holding these properties allows future construction work at these sites to occur, while minimizing the impact on student learning,” she added, “or, we could utilize these buildings as swing schools to enable building on or updates at other sites.”
Beardsley told parents the district’s “longer-term plan also includes investing capital dollars in all remaining school buildings that are enrolled in our smaller district footprint.”
Lincolnwood and Dewey were plucked as the two chosen schools to be shuttered for a variety of reasons, district leaders said, but most predominantly, feeder patterns, which are patterns of elementary schools feeding students into various middle schools.
Haven Middle School’s feeder pattern enrollment has declined by 33% in the past decade, according to administrators. The newly constructed Foster School, Orrington, Willard and Lincolnwood Elementary are composed of about 1,125 students, averaging 281 per school, and are currently positioned to feed into Haven.
District financial leaders said at the Oct. 13 meeting that Haven’s feeder pattern also has the greatest capital expenditures needed of the three in existence, and a majority of Lincolnwood students can be absorbed into Willard Elementary.
Along similar lines, the feeder pattern at Nichols Middle School — which Dewey feeds into — has also decreased by 33% over the past decade. Dewey has a lower percentage of enrolled students who identify as marginalized and the campus has limited outside space, with fewer classrooms than other Nichols K-5 buildings, per the district’s presentation.
But this plan would mean the forced redistricting of broader elementary school boundaries within the district, resulting in 713 students needing to change schools after this year. Of those, 329 identify as marginalized.
“Once we finalize, new boundaries will shift the enrollments, demographics and the level of needs at each of our schools,” Beardsley said during her presentation. “A smaller district footprint results in a K-5 [building] utilization rate of 75.7%.”
Lincolnwood and Dewey’s closure is projected to save District 65 about $2.9 million in combined annual savings and $58 million over the next two decades, officials confirmed Tuesday.
Though no specific staffing position cuts were identified at the Board meeting, district leaders told community members that they would be looking to eliminate over 200 positions in the budget overhaul, but no full position category for any staff role.
According to internal data, employee compensation and benefits make up the largest proportion of the district’s budget every year, at 75%.
District 65 CFO Eric Miller told Board members the district plans to get extra savings by cutting back on technology services, supplies and outside agency use.
Transportation services would also get an overhaul, with the district once again going out to bid for new transportation contracts. Student fees of $100 for full-paying families, or those who do not qualify for free or reduced lunch, would be added, though a $75 payment discount will be applied for those who register for the school year early.
“The idea here is not only asking parents to pay a little bit more, but more importantly, we’d like parents to help register students earlier than ever before, helping us be better prepared,” Miller said.
“We know that this presentation covers a lot and it asks a lot,” Interim Superintendent Witherspoon told families Tuesday. “But it also opens the door for a new chapter in our history…a school district that will be out of deficit financing.”
While Board members acknowledged the weight of these cuts and the overall impact they will have on district families — many of whom were previously displaced from Kingsley Elementary’s closure and would be displaced once again if Lincolnwood closes — they reiterated the pressing need for widespread financial stability.
“We have a structural solution here for a structural problem,” Board member Andrew Wymer voiced to his colleagues at the presentation’s conclusion. “The scope of this is sobering, it is significant. We can’t make this level of change without real impacts.”
“We are faced with impossible choices,” Board member Maria Opdycke said from the dais.
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“But this is also a situation of our own making, and I want us to take a minute and recognize that the Boards prior, the administrations prior, the community prior have gotten us to this point. So let us use this as the bottom.”
In the aftermath of the budget proposal, several parents voiced their contempt with the district’s plan, arguing that they felt blindsided by the decision to close Dewey, which was not previously included in the list of schools under consideration for closure last November and December.
“I followed the closure scenarios closely, as many of us did,” Sheila Murphy, a Dewey parent, said in an email sent to district leaders Oct. 14 and forwarded to Pioneer Press.
“The schools under discussion were Kingsley, Lincolnwood, Washington, Dawes, and King Arts. Dewey was not among them.”
“I understand the district’s financial situation is serious, and I’m not writing to pretend otherwise. But I do think the way this recommendation arrived, and the numbers behind it, deserve far more scrutiny than 27 days allows.”
Another parent, Christopher Grohman, voiced similar opposition, urging the Board to delay their scheduled Nov. 9 vote on the budget proposal to allow more time for financial analysis and community discussion.
“Ms. Opdycke said it best at the October 13 meeting: ‘This is a situation of our own making.’ She is right. It is yours. Dewey families did not make it, and Dewey families should not be the ones paying for it.”
As it stands, after the district is slated to vote on the proposal in November, a school closure hearing process would begin the following month, with three required hearings for each proposed school set to close.
A date for those December hearings has not yet been determined and will depend on the results of the Nov. 9 vote.