Everything from staff reductions to building sales to even changes in the school-day schedule is on the table for District 65 as the school board and administration try to right the ship after running two straight years of $10 million budget deficits.
At Tuesday night’s board meeting, financial consultant Robert Grossi outlined six key considerations in the development of a budget reduction plan that he and Chief Financial Officer Tamara Mitchell will ultimately present in December.
- “Staff reduction plan.
- “Recommended scope and timeline to better match district footprint to enrollment levels.
- “Plan to identify resources to address major capital needs.
- “Plan to deliver special education services in a more cost-effective manner if supported by data.
- “Plan to deliver transportation services in a more cost-effective manner if supported by data.
- “Re-bid major contractual services in the District.”
According to Grossi’s presentation, depending on conversations with the relevant unions, the district will make cuts to the nonteaching staff “by assessing operational value and staffing level efficiencies” and to the teaching staff “by matching class sizes with current targeted guidelines.”
On top of that, he’s calling for the removal of “programs and functions that are not generating a positive return on investment.” While showing data (in the slides below) on the district’s precipitous enrollment decline of 1,766 students since fall 2017, Grossi highlighted that the necessary budget cuts “cannot be achieved without consolidation of schools” – meaning school closures.
He also highlighted that the district has just 386 students per building on average, compared with an average of 533 students per building across the other Illinois districts with at least 4,000 students enrolled.
“What’s unique in Evanston is that the magnitude of your decrease in student enrollment is so significant that, from a financial perspective, you now have an opportunity to right-size the district,” Grossi said. “If all your buildings were at full capacity, there would be greater challenges that we would be talking about.”
Board member Omar Salem pushed back slightly on that framing, saying that he wanted “to acknowledge the difficulty of this conversation, because we’re talking about things like return on investment and finances, when we’re also talking about kids.”
He also added that he’d like to see relatively small class sizes maintained across the district even after making “really tough decisions”; though his board colleague Biz Lindsay-Ryan replied that classrooms half or a quarter full aren’t the best thing for students, either.
As for tackling “major capital needs,” Grossi admitted that District 65 simply doesn’t have the cash on hand to chip away at its nearly $190 million in building repairs, with barely more than three months’ worth of reserves right now. Instead, the district could either raise funds by selling bonds, or use the money from selling some school buildings to repair others.
One of the issues driving up spending over the last couple of years, Grossi said, is the district hiring a “very significant” number of special education classroom aides and paraprofessionals from outside staffing agencies compared with other districts. He also referenced an idea from the board’s finance chair, Joey Hailpern, to operate a “small fleet of buses” internally to cut transportation costs, which he said was worth exploring.
“To do this well … it is going to require some professional outside work, because essentially what needs to be done is really reshaping the blueprint of this district,” Superintendent Angel Turner said. “And that’s a lot. So, in full transparency, we’re going to need some support on that.”
Budget and financial reporting changes
Earlier in Tuesday’s meeting, Mitchell and Grossi presented a series of changes to how the district spends its money and reports financial information to the board and to the public, which will be implemented “immediately.”
For the last two years at least, district officials shared budget updates and expense reports with the board somewhere between two and four months late, according to Mitchell. Going forward, board members will be updated on the district’s cash position as of the last day of the previous month, she said.
They also plan to start posting financial statements directly to the district’s website for the public to see and do away with a past practice of running multiple payrolls a month, which “oftentimes [circumvented] the purchase order and approval process.”
“That’s not a best practice. It goes against board policy,” Mitchell said. “That is now being changed, so we will no longer be operating in those means.”
Other adjustments include more stringent oversight of department budgets and the district’s purchasing cards, or p-cards, which are basically company credit cards. As the RoundTable reported last week, former Superintendent Devon Horton used a District 65 p-card to charge moving expenses and a resort stay after he left Evanston.
Now, instead of issuing cards to individuals, each department will have a p-card with a lower purchase limit instead, Mitchell announced Tuesday night, and staff using a district card will have to submit more forms to receive approval to use the card, and turn in receipts afterward.
“These best practices seem like they will go a long way in terms of correcting some of the problems that we’ve had over the years, so I appreciate you taking such an extensive look at this and really digging into where problems occurred and how we can prevent them and solve for them in the future,” said board member Mya Wilkins. “I have to say, I’m shocked that some of this stuff wasn’t in place already. … I think we’re all on the same page that a lot of these systems and processes were long overdue.”
$400,000 saved through ‘value engineering’ on Fifth Ward school
Construction crews began to take down the existing fence around Foster Field last week, according to a memo to the school board from Director of Strategic Project Management Kirby Callam, officially kicking off work to construct the new Foster School in the Fifth Ward that is scheduled to open for the start of the 2026-2027 year.
At the same time, the district and architect Cordogan, Clark & Associates made several changes to the design based on “value engineering” feedback from Turner & Townsend Heery, a firm the district hired to do a “point-in-time review” of the project. Those changes (listed below) are expected to save a total of $407,000 on construction and won’t impact the “functionality” of the building, according to Callam.
The district also recently launched a Foster School page on its website that features an FAQ, renderings, construction updates and a link to a form that anyone can fill out with questions or concerns. A public meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25 at Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center, 1655 Foster St., “where we will also be presenting the garden landscape plans for the school to review with families and residents.”
Staff cuts, school closures on the way for District 65 is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.