Bessie Rhodes protesters blast District 65 at school board meeting

Hundreds of people filled the Joseph E. Hill Early Childhood Center parking lot on Monday evening, holding signs, talking to Chicago-area TV stations and chanting to protest recent decisions by the Evanston/Skokie District 65 school board and administration before filing in to the meeting inside the building.

Many were there to demand the district reverse its decision to close seventh and eighth grade at the Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies next month because of teaching vacancies. Some of them reused signs from a campaign last spring to save Bessie Rhodes, which failed to save the school as the board still voted 5-2 to close the building once the new Fifth Ward school opens after the 2025-26 academic year.

Others opted for new, simple signs, saying things like “Fix It” and “Enough.”

In a sign of just how widespread the district’s issues are, Bessie Rhodes advocates weren’t the only protesters at Monday night’s board meeting. District 65 Educators’ Council (DEC), the union representing the district’s teachers, also showed up to highlight the fact that teachers have been working without a contract for the last two months.

Wearing red union shirts, more than a hundred teachers marched around the perimeter of the parking lot and into the first floor of the JEH building. “We teach, we care, now it’s time to be fair!” they shouted in unison.

The two groups clearly shared a common goal: to express their dissatisfaction with the district and demand accountability.

“Today, I decided to show up to the march because I was totally, totally embarrassed by the city and your board decision to remove the seventh- and the eighth-graders. Latinos in Evanston have been disrespected. They have been perceived as passive and unimportant,” said Frances Aparicio, an Evanston resident and retired Northwestern University professor who was the director of the Latino and Latina Studies program there. She was referring to Bessie Rhodes’ status as the district’s only dedicated two-way immersion school, where all students through sixth grade (and reaching to seventh grade next year) take classes in both English and Spanish.

“This is how our families and our children are being abused today by all of you,” she said. “… Who is making these disastrous decisions that displace seventh and eighth-graders in the middle of the school year? You all should be removed for the utter lack of professionalism you have shown in working with Bessie Rhodes families.”

Path forward for Bessie Rhodes

By the time the board meeting kicked off, District 65 Superintendent Angel Turner had already apologized to the Bessie Rhodes community and promised to consider other alternative options before making a final decision about the fate of the school’s seventh and eighth grades.

Opening the Monday night meeting, Turner repeated last week’s apology, and some board members joined in saying they regretted how the district had communicated with families about the decision. “We did not have enough stakeholder input to make a decision on this,” said board member Biz Lindsay-Ryan, adding that “every student and family has the right to decide” whether to stay at Bessie Rhodes or move to a different school.

Her colleague Soo La Kim said the board should have spent more time considering its options before making a decision, also noting her desire to “put to rest” any notion that the district was intentionally trying to hurt Bessie Rhodes families.

But parents, students and community members gathered at the meeting found little consolation in those explanations and apologies. K. Tyler, who spoke from the podium while her son, a Bessie Rhodes eighth-grader, stood next to her, called out the district’s inability to hire new teachers for the school “a lack of effort.” She also described pleas from families for district help in finding solutions to a teacher shortage as being “met with annoyance.”

“It was bullying and it was measured. While the apology from the superintendent was appreciated and the admittance of the missteps redeeming, everyone in this room knows that such missteps would never, ever be allowed to take place at Haven [Middle School], like you have allowed at Bessie Rhodes,” Tyler said.

“The missteps were allowed because of the lack of value placed on this small, predominately Black and Brown school, the one in your minds that can be pushed around and stricken through like a marker on a piece of paper.”

Superintendent Turner and board members Kim and Lindsay-Ryan all stressed that their intention was to respond to concerns about a lack of enough teachers for Bessie Rhodes students. Those two upper-level grades are missing math, science and Spanish teachers, and administrators at the meeting said they were struggling to fill vacancies for various reasons, like not paying enough or the fact that prospective teachers can go online and read articles about plans to close the school and ongoing tensions between administrators and families.

As opposed to a “misconception” in the community, the district has tried hard, but to no avail, to find teachers to fill vacant roles at Bessie Rhodes.

Ultimately, Turner presented four options at the meeting for the path forward that are under consideration:

1. Close seventh and eighth grade, and send those students to their assigned neighborhood school based on their home address (the original path chosen by the district earlier this month)
2. Keep everyone at Bessie Rhodes, try to hire teachers and fill in the gaps with help from department heads and content facilitators who work in the central office but have the necessary credentials to teach.
3. Close seventh and eighth grade, but move all of those students together to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Literary & Fine Arts School.
4. Split up the two grades, with seventh grade moving to King Arts, and eighth grade either staying at Bessie Rhodes or going together to King Arts as a cohort.

Turner and others emphasized that each possibility has its pros and cons. Completely reversing the decision and keeping Bessie Rhodes as it is, for example, would stretch department heads thin and make it harder for them to fulfill their typical daily work. Other scenarios are less ideal because they impact students more directly and force them to move to a new school in the middle of the year.

While supporting whatever decision impacts kids the least, Lindsay-Ryan also questioned if the district would face the same problem again next year if it chooses to leave seventh and eighth grade open at Bessie Rhodes. That remains to be seen, depending on District 65’s ability to hire new teachers in the next year.

The board didn’t come to any final decision on Monday. Turner and her team will make that call by the end of this week, she said, after meeting with seventh and eighth grade families on Tuesday night in the Bessie Rhodes gym.

‘Your actions fracture communities’

While much of the meeting and the public comment portion were about Bessie Rhodes, the president and vice president of the teachers union also spoke briefly. They said their contract negotiations with the district have stalled over salary increases for educators.

Trisha Baker, DEC president, said the union recently requested mediation, which would launch a new phase of contract negotiations going through a neutral third-party instead of direct talks between the two sides. She said the district’s budget crisis “has sent everyone into a whirlwind anxiety because of the uncertainty of the district” and “the talk of schools closing, staff being cut.”

“You’ve asked us to show up for our students and families, and we have. But when it comes to building trust and stability in our schools, your actions show anything but the courtesy, professionalism, dignity, respect and humanization you claim to uphold,” said Emily Castillo-Oh, the union vice president.

“Your decisions are driving away talented educators who want to serve in this community, and will continue to weaken our ability to meet the diverse needs of our students. … I ask you to reflect as board members and district leaders, how are you upholding the thriving D65 ideals when your actions fracture communities, erode trust and create division between leadership and those on the frontlines of education?”

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