After hundreds of protesters filled the halls of the Joseph E. Hill Early Childhood Center on Monday night for the District 65 school board meeting, the board heard proposals from five consulting groups interested in creating a deficit reduction plan for the district.
Each proposal outlined how the consultants planned to work with the board, district leaders and the community over the next few months to come up with budget-cut recommendations to set District 65 on a path to financial stability. The district has run a $10 million deficit in each of the last two years and is on track for a more than $13 million shortfall by the end of the 2025 fiscal year.
One particular group, a combination of longtime Evanston residents who all own different companies that help restructure struggling organizations, didn’t mince words when describing the seriousness of the situation.
“Your own projections show that you will have 72 days of cash at the end of this fiscal year in June. In our backgrounds, in our experience, that means you’re insolvent,” said Bob Handler, the principal and CEO of Commercial Recovery Associates. “That means you don’t have enough money for any contingencies, for a rainy day, for any surprises that come up. Our mission, if we work with you, is to start cutting expenses today.”
The five groups submitting proposals were: Handler and his partner Dave Mack, an Evanston resident who’s the principal and managing director of Pathfinder Group; the ILO Group, an “education strategy and policy firm”; New Solutions K12, a group led by former Superintendent Nate Levenson and based in Massachusetts; The Wright Way Leadership Group, also led by a former superintendent in Iranetta Wright; and Martenson, Hasbrouck & Simon LLP, a law firm.
Their services range in cost from a proposed $59,960 for The Wright Way Leadership Group to $500,000 for Handler and Mack’s group, which quoted hourly rates capped at a total charge of half a million dollars for the entire project. ILO would charge $128,633 total and New Solutions K12 $135,000. The law firm only listed hourly rates of $450 for partners, $400 for counsel, $275-315 for associates and $115 for paralegals.
Most of the board ruled out the two options that depended on hourly rates, because “we don’t have the ability to monitor every hour that’s being utilized,” said Biz Lindsay-Ryan.
Board members also quickly skipped past Martenson, Hasbrouck & Simon because of its lack of experience working on projects in public education.
Lindsay-Ryan, School Board President Sergio Hernandez and Omar Salem all said they found ILO’s presentation to be the best; though Salem added the caveat that “I’m not super impressed, frankly, with any of them.”
Salem mentioned that he preferred an application from a group that ended up pulling out of the process. He liked that firm’s employment of past superintendents and experience engaging families on school closures.
Meanwhile, unlike other firms that presented on Monday night, Levenson said he would focus on everything but school closures, because he believed that closing schools doesn’t save as much money as you might think. Lindsay-Ryan and other board members said they needed a consultant who would at least be willing to consider the need for school closures.
Ultimately, the board decided to wait in order to gather more information, and then make a final decision on a firm at its next meeting at 4:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 4.
“What decisions need to be made? What’s the least painful answer?” Mack posed to the board during his presentation. “It’s messy. It’s going to be mess. We know it. You know it. That’s what you have today. It was messy.”
As Mack referenced, earlier in the meeting dozens of parents, students and community members expressed their strong dissatisfaction with the board for some of its recent choices.
“I’m really confused as to why the district wants to hire a consultant with money we don’t have, as it appears the primary reason is to outside the responsibility for your poor decision making,” said Spencer Stern, the parent of a Haven Middle School student. “The board has been aware of the financial problems for years, and instead of being accountable and making the decision yourself on who to fire, you will conveniently hire a consultant and say, ‘Well, we really don’t want to fire you or close your school, but the consultant recommended we did it.'”
‘You’re insolvent’: Consultants sound alarm in proposals to District 65 is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.