The latest enrollment data for Evanston/Skokie District 65 is in, and the results look familiar: The district once again took a hit to total enrollment, experiencing another 3% decline this year, with 191 fewer students enrolled this year than last year.
That brings the district’s total number of students — not including Park School and the Rice Education Center — down to 5,783. Enrollment has consistently fallen over the last five years, with the district now educating 17.1% fewer students this fall when compared with the fall of 2020.
Declines have hit every school, though some did manage to increase their enrollment slightly this year, including Kingsley, Oakton, Chute and King Arts. Since 2020, several schools have lost more than 100 students, with Haven Middle School down 198 students, the most in the district.
In terms of raw numbers, Oakton Elementary, Kingsley Elementary and the Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies have remained the most stable. Bessie Rhodes, which the school board has already decided to close after the 2025-2026 year at least partially because of low enrollment — actually lost the fewest number of students from 2020 to 2024.
In a memo to the board, Manager of Student Assignment, Registration and Records Reeshemay Bennett and Assistant Superintendent of Performance, Management and Accountability Stacy Beardsley sounded alarm bells about the need to address a district enrollment that continues to be in free fall. The two also presented enrollment numbers to the board at its meeting on Monday.
“It has become increasingly evident that some elementary schools have experienced significant and consistent enrollment losses. Projections show that the schools are not likely to regain their numbers in the next five years,” they wrote in the memo. “This decline necessitates a reassessment of our building, staffing, and section numbers, leading to potential adjustments in our operating costs.”
As shown in the graphs below, the district looks at both school-by-school projections and grade-by-grade projections when predicting enrollment numbers for future years. Looking at the figures by school, the enrollment in the fall of 2029 would be a higher 5,469 students, whereas projections by grade give the 5,313 number. Those are already several hundred students fewer than projections district officials presented last year.
In 2023, Sarita Smith, the district’s former manager of student assignments, told the RoundTable that the grade-by-grade projection tends to be more accurate because it “uses a wider range of years to calculate the averages.”
Bennett and Beardsley also showed data on the current utilization of elementary school buildings when compared with their total capacity. Oakton is closest to capacity at 79%, while Orrington is the lowest at 48%.
“These are the kind of things we’re going to want to look at and assess,” Beardsley said. “We have a survey going out that is also going to help us hear from the community about what are the factors, the categories and the criteria that the community believes are most important for us to be considering as we are moving into the school deficit reduction framework, specifically focused on potential school closings and consolidations?”
At Monday’s meeting, board members started to wrestle with what could be causing the decline, especially if there are factors contributing to the trend beyond just lower birthrates. The district is commissioning another demographic study that will be presented later this month, according to Beardsley. Findings in that report should help clarify the significance of population decreases as opposed to other issues like families going to private schools at higher rates.
“I think there’s a difference between, ‘There are no babies here,’ and, ‘These babies went somewhere else because they didn’t get their needs met,'” said board member Biz Lindsay-Ryan. “Those pieces where people are choosing other places, we need to understand better why.”
Along those lines, Beardsley replied that the district is finally putting together a long-discussed exit survey for families who do choose to leave District 65 for any number of reasons to fill out. One focus of that effort is convincing “a reasonable number of people to complete it to give us some solid feedback.”
“We do want to learn from people’s experiences while they’re here,” said Beardsley, “but if they are leaving, we want to understand the reasons why. So that survey will go forward.”
District 65 enrollment dips another 3% is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.