The Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Board of Education added more than $1.4 million in security costs between 2021 and 2023, introduced by former Superintendent Devon Horton. These expenses covered building “concierges” who keep track of school visitors, a manager and assistant manager of prevention and special response and 24-hour armed security for Horton during the 2021-2022 school year.
This total also includes two 2022 Ford Explorers the district purchased for more than $100,000 in 2022. When one of the cars was involved in an accident in early 2023, the district covered the damage with cash instead of filing an insurance claim.
The vehicle purchases and crash were first reported by local writer Tom Hayden, who dug into those costs on his Substack after discovering a $6,555.64 charge on the District’s Mastercard from Gerber Collision and Glass in June 2023.
Decision to fund new security measures
According to Horton at the time, the district planned to fund the new security positions by reducing private security costs and bringing substitute teacher recruitment, training and onboarding in-house.
Horton’s armed security did cease after the 2021-2022 year, and the district does now employ its own “guest educators”.
But the district is still outsourcing some of its staff, recently spending $2.4 million for temporary special education staff provided by a company called Epic Special Education Staffing, about $270,000 for temporary nurses outsourced from Ro Health and $225,000 for lunchroom supervisors and administrative assistants outsourced from Stivers Staffing.
The district has cited a reliance on outside staffing agencies as a significant factor in its recent budget deficits.
Besides Horton’s 24-hour security during the 2021-2022 school year, these new security measures were approved by the District 65 board in the summer of 2022.
The Ford Explorers
In August 2022, the district purchased two new 2022 Ford Explorers for $103,793.00 from Rick Ridings Ford, according to receipts obtained by Hayden through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
These costs (roughly) were included in an amendment to the 2022-2023 tentative budget before it was finalized, listed out in a memo of adjustments during September 2022. This memo, written by former Business Manager Kathy Zalewski to Horton and former CFO Raphael Obafemi on Sept. 14 — after the vehicles were purchased — was presented to the school board at its Sept. 19 meeting.
Board members wouldn’t have seen specifics about the two cars, where they were actually purchased and their exact cost until the Nov. 11 meeting, where members approved a list of August bills.
In a strange situation, one of the vehicles was in an accident in February 2023. According to the Evanston Police Department, the incident likely happened on Feb. 2, 2023 in the parking lot of Valli Produce (across the street from the district’s warehouse, where the vehicles typically stay parked at 2017 Greenleaf St.).
“The purchase as well as the incident in question took place under a former administration; therefore, we cannot speak to their intent or thought process in regard to the purchase nor the decision to pay for the vehicle damages out of local funds rather than submitting a claim. Please note that the car was insured. We can say, however, that under the current administration it is the recommendation of our new CFO that an insurance claim would be made for damages of this magnitude,” a District 65 spokesperson said in a statement to the RoundTable.
For whatever reason, officials ended up paying the $6,555.64 out of pocket with a district Mastercard, even though District 65 has insurance through a pooled plan from the Collective Liability Insurance Cooperative (CLIC).
At the time of the crash, the car in question was being driven by Ernest Cato, then-assistant manager of prevention and special response, according to the EPD accident report.
Interestingly enough, Cato was previously a Chicago Police Department deputy chief and one of three finalists for CPD chief in 2021, but left the police force on Sept. 16, 2022 before taking the District 65 job.
Other costs
From July 2021 through June 2022, after reporting a number of racist emails and voicemails, Horton received 24/7 armed “executive protection” from guards hired through private contractor Phoenix Security. These payments cost the district more than $500,000 during the 2021-2022 school year.
The rest of the security measures beyond Horton’s private service were introduced in the summer of 2022 and included concierges, two salaried positions and a few safety softwares.
In online job postings, the district listed expected salaries of about $110,000 and $80,000 for the manager and assistant manager of prevention and special response, respectively.
The previous manager, Samuel Muñiz, left roughly a year after his hiring, according to his resignation letter, which the RoundTable obtained through a FOIA request. He did not respond to a request for comment from the RoundTable, and the district redacted everything in his resignation letter except for his official two weeks’ notice.
Cato is also no longer employed by the district.
The two roles are still listed on the district’s website as key staff in the safety, climate and athletics department, but a look at the staff directory shows only the manager position is filled by a Jose Lema.
The building concierges also produced a hefty tab. The total budget for the two salaried positions and concierges was estimated at $676,000 — about $450,000 a year for the concierges, after subtracting out those salaried positions.
At the same time, the district bought and implemented several different software programs that summer as well.
The concierges used a program called Hall Pass, which tracked visitors as they entered and exited school buildings so the school could be aware of every person in a given building at any given time. It was rolled out to all schools in the winter of 2023.
Charges for a technology called “Hall Pass,” though, don’t appear on recent lists of bills approved by the school board. What does occasionally show up is a similar service called SmartPass, and the district pays around $995 a month for it. According to the SmartPass website, Hall Pass is actually a specific product offered by the overarching SmartPass company.
Navigate360, an app that keeps an archive of updated photos showing every hallway, door and classroom in district buildings, also launched across District 65 in fall 2022. The program is designed to help law enforcement and staff figure out where to go more quickly in the event of an emergency, and it cost $51,154 a year, according to district financial records.
At the same time as Navigate360, the district started to pilot another technology called the “SMART tag Parent App,” which allows students who ride the bus to and from school to scan an ID card telling the driver who they are and where they should be dropped off. This program cost $146,488 in the 2022-2023 school year, according to bills posted in public school board meeting packets.
As of this fall, Navigate360 completely replaced Hall Pass, according to the notice above on the district website.
The RoundTable asked the district for clarification on which of these technologies are still being used and how, but did not receive a response before publication of this story.
District 65 paid over $1.4 million for security between 2021 and 2023 is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.