District 65 board approves $13.3 million in cuts

The Evanston/Skokie District 65 school board took a key step Monday night in its effort to fix a budget crisis that has left the district with budget shortfalls for three years running.

Chief Financial Officer Tamara Mitchell, who joined the district’s central office last July, presented financial numbers in the fall showing that the district will essentially run out of money sometime in the 2027 fiscal year unless it makes significant spending reductions, starting with balancing the 2026 fiscal year by cutting at least $13.2 million.

At its meeting on Monday, the board unanimously approved a package of reductions totaling $13.32 million. As shown in the table below, that includes the elimination of 73 full time staff positions (out of about 1,400 total) — 26 from the central office, 29 from school buildings (who don’t work in direct instruction or social emotional learning) and 18 teachers. The district isn’t planning any teacher layoffs, though, instead intending to close 18 classroom sections through planned retirements and departures.

After Student-Centered Services, a consulting firm hired by the district to help create a structural deficit reduction plan, presented four possible options for the board to consider earlier this month, Superintendent Angel Turner ultimately recommended the above slate of cuts, and the board chose to approve them after some discussion Monday night.

The above plan is slightly modified from the original proposal, which called for a $15.6 million reduction. Most notably, the district decided to save four classroom sections, removing 18 instead of 22, and continue providing transportation to and from preschool, which brought the projected transportation savings down from $4.5 million to $2.3 million.

When Gregg Fuerstenau, a superintendent in downstate Litchfield and a Student-Centered Services representative, mentioned the decision to keep all preschool transportation, several early childhood educators in the crowd at the board meeting cheered. Fuerstenau and Turner said both changes were made in response to feedback from staff and community members.

Referring to providing preschool transportation, Fueresentau said, “However, there needs to be some analysis in terms of how we get efficient doing that, with partners and taking a look at things.” Board member Soo La Kim called that “an area we need to continue thinking about” given the amount of money the district is spending to bus a relatively small number of kids to preschool.

And, despite Turner and the board repeatedly acknowledging that the central office staff is much larger than other districts, Kim said District 65 has “been a pretty service- rich and curriculum-rich district,” and families will have to adjust to fewer people working out of district headquarters and readily available to answer questions.

No more ‘white glove service’

“The white glove service that we used to provide, that won’t exist anymore. The ability to be quick and responsive, and have what I’ve tried to hold people to in terms of a 48-hour response time as best we could, even with going through this process, it’s starting to dwindle off,” Turner said. “We have to start to be real realistic with folks on how things are going to look moving forward. It’s a lot of work that has to go into the enactment of this decision tonight.”

So far, Turner and the board have declined to publicly discuss what positions may be eliminated, citing both board policy that forbids talking about personnel decisions at open meetings and a desire to respect those who will be impacted. Biz Lindsay-Ryan, another board member, took a moment to acknowledge the “real people who have served our district well” and who “will not be here anymore.” She described the decision as painful and “nothing to celebrate.”

For his part, board member Omar Salem said he didn’t think reimagining the size and scope of the central office would inherently mean worse services for families.

“At the end of the day, we’re a school district, and we’re here to serve students and their families. I think some of those things [like “white glove” services] could be overlooked if parents and families feel like their students are getting everything they need in their classes,” Salem said.

“I know this is not a great situation we’re in, but I think some of the discussions around more autonomy at the [school] buildings, building leaders having more control and say in what’s happening, that’ll trickle down to the teachers and support staff, everyone in the building really having some ownership of what they’re doing in classes.

Impact on summer programs

The board also forged ahead with reducing the number of summer learning programs that the district offers, keeping these offerings:

And the following programs will be cut, unless “these partners secure their own funding the district can provide them with in-kind [non-monetary] services,” Assistant Superintendent for Instructional Leadership Katie Speth said in a presentation earlier this month:

• Summer Lift, a literacy skills program at Evanston Township High School
• Project SYNCERE, for students underrepresented in STEM fields
• The Evanston Public Library STEM camp
• ABC Boosters, a City of Evanston program to prepare students for kindergarten

But the board took a different approach to a question posed by Turner about the summer School Age Child Care (SACC) program, an eight-week, “non-academic” service that gives kids the chance to participate in activities like arts and crafts, cooking, science, games, music and dance, while also getting breakfast, lunch and a snack every day.

SACC doesn’t get the sack

Turner and her team were asking the board for guidance on potentially either eliminating the program or scaling it down from a full day of child care to 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. instead. The district offers a half-day option for families interested. The full price for two months of full-day care was $1,800 last summer. Sixty-one students participated in the morning sessions and 62 in the afternoons.

The problem was that the district spent a little over $140,000 on it last summer, while collecting only $87,623 from participating families.

But after several staff and parents showed up during the public comment portion of Monday’s meeting to voice support for SACC, the board decided to hold off on a vote until a later date. And, importantly, the before- and after-school care provided through SACC during the year will remain in place regardless.

One idea that received support from several board members is increasing the price for families to participate so that program can become “self-sustaining,” as Kim put it. They pointed out that $1,800 for two months is the cheapest child care money can buy these days.

Turner concluded the discussion by telling the board that she and her team will come up with new proposals for keeping the program in place as soon as possible.

Moving forward, the board and administration are now entering what they’re calling the third phase of the budget-reduction plan, which will begin the process of looking at “what schools should be closed or consolidated” starting after the 2025-26 school year, the superintendent said.

District 65 board approves $13.3 million in cuts is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.