By Tom Hayden, Third Ward resident, parent and writer for the blog FOIA Gras
Consider the facts:
- In the 2021-22 school year, local taxpayers funded ETHS $22,942 per pupil
- During that same period, local taxpayers funded District 65 $19,894 per pupil, $3,000 less.
- This gap was much worse before the 2017 Referendum and District 65’s enrollment crisis. In the 2012-13 school year, local taxpayers funded ETHS $22,173 per pupil, against $11,956 per pupil in District 65. A whopping $10,000 per student difference!
- According to their annual statements, District 65 has triple the debt of ETHS and has limited room for issuing additional bonds to raise funding.
- District 65 is trying to build a school in the Fifth Ward, and barely has the funds available to start construction due to inflation, dramatic increases in capital costs and maladministration.
Every year since at least 2011 (but probably going back much further), Evanston taxpayers have chosen to fund ETHS at a much higher rate than District 65.
Yet, District 65 is at a massive structural disadvantage. It has 18 campuses, compared to a single one for ETHS. The result is administrative duplication – District 65 needs 17 more principals, assistant principals, office staff and administrative staff just to maintain that overhead.
These additional campuses need significant repairs – District 65 needs to make nearly $190 million in repairs over the coming decades, more than the annual budget of the entire district! Meanwhile, ETHS is currently working on a project to build an “Alumni Hall” funded entirely by donations, a funding mechanism that is essentially unavailable to District 65.
District 65 pays educators 20% less than ETHS. The average full-time District 65 educator made $106,412 in 2023, a full 20% less than the average ETHS educator, who made $131,805. Even entry-level educators make less money: $52,595 in District 65 versus $64,103 at ETHS (according to existing union contracts).
I know of no compelling argument for paying a ninth grade teacher 20% more than an eighth grade teacher. Evanstonians think of the gender pay gap as something done elsewhere, but we’re perpetuating it under our own noses – according to the Illinois School Report Card, 80% of District 65 teachers are women, compared with 63% at ETHS.
If you care about the achievement gap, consider that there are two pathways to ETHS, either District 65 or the local private/parochial schools. Due to the district’s COVID-19 policies, more families with resources took the private school pathway for K-8. Those kids are not coming back until ninth grade. This disparity is only going to make the gap worse – you can’t solve the achievement gap in high school alone.
I believe the solution to the achievement gap is the hard one – putting the best teachers in front of the students who need it the most, and tracking those kids from kindergarten until the day they graduate high school. To do this, you have to compensate teachers accordingly, work to retain them, support them with resources and put them in buildings that are not falling apart. Evanston has failed and continues to fail on this front.
Both the ETHS and District 65 boards have looked into consolidation before and found it unfeasible: raising the District 65 educator compensation up to ETHS levels will cost more money than the savings from consolidation. This is true. Leveling up District 65 compensation could cost up to $20 million per year, which is about the size of the District 65 administrative apparatus. However, Evanston taxpayers have to then accept their complicity in both perpetuating the gender pay gap and an unwillingness to tackle the achievement gap in a meaningful way.
It’s not obvious that the costs must be entirely borne by the Evanston taxpayer. In fact, the State of Illinois has advocated for consolidation in the past; the Legislature passed bills in 1985 and 2007 to encourage consolidation and provide the resources to do so. In 2011, Springfield lawmakers even considered a bill to force consolidation on school districts. There may be the means available to accomplish consolidation and to tap into state resources to do so – Evanston’s state representative, Robyn Gabel, is the Legislature’s majority leader.
Critics will say that if we consolidate, then District 65 will damage ETHS by injecting additional politics and financial disarray into the school. Perhaps this is true, but it’s not clear yet what form a consolidated district can take. This is an opportunity to hit the “reset” button on both districts before things get worse and restructure in a way that ensures better governance, long-term financial planning, board/voter policies (such as recalls) and a unified approach to the achievement gap.
This two-tiered structure, created in 1947, worked reasonably well (primarily for white residents, some might argue) in the post-war era, but it is a relic of the past and exists almost nowhere else in the United States. Today, this system is responsible for perpetuating both the gender pay and achievement gaps.
It’s long past time to modernize, and I urge both the District 65 and ETHS boards to pass a resolution and initiate a feasibility study, funded by the Illinois State Board of Education, to seriously consider consolidation. If the boards choose not to initiate a study, I urge the voters to consider a 2025 referendum on the subject, which can be added to the ballot with a mere 50 petition signatures.
Guest essay: The case for a consolidated Evanston school district is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.
