Clik here to view.
With all 53 precincts across Evanston and Skokie reporting on Election Day, as well as early and mail-in votes received through Tuesday, two candidates for District 65 school board — Patricia Anderson and Nichole Pinkard — had separated themselves from the field of 12 as of Wednesday morning (see the latest available results here).
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The race for four open seats on the board is still too close to call, with some 5,700 outstanding mail-in ballots not yet received by Election Day (mail-in votes will be counted as long as they are postmarked by April 1 and received by April 14), but Anderson established a big lead at the top with 9,752 votes, more than 1,500 ahead of Pinkard’s 8,249, which was good for second place.
The two other candidates currently leading are Maria Opdycke at 7,155 votes and Andrew Wymer at 6,525. Chris Van Nostrand and Peter Bogira, in fifth and sixth respectively, have the best shot to make up ground with mail-in ballots, as they’re both less than 1,000 votes behind Wymer.
But the four top candidates have solidified their positions and are the likely winners at this point.
Clik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Anderson, a lifelong Evanstonian who recently retired from a 35-year career as a pediatric physical therapist in District 65, has a granddaughter at the Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies. Pinkard is a Northwestern University professor who studies how social and recreational systems support student growth, and Wymer is an associate professor at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and an Oakton Elementary parent. Opdycke is an executive at nutrition counseling company Foodsmart and a Dewey Elementary parent.
So far, the Cook County Clerk’s Office has counted nearly 19,000 ballots out of 58,836 registered voters within District 65 attendance boundaries, amounting to a turnout of 32.22%. Even without the additional mail-in votes counted, that’s the highest district turnout since the 2017 race, which saw participation from 34.19% of voters, likely motivated by the referendum on that ballot to raise the district’s property taxes to balance future budgets, which ultimately passed overwhelmingly.
Turnouts for District 65 have otherwise been abysmal over the last decade, especially during years without elections for mayor and City Council: the turnouts in 2015 and 2019 were 9.15% and 8.68%, respectively.
Anderson and Opdycke did not respond to requests for comment from the RoundTable on election night. In an email, Pinkard said she was “feeling incredibly grateful and energized.” She said she appreciated learning from residents and fellow candidates during the campaign, and noted that “now, the real work begins … with transparency, care, and a shared commitment to opportunity, equity, and excellence for all our kids.”
Wymer shared the photo below from a gathering with some of his supporters and said, “It’s been a long campaign, and tonight we’ve been celebrating how the village came together and pitched in. We are grateful for the apparent outcome, and I’m ready to get to work.”
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When asked about their reason for running, here’s what each of the four leading candidates had to say in video interviews with the RoundTable:
Anderson: “It’s one thing when the adults lose confidence in a system, but when the kids start to lose confidence in that system, it’s really going to take away from their learning, so that’s what kind of pushed me over the edge. I’m also retired, and for me this is a full-time commitment. That’s another thing that I didn’t see in the current board, in terms of doing their homework and studying and communicating with parents. That’s what we’re going to have to do going forward because we have a lot of hard decisions to make.”
Pinkard: “I just believe that right now, we’re in a very critical moment where we have to think about cutting, but we also have to think about what our visions are for learning, and how do we make these changes that we have to make — we have no choice but to make them — but how we’re making sure we have a longterm view of the implications of those changes, and that we’re working with our parents, and we’re also working with our teachers and working with our organizations to make that happen. … I probably wouldn’t have run if everything was great, but I think in this unique moment I have the ability to say, ‘I know where we want to go, but where are we now, and how do we make the changes that can get us to where we need to be?'”
Opdycke: “Education is the most important thing that we do in our community, because it really is the lifeblood of the community in Evanston. If we don’t have a strong District 65, then we don’t have a strong community. People won’t move here, people won’t come back here. … I really have the ability to ask difficult questions, and I don’t shy away from conflict or discourse. I really think that the community is hungry to see a board that can have some discussion and debate about issues that we’re facing, so that there’s transparency and trust between how decisions are made and what decisions are made.”
Wymer: “We’ve seen the drip, drip, drip of bad news coming out of D65, and we just had a moment of, ‘Let’s think for a moment about the good and the hopeful.’ And there’s just so much. I know my children’s school means so much to us, and we’ve made so many connections there, so many friendships, [and] a sense of belonging that emerges out of that. So there’s that appreciation for the good of D65, and then there’s also an awareness that not everyone experiences D65 this way. There’s disparities in senses of belonging in the school district. So [I’m] also wanting to run because amidst this financial crisis, we can’t forget who we are. We can’t forget who we aspire to be.”
District 65 election: Anderson and Pinkard pull ahead is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.