About 50 people turned out to the Chute Middle School cafeteria on Thursday night to share their thoughts on how District 65 should consider school closures going forward.
After running significant budget deficits in fiscal years 2023 and 2024, and projecting another deficit of more than $10 million for fiscal year 2025, the district has cut a total of nearly $20 million between this year and next year combined. That includes the removal of 73 full-time employees who will leave the district at the end of this school year.
But at least $15 million in additional cuts are necessary to achieve longterm financial sustainability, administrators and financial advisers have said, and that final stage of the Structural Deficit Reduction Plan involves the possibility of closing more schools (beyond the Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies, which the board has already voted to shutter after next year).
71 days of cash on hand
Right now, District 65 has 71 days of cash on hand, meaning it could last a little more than two months without revenue, Chief Financial Officer Tamara Mitchell told the audience at Chute on Thursday. A “healthy district,” according to Mitchell, would have at least 90 days of cash on hand, which is the district’s policy. A “very healthy district” would likely have at least 180 days of cash reserves, Mitchell said.
At the same time, the district’s average building is 79 years old, and design firm Cordogan, Clark & Associates — the architect and construction manager for the new Foster School — assessed all 18 existing buildings as “poor” or “very poor” condition, said Stacy Beardsley, the district’s assistant superintendent of performance, management and accountability. Those 18 buildings need a combined $188 million of maintenance.
And the third factor complicating the situation is declining enrollment. In the 2016-2017 school year, the district had more than 7,500 students. Today, there are 6,193 students. According to Beardsley, that amounts to an average building capacity of 65%, while “industry standard” for middle schools is 80% and for elementary schools is 90-95%.
Those factors are creating a perfect storm and causing this need to consider building closures, but “absolutely no decisions have been made” on such closures beyond Bessie Rhodes, Beardsley emphasized. Each closure amounts to an estimated $2 million in operational savings per year, she said. (The district’s total budget this year is about $185 million.) Scenarios currently on the table include no closures (which would require significant savings elsewhere), one or two closures and three or four closures (in addition to Bessie Rhodes), according to Beardsley.
After that initial presentation, district staff handed out markers and large canvas sheets to each table of attendees, who then wrote down the criteria most important to them for the district to consider in its evaluation of closures. Across the board, people identified walkability, current/projected enrollment, availability of programs (like dual language or African Centered Curriculum, for example), the physical size of the building and the building and property’s potential for adaptive reuse as priorities. Several groups mentioned the importance of comparing how much each building could be sold for versus the potential revenue of leasing out closed buildings to other companies.
When asked to pick the most important criteria, groups called out walkability, the effectiveness of existing schools as measured by student performance/outcomes and the available space and number of teachers and staff in buildings that could be asked to absorb another school population.
But perhaps the most interesting conversation of the night was reserved for the end of the meeting, when people shared their ideas for alternative ways to raise revenue.
Among the most popular suggestions: Lease out empty classrooms (with separate building entrances where possible) for preschool use, save on technology by doing away with the 1-to-1 device policy (where every student gets an iPad) and negotiate with Northwestern to use its buses or otherwise get more contributions from the university.
Kelly Breen, who has a child at Dawes Elementary, said she and other Dawes parents have already talked about using their building’s annex with a separate entrance as a preschool for special education students.
“We can have students from Wilmette and other towns pay to have their kids come to a full-day special ed preschool,” Breen suggested.
Focus on tech
Technology was a big sticking point, with several in attendance encouraging the district to move away from providing devices to every single student in favor of old-fashioned pen-and-paper schooling, with access to computer labs or library resources provided when necessary.
And another parent, Melissa Denton, proposed working with Foundation 65 (the district’s independent private fundraising wing) or the Evanston Community Foundation to launch a capital campaign that would provide money for basic building upgrades, among other things. Getting an independent organization to allocate funding for a specific purpose that the community can get behind would be a plus, according to Denton.
“It’s no surprise that the community right now doesn’t trust District 65 to manage finance, because we’re running at a deficit,” Denton said, arguing that families would donate money if they knew those dollars would go only toward building maintenance, for example.
“However, when you look at organizations like the Evanston Community Foundation and My65 [Foundation 65], because they’ve got expertise in not only raising the funds but then making sure that they’re allocating appropriately, I think more families and communities would be supportive of doing what’s in the best interest of our school buildings.”
Two more community feedback meetings on school closure criteria are scheduled, one for 9:30 a.m. Friday at Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center and another at 6:30 p.m. this coming Tuesday, April 15 at Nichols Middle School.
Families weigh school closure criteria at District 65 community meeting is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.