The Evanston/Skokie District 65 school board voted to cut 48 teachers and staff at its meeting on Monday, April 7, according to documents obtained by the RoundTable through a public records request.
The layoffs include five administrative staff, 17 school concierges, 16 Academic Skills Center tutors and 10 classroom teachers. Among those are a science curriculum coordinator, accounting specialist, safety officer, four elementary teachers, three middle school teachers, two at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School of Literary & Fine Arts — a K-8 magnet school — and one early childhood educator.
Depending on their position and tenure, each person impacted received a slightly different message from the district. The administrative employees, concierges and tutors got this: “We write to inform you that the Board of Education has determined to discontinue the particular type of educational support services to which you are assigned and/or decrease the number of educational support personnel it employs. Accordingly, you are honorably dismissed from your position effective June 30, 2025. We thank you for your service to the School District.”
Five of the teachers did not have tenure, which meant that the district could simply not renew them for next year with this notification: “You are hereby notified that you are dismissed as a teacher in this School District effective at the end of the present 2024-2025 school term. Accordingly, you will not be re-employed for the next school term.”
The district honorably dismissed five other teachers, telling them: “We regret to inform you that the Board of Education has determined to decrease the number of teachers employed in the School District as part of a reduction in force. Therefore, you are hereby honorably dismissed as a teacher and employee in the School District effective at the close of the 2024-2025 school term.”
One board member, Omar Salem, voted against that last resolution to honorably dismiss five educators, but the other two were approved unanimously.
After running budget deficits of more than $10 million for three straight years, the district has enough cash reserves left in the bank for 71 days, less than the board’s policy to maintain 90 days of emergency funds at a minimum, according to Chief Financial Officer Tamara Mitchell. Responding to that crisis, the school board voted in late January to cut $13.3 million from next year’s budget. More than $9 million of that sum is coming from the removal of 73 positions, the majority of which are included in the resolutions passed this month.
The board is also laying off the director of science and the chief of academics and schools management, a move that it approved last month. Other position cuts still remain to be seen.
“All staffing decisions are made in accordance with the district’s collective bargaining agreements, which outlines the non-renewal and honorable dismissal notice and timeline processes, and in consultation with union leadership,” Hannah Dillow, the district’s communications manager, said in a statement to the RoundTable.
“These are not easy moments, and the district is striving to center our Big Five values of courtesy, respect, dignity, professionalism, and humanization during this time of change.”
Moving away from Horton-era programs
Back in 2021, under then-Superintendent Devon Horton, the district launched the Academic Skills Center, a high-dose tutoring program that serves nearly 2,000 students behind in reading or math. Tutors recruited and trained by District 65 work with small groups of three or four students at every school districtwide. They meet three times a week for about half an hour each time to work on one of the two subjects.
In May 2023, the board got a progress report on the program, learning that about two-thirds of students enrolled at the time were on pace to hit their expected grade level proficiency in reading or math within one academic year of tutoring.
“This is one of the things that I can concretely point to when people are asking, ‘What’s going on, and what are we doing to address this gap?’” board member Biz Lindsay-Ryan said, referring to a persistent gap in academic outcomes by race, income and ability status, among other things. “This thing right here is working. It’s not perfect, but it is working, and I think we’re very excited about what this could mean five years, 10 years down the road.”
But less than two years later, the board voted to shutter the program entirely as part of its deficit reduction plan, arguing that the gains seen in earlier years had fallen off, and that the center was no longer providing a good enough return on investment.
Meanwhile, Horton also led a summer 2022 safety and security initiative that included hiring a “concierge” for every school building and a manager and assistant manager of prevention and special response. For the past three school years, the concierges have been tasked with monitoring all visitors, entrances/exits and hallways for any suspicious or potentially dangerous activity. The manager of prevention and special response coordinates with local law enforcement to respond to emergencies.
In 2022-2023, the district budgeted $676,000 for these positions. Horton and then-CFO Raphael Obafemi said they intended to reallocate money from private security (Horton had a 24-hour armed detail for the 2021-2022 year after he said he had received death threats, though the Evanston Police Department never received a report from him) and savings from bringing substitute teacher contracting in-house. The district never realized those savings, though, and it still spends millions a year on temporary staffing agencies.
When asked by the RoundTable this week, Dillow said that “the district remains committed to prioritizing the safety of our students and staff. Going forward, the District will still have a staff member whose primary responsibilities include safety.”
She outlined several security structures that will remain in place, including a visitor management system in every building, a “strengthened” partnership with EPD “to ensure increased coordination in times where the situation warrants additional support” and “network security measures to protect students from inappropriate content and monitor internet use for signs of distress.”
The district also told the RoundTable that “more updates about the restructuring of our safety team will be forthcoming in May.”
District 65 lays off 48 in latest cuts approved by school board is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.