Evanston/Skokie District 65 convened the Fifth Ward School Naming Committee Friday morning at Fleetwood-Jourdain Community Center, where four members present voted unanimously to recommend calling the new building Foster School.
That recommendation follows the endorsement of a study conducted by Northwestern University researchers last year, a community survey and the Foster Senior Club – a group of longtime Fifth Ward residents who meet every Wednesday at Fleetwood-Jourdain.
About 41% of survey respondents voted for the Foster School name, according to data presented by Kirby Callam, one of the district’s lead Fifth Ward school planners. The second-place name, with 23% of the votes, was New Foster School.
The name honors a pillar of the Fifth Ward: the original Foster School, which opened in 1905 where the Family Focus building now stands, just next door to Fleetwood-Jourdain. The school burned down in a massive fire in 1958, only to be rebuilt and then closed as a neighborhood school in 1967 when the district began desegregation by busing Black students to predominately white schools in other neighborhoods.
Origin of the name
The original school was named after a prominent white doctor in Evanston, whose wife, Ellen Foster, became the school’s first principal. Despite the name of the new school being the same, its namesake is the legacy and history of the Fifth Ward community, rather than the individual doctor, Callam said.
“That name just resonates with the Black community. And most of them don’t know what Kirby just said [about the original namesake],” said Ken Cherry, Fleetwood-Jourdain’s recreation manager and a pastor at Christ Temple Church, who also noted that the community center was originally called Foster Center, too. “They just connect that name Foster with the history of Foster School, and this being the African American community.”
Meanwhile, the committee also formally recommended making the new school’s mascot the phoenix, the mythical bird that is reborn from its own ashes when it dies. The idea for that name came from the third- through fifth-graders in JoAnn Avery’s Family Focus class and is a nod to both the return of a neighborhood school to the Fifth Ward and the ashes from the fire that burned down the first school building in 1958.
Committee members
Avery and Cherry served on the naming committee alongside two Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies staff members: Principal Charlise Berkel and Librarian Tracy Hubbard. Since the school board recently voted to close Bessie Rhodes when the Fifth Ward school opens in 2026, Berkel and Hubbard added the recommendation for the new school’s library to be named after Bessie Rhodes.
On top of that, the atrium just inside the main entrance to the new school will include a “History Hall” to honor the Fifth Ward’s past and the first Foster School, which will include a special tribute to Bessie Rhodes as well, Callam said.
“I never had the pleasure of meeting her, but everybody I spoke to has talked about what an influential person [she was],” Hubbard said. “One of the things is to really remember she was the first Black woman that a school building was named after in Evanston. … If there is a way to remember her within the new school, I think that we should.”
The school board will get the final vote on naming the new school and its mascot, which will likely happen at its next meeting July 15.
Committee endorses bringing back ‘Foster’ name for 5th Ward school is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.