Evanston School Board continues SDRP3 consolidation process as parents and special‑education advocates urge delay and preserve King Arts

Evanston/Skokie School District 65’s board and administration on Tuesday continued public review of SDRP3 school-closure scenarios amid intense public comment focused on equity, special-education services, transportation and the future of King Arts magnet school.

Board members and staff presented revised versions of two three-school scenarios (labeled in district materials as revised 3b and 3d) that the board asked administration to refine after public feedback. The revisions re-drew some elementary boundaries to lower overall utilization rates in affected clusters. Administration said the revised scenarios keep all K–5 schools’ overall utilization below 90 percent in the modeled year, while the trade-off increased projected transportation impacts for some students.

“While the process has been data driven and rigorous,” Board Member Maria (last name not specified in the transcript) told the meeting, “we do not have a shared vision of what we are trying to accomplish beyond building utilization and financial sustainability.” Several other board members said they want to pair the facility recommendations with clearer educational goals.

Parents, educators and special-education advocates urged the board to slow the timeline, to incorporate additional programmatic audits and to model alternatives. Speakers repeatedly raised three categories of concern: the effect of closures on Title I (low-income) families and multilingual communities, risks to students with individualized education programs (IEPs), and what commenters called insufficient transparency in the modeling and financial assumptions.

Public commenters cited specific data from the district materials and raised operational concerns:

- Tina Degan Bernabe, a Dawes parent, said Dawes earned a top score for ADA accessibility on the district’s building-functionality metric and warned that some scenarios would move students from fully accessible buildings to less accessible ones. “ADA compliance is not an amenity. It is a civil right,” she said, adding that 50 percent of Dawes students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and that in scenario 3b, 28 percent of all District 65 students would be reassigned.

- Kelly McCabe noted questions about the district’s budget numbers, citing a community round-table figure she said showed the projected deficit dropping from $5,000,000 to $372,000; she asked the board to explain the difference. Multiple speakers asked for clearer explanations of the district’s revenue assumptions (including projected lease income, targeted grants and private donations) and for the finance team to stress-test those assumptions.

- Special-education advocates, and multiple speakers who described themselves as RISE or STEP program parents, asked the board to postpone decisions until the district’s special-education audit is complete. District staff said the WestEd audit was underway and that some programmatic changes could raise short-term staffing needs even as they might lower long-term costs if students are brought back from higher-cost private placements.

A sizeable portion of public comment defended King Arts, a K–8 fine-arts magnet. Parents and staff described King Arts as a high‑functioning building with elevator access and programming for students with disabilities, bilingual learners and Title I families. Several speakers said closing or reconfiguring King Arts would disproportionately harm students served by the school’s RISE and STEP special‑education programs and the school’s magnet status.

“Closing King Arts would not eliminate the need to serve these students, but it would create a greater cost to the district to serve these students with integrity,” said JC Costa Herman, a parent and member of the district’s SDRP subcommittee.

Board members and staff outlined process details and next steps. Administration said the SDRP facilities subcommittee developed criteria and weightings through a public process this year and that category weights were applied consistently when computing scenario scorecards. Staff acknowledged the subcommittee is not demographically identical to the district and said the group had sought broad participation but had concentrated involvement in certain wards.

On technical points: staff said the district’s walkability metric used 0.75 miles as a differentiator for the scorecard even though Illinois School Code (and ISBE guidance) uses 1.5 miles as the metric that triggers mandatory transportation. Administration said its 0.75-mile walkability measure was a committee choice designed to produce more differentiation between scenarios and noted that any final board decision about transportation or hazard crossings would require explicit policy choices.

On the budget, Chief Financial Officer Tamara Mitchell explained that a portion of District 65 revenue is enrollment-dependent and responsive to per‑pupil funding; she said roughly 2 percent of the revenue budget was directly tied to those enrollment-driven funding sources, while property tax revenues account for a substantially larger share of the district’s operating revenue. Staff also cautioned that some anticipated revenue levers in scenario modeling (unfunded targeted grants, donations, lease income) remain estimates and are not guaranteed.

Board members asked staff to ensure the community engagement sessions scheduled for the following days remain open and to collect input; staff said revised scenario materials and FAQs would be posted on the district website and that the district would accept written input through a survey that remained open through the end of the week. Board members discussed the possibility of phasing closures across multiple years; several members urged that any phasing plan avoid creating a situation in which the same students are required to move twice.

Several public commenters called for the resignation of board members who served while alleged financial irregularities occurred under the former superintendent. Speakers also asked the board to publish lessons learned from the Horton's administration, strengthen whistleblower protections and adopt stronger financial reporting and procurement controls.

What happens next: staff said revised scenario documentation (including the revised 3b and 3d materials) will be published on the District 65 SDRP hub and that the board planned continued public engagement through the week. The board signaled it would aim to reach final decisions in November but said it was open to adding meetings if more time is needed to test financial assumptions and programmatic impacts.

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