D65 Election Endorsements and Errata
Maria is hidden on the voting machine, Nichole didn't come up with the Foster School Numbers, and some endorsements!
First, let me give you a preview of a story I am working on for after the election. A reader FOIA’ed more Horton-era purchasing card bills from District 65 and sent them over. I’m still working through the bills but there are some wild things in here.
The pay-per-view fight in question is most likely Gervonta Davis vs Hector Luis Garcia, which occurred on January 7, 2023. Davis won the fight, holding onto his lightweight title. If you’re an Evanston taxpayer, you paid for Dr. Horton to watch.
Community Endorsements
Next, I’d like to share some endorsements by local people I trust on these issues. These are not my endorsements, I want to amplify other community voices.
Simone Larson is a District 65 teacher and runs a Substack. She’s endorsing Pat Anderson for School Board and you can read her post at the link below. You should also subscribe!
Sepehr Vakil is a Professor at Northwestern and is the lead researcher on the grant Northwestern has to study the Foster School. He’s a cool guy who also runs a Substack and is endorsing Nichole Pinkard for Board.
Maria Stuck Below the Fold 📰
If you’re going to vote for Maria Forres Opdycke (read my voter guide) for School Board - the software that Cook County uses has caused her name to appear below the fold on the voting machines. If you want to vote for her, you’ll have to tap the “Scroll Down” button where she is #152.
Cook County has an interesting system for ordering on ballots for large elections. In general, it is in the order that you filed - however the top 4 and bottom 4 are randomized.
Neither Pinkard nor Northwestern Invented the $3 million bus savings number
I had about a dozen people email me to ask about a rumor that Nichole Pinkard was involved in the Foster School Bus Savings fiasco. You can read my lengthy story on the bus savings mess if you want some background.
Some folks said that I was the source on this claim, and this is definitely false. I think the origin was a facebook post — a former Board member was offering endorsements. He’s subsequently corrected the record.
As someone who has been staring at this stuff for two years now, I will testify that there is absolutely no evidence that Nichole, or Northwestern for that matter, were involved in the debunked bus savings number. In fact, one of my complaints has been that Northwestern wasn’t involved!
With that said, the origin of the bus savings estimate is still not exactly known. A while ago, I submitted a FOIA for documents that went into the calculation and they were denied for being “predecisional.” You can read the denial below;
Response: The district identified four emails responsive to your request, but is withholding them pursuant to Section 7(1)(f) of the FOIA as predecisional records. 5 ILCS 140/7(1)(f). The District withheld these documents because they contain preliminary drafts, in which opinions are expressed. Such records are exempt from disclosure under Section 7(1)(f) of the FOIA as predecisional records. 5 ILCS 140/7(1)(f). As you may know, Raymond James and the District made public presentations at that time. The emails appear to be communications to prepare for those eventual public meetings.
I think that most likely, those four emails are from the Raymond James (the financial consultant) and the District business office. The business office is even cited on the slides as the origin of the number. You can see those slides on my story. It would be very unlikely for anyone at Northwestern to have showed up out of nowhere at that point.
I reached out to Nichole and she provided the below quote;
Our work with D65, focused on reassignment analysis began under Paul Goren’s leadership and continues today. The goal was to develop a model that helped the district understand the implications of boundary changes for student placement within schools. Our role was to provide models that allowed the district and the community to explore potential school populations under different boundary scenarios, including the reopening of the Fifth Ward School. These models were shared publicly as part of the SAP I discussions.
However, we played no role in how the district translated this data into transportation cost savings. Our work ended with providing boundary scenario models to support community discussions, and we were not involved in any subsequent financial analysis related to busing. Given the data sharing agreement, Northwestern has limited data on busing needs beyond distance and hazards (for example, we do not have individual student busing needs for IEPs). We are always clear about the limitations of our analysis whenever we present results. The $2 million cost savings that was presented at the SAP presentation to the board came from D65 and not from Northwestern.