I spoke out at the Board meeting last night about the appointment process, not anticipating that the closure votes would end in an impasse. Obviously that 7th Board member becomes an awfully important individual in the decisions facing our community. I am not sure that I would want to be in his/her shoes.
That said, I think that the process of picking should be far more transparent than it is currently. The Open Meeting Act says that these discussions MAY be held in private session, but does not require it. It has been done that way as long as I have been paying attention to it, but it doesn't have to be that way.
I think it should be a far more open process - the decisions they make are a substitute for a democratic process. In the past it has also handed the new board member the advantage of incumbency (although admittedly "I voted/didn't vote to close schools!" is a less appealing piece of cargo that would come with incumbency).
The decisions the new Board member is going to take part in are pretty momentous decisions and current Board members should be accountable for that. And that extends to not just who they pick but also who was also available. To analogize to the NFL draft, after the draft, columnists grade the team's draft. The Bears may have gotten a B+ for choosing a particular player on his own merits, but end up with a B- final grade because they passed on someone else who turned out to be a better option. In a closed process, we have no idea who was a serious candidate or why a current Board member made the choice he/she did.
The process I would recommend is that the Board pick a small handful of finalists. They go to a public meeting, give a 5 minute pitch for why they should be on The Board and field questions from the Board. End of session. At a second session, the public gets to comment, the Board deliberates, and then they vote. A transparent process with community engagement and accountability for the Board.
The Board talks about wanting to earn the trust of the community and this kind of open process builds trust and offers accountability for the decisions that were made.
I (https://docs.google.com/document/d/13N9rAUmmwq6iOO_AiOxlJsg-a_sLwXcq/copy) threw my hat in the ring at the 11th hour, but not because I want to challenge #5 or #6, etc, on the list of vote recipients in the prior board election, but because I'd like to speak up against 1) the false urgency characterizing the "we must close schools right now" rhetoric; 2) the lack of evaluation of budgets, particularly around administrator salaries, which is part and parcel of what a school board in Illinois is charged to evaluate; 3) the total absence of community input gathering. I wrote about these 3 issues in my application, and I would be...surprised?...if those answers are welcomed, but we'll see.
I don’t see how at such a contentious moment the board can ignore voter preferences on runner-up candidates. Voter shares were diluted because there were so many candidates. Anyone who received over 5k votes was a serious contender. The board needs to regain community trust- show people you care by appointing a runner-up with high vote share.
I think that the Board should be focused on identifying the best candidate to help turn the page on the prior Board and regime. That means choosing someone of unquestioned integrity who can help restore legitimacy to the Board and its decisions.
If I were board president, I would have encouraged applications from a former Mayor, alderman, or 65 or 202 board member, or other person who is widely respected in the community and has experience making decisions for a public and/or educational body.
It’s not important whether that person ran in the last election, or has taken a public position on school closings. It’s also not important that the person commit to running - or not running - for the seat.
Instead, it is critical that the new member can help the board regain the confidence of the community, and deal with the financial, educational, administrative, and process issues that this Board needs to address. Unless the community has confidence in the Board and the directions it will take, “lost” students will not return, and the needed referendum will not pass.
The school closing issue is foremost in everyone’s mind - and it is very, very important - but there are larger issues that need to be addressed.
I don’t think there is any procedural reason Pat and Dr. Turner couldn’t have added this item to the agenda. My take on it was that the administration is very concerned about legal liability. It would certainly explain why they are so quick to defend SDRP as a “perfect” process at every opportunity.
It took me a while to uncover exactly what the lease certificate is/does. (I know - I’m slow.) Except in cases where it legitimately expedites funding that has otherwise been approved, e.g., bond issue or referendum, it smacks of a payday loan scheme that performs an end run around voter oversight.
They tried to do this in Wheaton to build a preschool and there was a citizen that sued, ultimately the district there settled with her and held a referendum (which passed). Funnily enough, in the materials that Raymond James presented to the Board, they mentioned Wheaton as a lease certificate success.
I tried to figure out and couldn’t nail it down — was Raymond James recommending the lease certificate AND selling the instrument as well? Some of what I read seemed to imply this. Not that D65 cared much about conflict of interest, but if that was the case it would have been a huge one.
My question that I haven't got a definitive answer to yet is: Does a school closure vote actually have to pass by Dec 1 or it's zero schools closed? Is that date the legal cutoff? If so, they better have another special Board meeting on Thanksgiving week, before the holiday, because time is running out.
Appointment process is very interesting. I understand the appeal of appointing the next highest voter.
I also think it's important to acknowledge the person who received the 5th most votes *LOST* the election. Obviously maybe people would've voted differently if... and there could be a million ifs.
Given that the 5th highest vote getter lost the election I would ask what procedures exist, were they created through a democratic process (such as through a democratically elected board) and what do they say?
If they say something besides give it to the person who lost by the least and they are written/approved through a democratic process in which board members represent us I would think that's more democratic but I am far from an expert.
My example above is probably too naive and I imagine those procedures are not going to be clear or easy.
I have heard some say in years past that the appointment was filled by the next highest candidate. I am not sure if that is process or correlation. We would hope that high vote getters are strong candidates.
Anyways, all this to say I hope if there process and it is somehow a byproduct of democratic processes we follow it. In either case I imagine some applications will be from high vote getters and some are not. A lot has changed in our country and community in a short time.
I thought about this on the drive home today. i think the issue for me is legitimacy - it looks like this person is probably going to be the 3-3 tie breaker now, so I think punting the decision to the voters preferences (ie the democratic way) affords legitimacy in the decision when some people inevitably hate it.
Saying the first runner up “lost the election” is certainly one way to put it. Another way would be to say they earned nearly 7,000 votes from community members. That is a significant portion of Evanston and an even larger percentage of people that showed up to vote.
I’m not suggesting taking the next runner up is a perfect solution, but it absolutely seems to be the most democratic.
I applaud all who run for public office and I do agree 7,000 votes is a lot.
Maybe my understanding of elections is wrong but I think of it as binary. There are winners and there are losers. There's no standbys unless specifically noted.
My understanding is that in some cases there is a strong case for the process to appoint a recent candidate and in some cases that is not the procedure.
If we want that to be our procedure in Evanston and it isn't it seems like an option we could pursue.
My understanding of democracy is that if we make rules through a democratic process we should follow them or change them.
I do agree, if the board process and procedures call for a specific approach that should definitely be followed.
If not, recent results are the best indicator of what voters wanted in a candidate after going through the election process and having an opportunity to evaluate the candidates.
The 5th highest candidate lost the election because there were 4 open spots. I believe in the last election there were 3 open spots, so the 4th candidate lost the election. The 5th and 6th candidates in the most recent election both received more total votes than any of the current sitting board members from elections prior to 2025.
If Salem had resigned a day before the election, the fifth person would have won, instead of lost, no? But he did it 6 months later. Why does this time lapse change the analysis truly?
I am not an an election expert and I do not know what board processes and procedures look like.
For all I know they could say "seat the next highest vote getter" if they do, let's appointment that person post haste!
It may not change the analysis lot, but, I do not feel using a counterfactual as the method to make appointments is good or democratic.
I think this counterfactual is especially difficult because I believe school board is a vote for up to four candidates election so if Omar had resigned in advance of the election I think they analysis actually could've changed in meaningful ways it would be hard to calculate. 5 and 6 are not far apart how confident are we those Omar votes don't move 6 to 5 etc etc. My answer wouldn't change with a simple 1 winner 1 vote election though.
Either way Omar was elected which follows an election process. This is an appointment which has a different process.
I think it is important when it comes to elections and appointments we are all better off if we stick to established and approved rules.
I have no information on appointment procedures within out district but I do not see a compelling reason to disregard them because something that didn't happen could have.
I would just ask you what the rationale for bypassing procedures if they meet the expectations I outlined above.
I hope there's more discussion on Thursday about what happened with adding the 1 closure option. Turner's explanation didn't make sense when she said legal recommended it so that there was a failsafe - the failsafe was 0 closures. She also didn't include it in her email to the community. It's certainly possible a staffer put it on the agenda and she didn't review it or notice it until it was posted.
I expect that everyone, including myself, assumed that Anderson was going to vote for Kingsley+Lincolnwood due to her voting for 2 closure scenario a few meetings back. If that 1 closure option hadn't been on there, maybe Anderson would've voted for 2.
“ For a lot of these communities, you start to have questions of, is the school operating in an efficient manner? Can they afford a nurse, an art teacher, a music teacher, a social worker? And increasingly, the answer is no.”
The main argument of the NPR piece points to a falling birth rate and demographic changes as being the reason for falling enrollment. Does that explain the falling enrollment in D65? The private schools and neighboring elementary schools seem to be booming ?
Given that we're pretty far down the road in this process, I still don't understand why the board didn't ask the superintendent to make the closing recommendation to the board after running a transparent process with the community, with the board voting yes/no to approve or not. This is a "best practice" for boards for organizations with delegated authority.
Now, with the impasse, the person appointed to fill the vacant board seat has a weighty burden, perhaps even heavier than that of the other six board members in the short term. Take this burden off the unpaid, volunteer, citizen board member and place it on the paid, professional staff we rely on to run D65.
And then the board must provide oversight to the execution of the closing plan -- with the appropriate remedies if the closings fail to meet the objectives and projections developed by staff.
No thanks, Beardsley/Turner have put their finger on the scale enough. Turner should absolutely NOT have a say in what schools are closed as she and Beardsley were the ones that got in this mess to begin with (and yes more Beardsley, but still). Its asking the Fox to guard the hen house, and these foxes have eaten all the chickens!
Yeah, I'm with you on this, even if I don't have the same animus for the administrators that you do. I think this approach would've been even worse. We elect the board to make these decisions and we should let them do it instead of un-elected staffers responsible to no one. It's the whole point of elections - pick the people to make the hard decisions
I don't want to have animosity for these people, I just want a well ran system and fairness. While our recent tax bill is pretty high, its going up astronomically next year thanks to the reassessment. There has to be accountability for past decisions.
One thing I'd like to see Pat do is put spending on the agenda first. Bills payable and any vote needed to spend one dollar should be first so they and the audience has more energy to understand what we are spending money on, rather than tack it on at the end when everyone is ready to go home.
I should add a great example of hiding spending until the very last minute is the 6/23/25 Board Meeting (see 2 hours and 10 min in- or I should say the very end) where non-union Admin put their hands out for a 4.5% raise amidst SEVERE financial distress as one of the finance guys put it, for at least $574,000. Why this wasn't at the top of the agenda to discuss is in my opinion malpractice.
I acknowledge that I have a somewhat contrarian view here. I 100% agree that this whole discussion is about accountability.
I see two challenges with the "board makes the call" process being executed:
1) Decision vs execution. As hard as the school-closing decision is, it will be even harder to execute. And when it goes bad -- and it will go bad, right? -- the professional staff will say, "Well, that wasn't the plan we would have picked." Yes, I'm being a bit facetious here, but my point is that the folks who get paid need to have the most skin in the game.
2) Boards never know enough. Even with all the time the current board has invested (thank you!), they will never know all that the professional staff knows, just because this isn't their day job. They are being asked to decide with insufficient information.
[sidebar: the school closing buffet presented achieved one thing really well: muddying the waters so that an excess amount of anxiety has been created. That's not professional management. That's a masterclass in CYA, punting an operational decision to folks who will age out of D65 in short order.]
Looking into the future, the remedy for a school-closing plan's failure shouldn't be waiting for the next election. It's firing staff and starting over months or even years sooner.
TDLR: Bad governance got us into this mess, but better governance is the way out: let operators be operators, let oversight be oversight; make the lines of responsibility very clear with the appropriate remedies.
I spoke out at the Board meeting last night about the appointment process, not anticipating that the closure votes would end in an impasse. Obviously that 7th Board member becomes an awfully important individual in the decisions facing our community. I am not sure that I would want to be in his/her shoes.
That said, I think that the process of picking should be far more transparent than it is currently. The Open Meeting Act says that these discussions MAY be held in private session, but does not require it. It has been done that way as long as I have been paying attention to it, but it doesn't have to be that way.
I think it should be a far more open process - the decisions they make are a substitute for a democratic process. In the past it has also handed the new board member the advantage of incumbency (although admittedly "I voted/didn't vote to close schools!" is a less appealing piece of cargo that would come with incumbency).
The decisions the new Board member is going to take part in are pretty momentous decisions and current Board members should be accountable for that. And that extends to not just who they pick but also who was also available. To analogize to the NFL draft, after the draft, columnists grade the team's draft. The Bears may have gotten a B+ for choosing a particular player on his own merits, but end up with a B- final grade because they passed on someone else who turned out to be a better option. In a closed process, we have no idea who was a serious candidate or why a current Board member made the choice he/she did.
The process I would recommend is that the Board pick a small handful of finalists. They go to a public meeting, give a 5 minute pitch for why they should be on The Board and field questions from the Board. End of session. At a second session, the public gets to comment, the Board deliberates, and then they vote. A transparent process with community engagement and accountability for the Board.
The Board talks about wanting to earn the trust of the community and this kind of open process builds trust and offers accountability for the decisions that were made.
I (https://docs.google.com/document/d/13N9rAUmmwq6iOO_AiOxlJsg-a_sLwXcq/copy) threw my hat in the ring at the 11th hour, but not because I want to challenge #5 or #6, etc, on the list of vote recipients in the prior board election, but because I'd like to speak up against 1) the false urgency characterizing the "we must close schools right now" rhetoric; 2) the lack of evaluation of budgets, particularly around administrator salaries, which is part and parcel of what a school board in Illinois is charged to evaluate; 3) the total absence of community input gathering. I wrote about these 3 issues in my application, and I would be...surprised?...if those answers are welcomed, but we'll see.
GOOD LUCK!!!
I don’t see how at such a contentious moment the board can ignore voter preferences on runner-up candidates. Voter shares were diluted because there were so many candidates. Anyone who received over 5k votes was a serious contender. The board needs to regain community trust- show people you care by appointing a runner-up with high vote share.
I think that the Board should be focused on identifying the best candidate to help turn the page on the prior Board and regime. That means choosing someone of unquestioned integrity who can help restore legitimacy to the Board and its decisions.
If I were board president, I would have encouraged applications from a former Mayor, alderman, or 65 or 202 board member, or other person who is widely respected in the community and has experience making decisions for a public and/or educational body.
It’s not important whether that person ran in the last election, or has taken a public position on school closings. It’s also not important that the person commit to running - or not running - for the seat.
Instead, it is critical that the new member can help the board regain the confidence of the community, and deal with the financial, educational, administrative, and process issues that this Board needs to address. Unless the community has confidence in the Board and the directions it will take, “lost” students will not return, and the needed referendum will not pass.
The school closing issue is foremost in everyone’s mind - and it is very, very important - but there are larger issues that need to be addressed.
Someone like Jonathan Baum would be perfect.
I don’t think there is any procedural reason Pat and Dr. Turner couldn’t have added this item to the agenda. My take on it was that the administration is very concerned about legal liability. It would certainly explain why they are so quick to defend SDRP as a “perfect” process at every opportunity.
Well, the optics are opening one school without a referendum and dubious financing and then closing two others as a result…
ETA - it’s actually three schools with BR
I’ve always wondered why nobody has sued over the lease certificate thing. It seems like such a clear violation of taxpayer rights.
It took me a while to uncover exactly what the lease certificate is/does. (I know - I’m slow.) Except in cases where it legitimately expedites funding that has otherwise been approved, e.g., bond issue or referendum, it smacks of a payday loan scheme that performs an end run around voter oversight.
Well until there’s a tangible resulting harm - which these closures arguably are - I am not sure if there was an easy path to that.
They tried to do this in Wheaton to build a preschool and there was a citizen that sued, ultimately the district there settled with her and held a referendum (which passed). Funnily enough, in the materials that Raymond James presented to the Board, they mentioned Wheaton as a lease certificate success.
I tried to figure out and couldn’t nail it down — was Raymond James recommending the lease certificate AND selling the instrument as well? Some of what I read seemed to imply this. Not that D65 cared much about conflict of interest, but if that was the case it would have been a huge one.
Mesirow and Zionsbanc are named in the certificate itself
My question that I haven't got a definitive answer to yet is: Does a school closure vote actually have to pass by Dec 1 or it's zero schools closed? Is that date the legal cutoff? If so, they better have another special Board meeting on Thanksgiving week, before the holiday, because time is running out.
That date is not the legal cutoff. There is a Dec 1st deadline relating to school closures in IL law, but it's contained in a section that only applies to CPS. Some more details here - https://old.reddit.com/r/evanston/comments/1p1eumb/is_december_1st_the_deadline_for_d65_school/?ref=share&ref_source=link
Appointment process is very interesting. I understand the appeal of appointing the next highest voter.
I also think it's important to acknowledge the person who received the 5th most votes *LOST* the election. Obviously maybe people would've voted differently if... and there could be a million ifs.
Given that the 5th highest vote getter lost the election I would ask what procedures exist, were they created through a democratic process (such as through a democratically elected board) and what do they say?
If they say something besides give it to the person who lost by the least and they are written/approved through a democratic process in which board members represent us I would think that's more democratic but I am far from an expert.
My example above is probably too naive and I imagine those procedures are not going to be clear or easy.
I have heard some say in years past that the appointment was filled by the next highest candidate. I am not sure if that is process or correlation. We would hope that high vote getters are strong candidates.
Anyways, all this to say I hope if there process and it is somehow a byproduct of democratic processes we follow it. In either case I imagine some applications will be from high vote getters and some are not. A lot has changed in our country and community in a short time.
I thought about this on the drive home today. i think the issue for me is legitimacy - it looks like this person is probably going to be the 3-3 tie breaker now, so I think punting the decision to the voters preferences (ie the democratic way) affords legitimacy in the decision when some people inevitably hate it.
Saying the first runner up “lost the election” is certainly one way to put it. Another way would be to say they earned nearly 7,000 votes from community members. That is a significant portion of Evanston and an even larger percentage of people that showed up to vote.
I’m not suggesting taking the next runner up is a perfect solution, but it absolutely seems to be the most democratic.
Random factoid: Mayor Pete's 2015 reelection in South bend garnered ~8500 votes.
I wonder if he's gonna apply for the D65 board vacancy!
I applaud all who run for public office and I do agree 7,000 votes is a lot.
Maybe my understanding of elections is wrong but I think of it as binary. There are winners and there are losers. There's no standbys unless specifically noted.
My understanding is that in some cases there is a strong case for the process to appoint a recent candidate and in some cases that is not the procedure.
If we want that to be our procedure in Evanston and it isn't it seems like an option we could pursue.
My understanding of democracy is that if we make rules through a democratic process we should follow them or change them.
I appreciate your response.
I do agree, if the board process and procedures call for a specific approach that should definitely be followed.
If not, recent results are the best indicator of what voters wanted in a candidate after going through the election process and having an opportunity to evaluate the candidates.
The 5th highest candidate lost the election because there were 4 open spots. I believe in the last election there were 3 open spots, so the 4th candidate lost the election. The 5th and 6th candidates in the most recent election both received more total votes than any of the current sitting board members from elections prior to 2025.
I imagine total voter engagement was much higher in this election as well.
If Salem had resigned a day before the election, the fifth person would have won, instead of lost, no? But he did it 6 months later. Why does this time lapse change the analysis truly?
I am not an an election expert and I do not know what board processes and procedures look like.
For all I know they could say "seat the next highest vote getter" if they do, let's appointment that person post haste!
It may not change the analysis lot, but, I do not feel using a counterfactual as the method to make appointments is good or democratic.
I think this counterfactual is especially difficult because I believe school board is a vote for up to four candidates election so if Omar had resigned in advance of the election I think they analysis actually could've changed in meaningful ways it would be hard to calculate. 5 and 6 are not far apart how confident are we those Omar votes don't move 6 to 5 etc etc. My answer wouldn't change with a simple 1 winner 1 vote election though.
Either way Omar was elected which follows an election process. This is an appointment which has a different process.
I think it is important when it comes to elections and appointments we are all better off if we stick to established and approved rules.
I have no information on appointment procedures within out district but I do not see a compelling reason to disregard them because something that didn't happen could have.
I would just ask you what the rationale for bypassing procedures if they meet the expectations I outlined above.
https://medium.com/@ztasic/in-filling-vacant-seat-on-d65-school-board-democracy-matters-626036023373
I hope there's more discussion on Thursday about what happened with adding the 1 closure option. Turner's explanation didn't make sense when she said legal recommended it so that there was a failsafe - the failsafe was 0 closures. She also didn't include it in her email to the community. It's certainly possible a staffer put it on the agenda and she didn't review it or notice it until it was posted.
I expect that everyone, including myself, assumed that Anderson was going to vote for Kingsley+Lincolnwood due to her voting for 2 closure scenario a few meetings back. If that 1 closure option hadn't been on there, maybe Anderson would've voted for 2.
https://www.npr.org/2025/11/20/nx-s1-5614199/why-so-many-public-schools-are-closing
Among the high level takeaways from this piece:
“ For a lot of these communities, you start to have questions of, is the school operating in an efficient manner? Can they afford a nurse, an art teacher, a music teacher, a social worker? And increasingly, the answer is no.”
The main argument of the NPR piece points to a falling birth rate and demographic changes as being the reason for falling enrollment. Does that explain the falling enrollment in D65? The private schools and neighboring elementary schools seem to be booming ?
Given that we're pretty far down the road in this process, I still don't understand why the board didn't ask the superintendent to make the closing recommendation to the board after running a transparent process with the community, with the board voting yes/no to approve or not. This is a "best practice" for boards for organizations with delegated authority.
Now, with the impasse, the person appointed to fill the vacant board seat has a weighty burden, perhaps even heavier than that of the other six board members in the short term. Take this burden off the unpaid, volunteer, citizen board member and place it on the paid, professional staff we rely on to run D65.
And then the board must provide oversight to the execution of the closing plan -- with the appropriate remedies if the closings fail to meet the objectives and projections developed by staff.
No thanks, Beardsley/Turner have put their finger on the scale enough. Turner should absolutely NOT have a say in what schools are closed as she and Beardsley were the ones that got in this mess to begin with (and yes more Beardsley, but still). Its asking the Fox to guard the hen house, and these foxes have eaten all the chickens!
Yeah, I'm with you on this, even if I don't have the same animus for the administrators that you do. I think this approach would've been even worse. We elect the board to make these decisions and we should let them do it instead of un-elected staffers responsible to no one. It's the whole point of elections - pick the people to make the hard decisions
I don't want to have animosity for these people, I just want a well ran system and fairness. While our recent tax bill is pretty high, its going up astronomically next year thanks to the reassessment. There has to be accountability for past decisions.
One thing I'd like to see Pat do is put spending on the agenda first. Bills payable and any vote needed to spend one dollar should be first so they and the audience has more energy to understand what we are spending money on, rather than tack it on at the end when everyone is ready to go home.
I should add a great example of hiding spending until the very last minute is the 6/23/25 Board Meeting (see 2 hours and 10 min in- or I should say the very end) where non-union Admin put their hands out for a 4.5% raise amidst SEVERE financial distress as one of the finance guys put it, for at least $574,000. Why this wasn't at the top of the agenda to discuss is in my opinion malpractice.
Oh I saw this in the data but didn’t know where it came from..
Hi Jaime H. and Tom,
I acknowledge that I have a somewhat contrarian view here. I 100% agree that this whole discussion is about accountability.
I see two challenges with the "board makes the call" process being executed:
1) Decision vs execution. As hard as the school-closing decision is, it will be even harder to execute. And when it goes bad -- and it will go bad, right? -- the professional staff will say, "Well, that wasn't the plan we would have picked." Yes, I'm being a bit facetious here, but my point is that the folks who get paid need to have the most skin in the game.
2) Boards never know enough. Even with all the time the current board has invested (thank you!), they will never know all that the professional staff knows, just because this isn't their day job. They are being asked to decide with insufficient information.
[sidebar: the school closing buffet presented achieved one thing really well: muddying the waters so that an excess amount of anxiety has been created. That's not professional management. That's a masterclass in CYA, punting an operational decision to folks who will age out of D65 in short order.]
Looking into the future, the remedy for a school-closing plan's failure shouldn't be waiting for the next election. It's firing staff and starting over months or even years sooner.
TDLR: Bad governance got us into this mess, but better governance is the way out: let operators be operators, let oversight be oversight; make the lines of responsibility very clear with the appropriate remedies.