While his ‘yes’ vote was disappointing, I appreciated board member Joey Hailpern acknowledging the lies of the previous administration and all the confounding variables that have popped up since the original K-8 school-within-a-school plan was offered.
I believe him when he says he is sincere about rebuilding trust, despite his irritating…
While his ‘yes’ vote was disappointing, I appreciated board member Joey Hailpern acknowledging the lies of the previous administration and all the confounding variables that have popped up since the original K-8 school-within-a-school plan was offered.
I believe him when he says he is sincere about rebuilding trust, despite his irritating habit of trying to work all the angles. But how can a couple members with open eyes and good intentions compete with a board majority that believes the same thing on Wednesday that they believed on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday?
Seriously Chris? The ONLY mandate of the board is to hire/fire the Superintendent and approve the budget. It’s not to reform a system, bring equitable change or any of the moronic and socialist things the board talks about, almost none of which discuss bringing better educational outcomes to the so called marginalized they claim to care so much about. So when anyone says they have any empathy for a board member that was part of Horton’s hiring and then continued to let that guy do his thing without question which resulted in spending millions of dollars on pet projects, hiring of shady friends, a botched Covid plan that kept kids out of classrooms far too long and over $500m spent on his own personal security I WANT TO PUKE. The board is accountable for Horton from start to finish. Don’t ever think otherwise.
I remember Sergio making statements during the last election that they needed to take on affordable housing! Maybe a little guilt for the gentrification that will accompany the new school, but so far out of the board’s purview that it’s ridiculous.
Most of the board is so far outside their mandate it's hard to even fathom. If you listen to a school board meeting, it is abundantly clear. They also think that because they were voted in (mind you less than 20% of all Evanston voters voted in the last election), they have been given the golden ticket to pursue their initiatives. Let's be honest....you shouldn't have initiatives as a school board member. The charge is fairly simple and they are failing miserably at their core duties.
I don’t think there’s anything socialist about an arrangement that extracts millions of dollars of public funds and deposits it into whatever private firm owns those lease certificates. Redistributing wealth up and and out of a community seems tragically, familiarly capitalist to me.
The socialism is avoiding the referendum which I would argue they legally need to build a new school bc the board believes a new school "must" be built to bring equity to ward that lost a school 60 years ago when the demographics were different. The ISBE statute allowing lease certs was likely meant for small school additions (think the multi-purpose room addition at Willard about 15 years ago). Yes, paying bankers taxpayer money to broker a questionable deal feels yuck, but having a board in charge of a $160 million budget with their mindset is a far bigger problem. Also, to clarify, lease certificate owners don't hold deposits. They get paid interest and principal. That's their return.
I should do an update on lease certificate stuff - the way that D65 used this is not what the Municipal Reform Act intended it to be used for. My understanding is that the main intent of this funding is to give public bodies the ability to fund things quickly without a referendum in the case of (1) building danger/hazards or (2) statutory changes (such as requiring full day preschool). It wasn't meant to be an all-in funding mechanism and not even Skokie, who used one to build Lincoln Middle School, funded the entire thing this way.
I emailed the board a few weeks ago to suggest that they sue Raymond James for misleading them with respect to the lease certificates. I did get a nice reply from one board member (Ms. Su) thanking me.
I think we are in strong agreement about the board going way outside the bounds of their job description and acting like they’re the great champions of the oppressed while making the city and schools more inhospitable to the populations they claim to be helping. Once we have a board that can stay in their lane and take responsibility for their own actions I’d be happy to grab a coffee and debate ideologies. Until then, I’m happy to focus on electing a board that won’t hemorrhage money, students, and faculty.
I am going to make a post on this soon - by far - the biggest challenge I've encountered in local politics is this question: in a highly technocratic liberal society - what is the right level of interaction between elected officials and technocratic staffers? What comprises a "lane" for someone who is elected and can't be fired? What types of problems are acceptable for them to deviate from the lane? What if staffers they appoint suck? I think this is a much harder question than people appreciate and it is rampant across all levels of evanston government.
I think if they had the same goals, ideals and ‘dreams’ but were actually good at their jobs I wouldn’t care. The role of a school board is probably pretty vague and leaves a lot of freedom for varied agendas but again, you have to actually be good at your job.
I took particular offense at board member Soo La Kim lecturing the audience about how she didn’t run for the school board to maximize the benefit for her own children, as if it’s impossible for her to be acting in her own self-interest, while also implying that the BR community were only concerned with ‘hoarding resources’ for their children at the expense of the district as a whole.
It looks like she’s acting in her self-interest to be the hero who went down in history as returning a fifth ward school and bringing “walkability” to Evanston/district65 schools.
I'd almost prefer that Board members act in their own self interest for their own kids - it means they have skin in the game instead of some vague dedication to "equity"
Forget self-interest for their kids, the Board isn't even structured to ensure every Ward is represented, let alone every school community. So, there are schools with literally no voice on the Board.
What I've been told in the past is that the campus liaison structure accounts for that. Yet, if you ask the Board if their campus liaisons actually visit the campuses you can expect a 500 word email explaining why that isn't an obligation (in a particular case to explain why Biz had not visited Haven MS even once during the contentious 2021-2022 school-year).
The majority of the Board does not demonstrate an interest in kids or education, at all. A couple members aside, most of them seem to be there to represent their own professional interests. It's shameful.
Not only did Biz not visit the school, she then lectured us about how even reaching out to her [our elected representative and supposed school board liaison] was white supremacy in action because it was "going around" the leadership of the school [even though many parents HAD started with the school leadership and also her literal role was supposed to ameliorate those interactions between parents and district employees].
I'm curious if Haven's (wonderful, IMO) principal was grateful that the school's Board liaison took such a principled stand against offering tangible, in-person support with the broader school community - a stand that resulted in her doing basically nothing - during a time when every available hand should have been on-deck to help a struggling school.
TBH I think he realized that the central admin including the supposed head of “culture and climate” and Dr. Horton, and also the board were not going to help and potentially making things worse. And he and the VPs and social workers worked from within to strengthen relationships with students, families and teachers and the last two years have proven out that was more effective than anything our “equity focused” board has done. And then Soo La had the nerve to get another dig at Haven when they talked about downsizing the 5th Ward school to not have middle school.
Agree! Haven's turnaround these past two years is 100% due to the principal, teachers, leadership team, staff and parent community. IMO the Board gets zero credit and, in fact, actually served to continually destabilize the school community with their unfair and ill-informed commentary.
Biz still should have shown up, at least one time.
I agree completely. The BR students are being treated like another resource to be allocated in service of the board’s grand plan. It doesn’t matter if they spend one year in a neighborhood school, then another at a nearby school when the first school is closed/consolidated. They (and the other students displaced by consolidation) will wind up wherever they need to in order to facilitate the board’s plan. Maybe if they had kids in the affected schools (like superintendent Horton’s were in King Arts, which is why no one mentioned that school until Joey Hailpern did yesterday), they would show a little more care in jerking these kids around.
If walkability is still a chief factor in their goals, there are very few options for closures that wouldn't impact walkability for a subset of their students. So why not just be clear about what schools they're targeting for closure. The only possibility I see is closing one of Kingsley or Lincolnwood and redistricting those kids to the 5th Ward school or Willard based on where they live closest to. Currently there are already students being bussed to Orrington who live in NE Evanston so they don't have to make the dangerous crossing on the street level tracks north of Central, and kids who are bussed to Dewey from the Noyes-Ridge area, what's their walkable school that doesn't involve crossing Green Bay? There are kids zoned for Willard who live west of Crawford, who aren't walkable to any other school.
I’m not sure that walkability is still a chief factor —that’s the thing. It was part of their justification to get the new 5th Ward built —and I don’t really think they care about it when it comes to the rest of the district. Just like I don’t believe that they were ever serious about a “school within a school.” That was merely another ploy to quiet a community during a school board election and crucial moment in getting the new school across the proverbial finish line. Awful, just awful.
I agree with this assessment. New school as an asset replacement for Kingsley seems like a slam dunk. Lincolnwood is 4 blocks west and new school is 3 blocks South. Otherwise, any closure is a net negative to walkability.
I think walkability will still have to be at least somewhat of a factor for bussing savings, and they'll also consider which schools will lose the most 5th ward students. I don't think the farthest south elementary schools will close, and I don't think Washington will close because it already has two TWI streams and will likely absorb some of the Bessie Rhodes students who don't go to the 5th ward school. Once you start to look at it from that lens, it will more than likely be a north school and Kingsley would make the most sense for the reasons you said.
Re school closures, I do think it’s likely that 2-3 schools will be on the chopping block —and given this Board and Administration who knows if the ones chosen will make any logical sense. In fact, given past track records, that seems unlikely.
Austere times are coming —for sure. Where is the $200M+ coming from to repair existing schools, for example?! There is no way you can justify this many schools with the declining d65 student population. And I think we’re past the point of claiming that the families/kids that left will come back. Why should they?
They need to have a referendum on the 2025 ballot and should've had one on the 2023 ballot! Even if it fails miserably, they need to at least get the ask out there. The 2017 referendum was specifically designed only to last until 2024. I don't understand why they're not talking about this. Even if they fired everyone at 1500 McDaniel, they'd still be in rough shape. They need to at least lift up the per-pupil funding so it levels out with ETHS and the only way that will happen is via a 5% referendum.
At the listen and learn in April, someone asked Dr. Turner if they were planning on trying to get enrollment numbers up. The comms person spoke up and said they are not targeting families that left as they assume it's unlikely they'll come back at this point. Their goal was targeting new Kindergarten families...Seems like most new Kindergarten families would like some clarity on if their school is going to get shut down if they are on the fence of sending their kid to D65, but that's just me.
There's no real technical upside to increasing enrollment - like it doesn't really bring in any additional revenue but it increases the costs. We have such a broken system here in IL!
Sergio JIUST said in a recent board meeting that they are reaching out to families who left to find out why. Ha! Another lie. I am one of those families and have many friends who left and no one has been contacted because he made it up.
She and a majority of the board are willing to do tangible harm (BR student displacement, possibly to schools that will be closed in the near future) in service of an intangible dream (walkability, equity). Her plan only has two parts: f- around and find out. And if the rumors are true, it sounds like she won’t be on the board during the ‘find out’ phase of her plan.
Thanks for that intel. I then expect Soo La Kim to resign not long before the election so they (read: the current board members) can appoint someone that they want long-term. This board has a pattern of doing that -- they "pick and choose" their successors from their circle of like-minded thinkers instead of offering it up to the electorate to decide and vote. Of course, that person then needs to be elected when the election comes, but incumbency is powerful....I think Donna Wang Su and Omar Salem are the ONLY current board members to first join when voted in from an election? And shockingly, they're the only two that went "against the grain" on this vote.
I have found Soo La Kim in particular (with Biz a close second) to often be condescending in her remarks throughout her tenure. Joey Hailpern is the only (longstanding) board member who is willing to acknowledge a mistake and shows some empathy ...
There is great irony in the fact that this equity/racial-lens-obsessed board is getting national headlines about closing the most diverse/low income school. This board values certain minority groups over others though and also needs the 37% of BR students to populate their new school that is the beacon symbol of "educational reparations" lest it be left half empty with few that want to go there.
To be fair, there have also been a fair number of elections where folks ran unopposed or with not much opposition. Prior to 2021, there wasn't much competition in these races.
Wow, that is good context to have....would also be interesting to overlay what the turnout was (% of total electorate who voted) for those. How many of the above winners were appointed before being elected? Is it true that Omar and Donna were the only ones?
While his ‘yes’ vote was disappointing, I appreciated board member Joey Hailpern acknowledging the lies of the previous administration and all the confounding variables that have popped up since the original K-8 school-within-a-school plan was offered.
I believe him when he says he is sincere about rebuilding trust, despite his irritating habit of trying to work all the angles. But how can a couple members with open eyes and good intentions compete with a board majority that believes the same thing on Wednesday that they believed on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday?
Seriously Chris? The ONLY mandate of the board is to hire/fire the Superintendent and approve the budget. It’s not to reform a system, bring equitable change or any of the moronic and socialist things the board talks about, almost none of which discuss bringing better educational outcomes to the so called marginalized they claim to care so much about. So when anyone says they have any empathy for a board member that was part of Horton’s hiring and then continued to let that guy do his thing without question which resulted in spending millions of dollars on pet projects, hiring of shady friends, a botched Covid plan that kept kids out of classrooms far too long and over $500m spent on his own personal security I WANT TO PUKE. The board is accountable for Horton from start to finish. Don’t ever think otherwise.
I remember Sergio making statements during the last election that they needed to take on affordable housing! Maybe a little guilt for the gentrification that will accompany the new school, but so far out of the board’s purview that it’s ridiculous.
Most of the board is so far outside their mandate it's hard to even fathom. If you listen to a school board meeting, it is abundantly clear. They also think that because they were voted in (mind you less than 20% of all Evanston voters voted in the last election), they have been given the golden ticket to pursue their initiatives. Let's be honest....you shouldn't have initiatives as a school board member. The charge is fairly simple and they are failing miserably at their core duties.
I don’t think there’s anything socialist about an arrangement that extracts millions of dollars of public funds and deposits it into whatever private firm owns those lease certificates. Redistributing wealth up and and out of a community seems tragically, familiarly capitalist to me.
The best of both worlds - money out of our pockets to Wall Street AND a messy public works project! Public-private partnership at its best.
The socialism is avoiding the referendum which I would argue they legally need to build a new school bc the board believes a new school "must" be built to bring equity to ward that lost a school 60 years ago when the demographics were different. The ISBE statute allowing lease certs was likely meant for small school additions (think the multi-purpose room addition at Willard about 15 years ago). Yes, paying bankers taxpayer money to broker a questionable deal feels yuck, but having a board in charge of a $160 million budget with their mindset is a far bigger problem. Also, to clarify, lease certificate owners don't hold deposits. They get paid interest and principal. That's their return.
I should do an update on lease certificate stuff - the way that D65 used this is not what the Municipal Reform Act intended it to be used for. My understanding is that the main intent of this funding is to give public bodies the ability to fund things quickly without a referendum in the case of (1) building danger/hazards or (2) statutory changes (such as requiring full day preschool). It wasn't meant to be an all-in funding mechanism and not even Skokie, who used one to build Lincoln Middle School, funded the entire thing this way.
I emailed the board a few weeks ago to suggest that they sue Raymond James for misleading them with respect to the lease certificates. I did get a nice reply from one board member (Ms. Su) thanking me.
That would be very helpful!
I think we are in strong agreement about the board going way outside the bounds of their job description and acting like they’re the great champions of the oppressed while making the city and schools more inhospitable to the populations they claim to be helping. Once we have a board that can stay in their lane and take responsibility for their own actions I’d be happy to grab a coffee and debate ideologies. Until then, I’m happy to focus on electing a board that won’t hemorrhage money, students, and faculty.
I am going to make a post on this soon - by far - the biggest challenge I've encountered in local politics is this question: in a highly technocratic liberal society - what is the right level of interaction between elected officials and technocratic staffers? What comprises a "lane" for someone who is elected and can't be fired? What types of problems are acceptable for them to deviate from the lane? What if staffers they appoint suck? I think this is a much harder question than people appreciate and it is rampant across all levels of evanston government.
I think if they had the same goals, ideals and ‘dreams’ but were actually good at their jobs I wouldn’t care. The role of a school board is probably pretty vague and leaves a lot of freedom for varied agendas but again, you have to actually be good at your job.
I took particular offense at board member Soo La Kim lecturing the audience about how she didn’t run for the school board to maximize the benefit for her own children, as if it’s impossible for her to be acting in her own self-interest, while also implying that the BR community were only concerned with ‘hoarding resources’ for their children at the expense of the district as a whole.
It looks like she’s acting in her self-interest to be the hero who went down in history as returning a fifth ward school and bringing “walkability” to Evanston/district65 schools.
I'd almost prefer that Board members act in their own self interest for their own kids - it means they have skin in the game instead of some vague dedication to "equity"
Forget self-interest for their kids, the Board isn't even structured to ensure every Ward is represented, let alone every school community. So, there are schools with literally no voice on the Board.
What I've been told in the past is that the campus liaison structure accounts for that. Yet, if you ask the Board if their campus liaisons actually visit the campuses you can expect a 500 word email explaining why that isn't an obligation (in a particular case to explain why Biz had not visited Haven MS even once during the contentious 2021-2022 school-year).
The majority of the Board does not demonstrate an interest in kids or education, at all. A couple members aside, most of them seem to be there to represent their own professional interests. It's shameful.
Not only did Biz not visit the school, she then lectured us about how even reaching out to her [our elected representative and supposed school board liaison] was white supremacy in action because it was "going around" the leadership of the school [even though many parents HAD started with the school leadership and also her literal role was supposed to ameliorate those interactions between parents and district employees].
I'm curious if Haven's (wonderful, IMO) principal was grateful that the school's Board liaison took such a principled stand against offering tangible, in-person support with the broader school community - a stand that resulted in her doing basically nothing - during a time when every available hand should have been on-deck to help a struggling school.
Probably about as much as he appreciated Horton basically throwing him under the bus during the school town hall that was finally held.
TBH I think he realized that the central admin including the supposed head of “culture and climate” and Dr. Horton, and also the board were not going to help and potentially making things worse. And he and the VPs and social workers worked from within to strengthen relationships with students, families and teachers and the last two years have proven out that was more effective than anything our “equity focused” board has done. And then Soo La had the nerve to get another dig at Haven when they talked about downsizing the 5th Ward school to not have middle school.
Agree! Haven's turnaround these past two years is 100% due to the principal, teachers, leadership team, staff and parent community. IMO the Board gets zero credit and, in fact, actually served to continually destabilize the school community with their unfair and ill-informed commentary.
Biz still should have shown up, at least one time.
I agree completely. The BR students are being treated like another resource to be allocated in service of the board’s grand plan. It doesn’t matter if they spend one year in a neighborhood school, then another at a nearby school when the first school is closed/consolidated. They (and the other students displaced by consolidation) will wind up wherever they need to in order to facilitate the board’s plan. Maybe if they had kids in the affected schools (like superintendent Horton’s were in King Arts, which is why no one mentioned that school until Joey Hailpern did yesterday), they would show a little more care in jerking these kids around.
And they're not even telling us what the "grand plan" is!! What is it besides just handwavey claims about "equity"??
According to Sergio his grand plan is system level changes , at least that what he stated when he scolded us after the meeting
If walkability is still a chief factor in their goals, there are very few options for closures that wouldn't impact walkability for a subset of their students. So why not just be clear about what schools they're targeting for closure. The only possibility I see is closing one of Kingsley or Lincolnwood and redistricting those kids to the 5th Ward school or Willard based on where they live closest to. Currently there are already students being bussed to Orrington who live in NE Evanston so they don't have to make the dangerous crossing on the street level tracks north of Central, and kids who are bussed to Dewey from the Noyes-Ridge area, what's their walkable school that doesn't involve crossing Green Bay? There are kids zoned for Willard who live west of Crawford, who aren't walkable to any other school.
I’m not sure that walkability is still a chief factor —that’s the thing. It was part of their justification to get the new 5th Ward built —and I don’t really think they care about it when it comes to the rest of the district. Just like I don’t believe that they were ever serious about a “school within a school.” That was merely another ploy to quiet a community during a school board election and crucial moment in getting the new school across the proverbial finish line. Awful, just awful.
I agree with this assessment. New school as an asset replacement for Kingsley seems like a slam dunk. Lincolnwood is 4 blocks west and new school is 3 blocks South. Otherwise, any closure is a net negative to walkability.
I think walkability will still have to be at least somewhat of a factor for bussing savings, and they'll also consider which schools will lose the most 5th ward students. I don't think the farthest south elementary schools will close, and I don't think Washington will close because it already has two TWI streams and will likely absorb some of the Bessie Rhodes students who don't go to the 5th ward school. Once you start to look at it from that lens, it will more than likely be a north school and Kingsley would make the most sense for the reasons you said.
We’ll see. Sadly, it’s all about clear as mud.
Re school closures, I do think it’s likely that 2-3 schools will be on the chopping block —and given this Board and Administration who knows if the ones chosen will make any logical sense. In fact, given past track records, that seems unlikely.
Austere times are coming —for sure. Where is the $200M+ coming from to repair existing schools, for example?! There is no way you can justify this many schools with the declining d65 student population. And I think we’re past the point of claiming that the families/kids that left will come back. Why should they?
They need to have a referendum on the 2025 ballot and should've had one on the 2023 ballot! Even if it fails miserably, they need to at least get the ask out there. The 2017 referendum was specifically designed only to last until 2024. I don't understand why they're not talking about this. Even if they fired everyone at 1500 McDaniel, they'd still be in rough shape. They need to at least lift up the per-pupil funding so it levels out with ETHS and the only way that will happen is via a 5% referendum.
At the listen and learn in April, someone asked Dr. Turner if they were planning on trying to get enrollment numbers up. The comms person spoke up and said they are not targeting families that left as they assume it's unlikely they'll come back at this point. Their goal was targeting new Kindergarten families...Seems like most new Kindergarten families would like some clarity on if their school is going to get shut down if they are on the fence of sending their kid to D65, but that's just me.
There's no real technical upside to increasing enrollment - like it doesn't really bring in any additional revenue but it increases the costs. We have such a broken system here in IL!
Sergio JIUST said in a recent board meeting that they are reaching out to families who left to find out why. Ha! Another lie. I am one of those families and have many friends who left and no one has been contacted because he made it up.
She and a majority of the board are willing to do tangible harm (BR student displacement, possibly to schools that will be closed in the near future) in service of an intangible dream (walkability, equity). Her plan only has two parts: f- around and find out. And if the rumors are true, it sounds like she won’t be on the board during the ‘find out’ phase of her plan.
Thanks for that intel. I then expect Soo La Kim to resign not long before the election so they (read: the current board members) can appoint someone that they want long-term. This board has a pattern of doing that -- they "pick and choose" their successors from their circle of like-minded thinkers instead of offering it up to the electorate to decide and vote. Of course, that person then needs to be elected when the election comes, but incumbency is powerful....I think Donna Wang Su and Omar Salem are the ONLY current board members to first join when voted in from an election? And shockingly, they're the only two that went "against the grain" on this vote.
I have found Soo La Kim in particular (with Biz a close second) to often be condescending in her remarks throughout her tenure. Joey Hailpern is the only (longstanding) board member who is willing to acknowledge a mistake and shows some empathy ...
There is great irony in the fact that this equity/racial-lens-obsessed board is getting national headlines about closing the most diverse/low income school. This board values certain minority groups over others though and also needs the 37% of BR students to populate their new school that is the beacon symbol of "educational reparations" lest it be left half empty with few that want to go there.
To be fair, there have also been a fair number of elections where folks ran unopposed or with not much opposition. Prior to 2021, there wasn't much competition in these races.
2023: 3 winners, 5 candidates (Wilkins, Salem, Hernandez)
2021: 4 winners, 8 candidates (Kim, Hailpern, Lindsay-Ryan, Su)
2019: 3 winners, 3 candidates (Tanyavutti, Mendoza, Hernandez)
2017: 4 winners, 5 candidates (Chow, Cohen, Hailpern, Kartha)
2017-special: 1 candidate, 1 winner (Tanyavutti)
2015: 3 winners, 4 candidates (Rykhus, Phillips, Brown)
2013: 4 winners, 4 candidates (Quattrocki, Chow, Kartha, Garrison)
Wow, that is good context to have....would also be interesting to overlay what the turnout was (% of total electorate who voted) for those. How many of the above winners were appointed before being elected? Is it true that Omar and Donna were the only ones?
Stay tuned - I got my intern working on compiling this!!
Sounds eerily familiar to the strategy others implemented from a recent administration. Except it's more like "f- around and cash out"