Evanston should take linguistic diversity and its changing demographics seriously and commit to Bessie Rhodes, not shut it down. The equity grifters on the current school board don’t care about the benefits of early two-way immersion for all children, and are moving to shut down the District’s most innovative school rather than figure out how to expand its academic offerings.
I'm currently working on my dissertation on curriculum studies at Depaul. While I'm not a specialist in dual language education, I am a parent of two kids at Bessie Rhodes and did my homework going in. One of the really infuriating things here is that even a cursory glance at the education research via Google scholar reveals that a wall to wall TWI program is an order of magnitude more effective at meeting the needs of EL students, and their families. I cannot conceive of the level of mental gymnastics that Sergio is doing to convince himself that what they are doing by closing Bessie Rhodes will do anything other than decrease equity and inclusion for our Spanish speaking population.
Moreover, as you point out, everything about this closure is, charitably, "penny wise and Pound foolish." It feels a lot like when Daley was telling everyone how great selling off the parking rights in Chicago was going to be.
The statement was self-serving, disingenuous and should have been followed by his immediate resignation. I would like to know what the parents were saying to him after they shut the sound off; the video feed was still going and you could see a couple of angry gestures. The group hug was gross. The BR community has been lied to and used; they went from the “school within a school” to losing their building, their community and their program. Several speakers have actually presented reasonable, doable options to house the BR students but the Board is not interested in hearing any of it. I fear that the last meeting is going to be ugly and I am not so sure that the inevitable vote to close will be unanimous.
I totally agree with others here that the president's rant was very egocentric and centered himself instead of the families who are simply asking for a more clear explanation as to why this closure has to occur. I'm curious why the board won't consider the full scope of the closures needed at the same time? It seems like the newest member Salem wanted to discuss it before being shot down. He also didn't join that performative group hug.
It's time for Mr. Hernandez to resign from the board. His recent statements appeared to be primarily self-serving and somewhat dismissive, which raises concerns about his authenticity and commitment to the needs of District 65 students. His shift in stance from previous support for Bessie Rhodes and TWI, coinciding with his advancement to board president, suggests a disconnect with the community he purports to represent. Matter of fact the whole entire board needs to resign!
Self-serving is the name of the game with this crew. His little cry me a river stunt reminded me of when Joey and Omar hijacked the District email list to show how great they are as being Jewish and Arab friends.
It had absolutely no bearing on their job as Board members and served as a diversion from the budget issues that were recently revealed.
Tom, you've said that you support the 5th ward school because, I believe, the 5th ward kids deserve a walkable school. Do you know if the district ever considered simply redrawing the boundaries so that the south half of the 5th ward goes to Dewey and the North half goes to Kingsley? Did they ever consider this? I don't recall anyone ever talking about it. I live in the 5th ward and feel that either Dewey or Kingsley would be walkable, but our kids are zoned for Willard, which is why we chose a magnet school. By walkable, I mean less than a mile, which King Arts is as well for us. We weren't allowed to go to any of those schools, but we ended up at Bessie Rhodes and we are very happy there. How ironic it is that they are closing our wonderful school to open another one, presumably so we have a school that we can walk to, but they wouldn't let us attend any of the other three schools that are already walkable!
I don't know exactly - the SAP committee had a ton of conversations around this stuff but I wasn't part of those conversations (and haven't seen the minutes) so I don't know. I do think the SAP committee's output was pre-ordained in a way ("we need a new school!") so I don't know to what degree they seriously considered options like this.
It just bothers me that everyone keeps saying the 5th ward deserves a walkable school when we already have several. I understand that this is about reparations, and that's fine, but it just seems like a dishonest argument that its actually about walkability. Anyway, thank you for this blog post (and all your others), you've said what so many of us Bessie Rhodes parents have said. I especially love this part: "This isn’t a zero sum game between Bessie Rhodes Parents and some kind of magical equity utopia."
A lot of people, including the Board I guess are phrasing this like Bessie Rhodes is standing in the way of equity progress. I dont get that sense at all - the fifth ward school is getting built whether BR closes or not. Even if they closed BR today, the financial gains are years out. They are two different things!!
You can also use this letter as a template for reaching out to your local public officials.
Second, Bessie Rhodes' families are planning to march again on Monday, May 20th. We will meet at Bessie Rhodes School (3701 Davis Street) and start marching at 4:30 pm. We will walk 1 mile down Church Street to Joseph E. Hill Center (1500 McDaniel Avenue), ahead of the 6:00 Public Hearing #3. You are warmly invited to join us. This is a family-friendly protest, with food, music and activities for kids.
Third, we would appreciate the voices of any D65 residents willing to speak during Public Comments at the hearing. The more we can demonstrate this is a district-wide concern, the better. We can provide support to anyone willing to speak: bessierhodesparents@gmail.com.
Thank you Melissa - I'll make a post and amplify this later in the week. I will also be there on 5/20 with my kid for the protest and then I will also make a public comment in support of keeping Bessie Rhodes open.
Nice touch how the Board will host a meeting where they fail all the BR families (well, they never gave a crap about keeping BR open, I won’t kid myself) AND pat themselves on the back again while they announce the name of the new school (the death knell of BR) in the next breath. Nothing like ending an awkward meeting on a high note, complete with photo ops of the sign they will use for the big reveal of Horton Elementary. This is so the lasting public impression and media attention is on the 5th ward school and how they righted a wrong! Hip Hip Hooray! God those words from 2017 really come back to bite Sergio on the backside. It must tear him apart to have to close BR, a system of education that he (and research apparently) fervently believes is the most effective, but also bank on the fact that in the future, no one will remember what he did to the district financially, so he can profit off of being one of the visionaries that built the school no one else could. I know some other consultants will be putting this on their promotional websites if they haven’t already. SMH.
The demise of Bessie Rhodes is likely due to two factors, both related to the assumption that many of the families who attend BR will end up attending the 5th ward School
1) By sending many of the BR families to a brand new school (sold by the walkability argument), the resistance against the BR closure would theoretically be less than the resistance that would happen at any other school (king arts) that's shut down with no new option as the replacement
2) The 5th ward School is the end all, be all of this board's long term efforts. If the BR kids were given the option to stay put, enrollment at the new school might be dramatically lower and reveal that walkability was not the priority for many families. Rather than risk this revelation and embarassment of low enrollment, remove the possibility of it happening. Especially because of the likely upcoming closure of Orrington, which would be even more difficult if the new school had the lowest enrollment.
As to walkability - is Emerson treated as a hazardous road for walkability purposes? I wonder if a sizable number of children will end up being bused to the new school due to that, just like they are to many other schools that they're within the "walkable" range of.
For a board that considers the fifth ward school such a high priority, I still can't understand why they didn't bother asking about it for .. 18 months from May 2022 to October 2023.
They probably knew and had a back room deal to have no one say anything until the major players found new jobs. Everyone gets to claim a win in building it, the tough financial questions get to be pushed under a rug
Second, I think it's ridiculous if the Board cares about enrollment at the fifth ward school. Like maybe in year 1 the enrollment is low because everyone is at other schools, but there are already Zillow listings for $1m homes nearby talking about the new school. I think if you build it, people will come.
I wish a real life Jake Gittes would look into who bought land or housing on the cheap in the fifth ward during the run up to the vote to build the new school, and who stands to gain from the ensuing gentrification.
I’ve been saying from the start that all the kids on our block will still be at the same bus stops each morning. This school is not walkable for everyone in the 5th ward. I’d be super excited to have my kid walking home after school yesterday, when automatic weapons were fired just spitting distance from the school just before 4 pm. I guess the gentrification willl eventually clear that up. Plus side.
Orrington is usually the first school that people assume will be closed from my anecdotal conversations. That's always seemed off to me if the district really cares about walkability. It would be a hike for many of those students to Kingsley if it's closed. Under the current set of new boundaries, it's also supposed to gain enrollment, while the other three north side schools (especially Kingsley and Lincolnwood) are projected to lose students. Willard's numbers would likely take a similar dive if its TWI stand was moved to the 5th ward school too (though it would be an even bigger distance commuting to a new school for many of its students relative to Orrington closing).
I get it's the smallest school now, but do people assume Orrington will be the next to go because it's the smallest, wealthiest, the highest valued real estate, or some combination of the three?
This is why I am so baffled. Everyone will say things like this and even Sergio will basically say something like this: "They can take their kiddos to have tutoring and take them to trips -- you know, one-week trips to Europe. And the rest of us are here hustling and trying to work and make sure that our kids are doing their homework. We want to level the playing field at a systems level. That's what we're striving for."
And then .. close the dual language school full of black and brown non-english speakers? That'll teach em?!
You have to wonder how much potential litigation from the parents factors into their decisions and the dynamics of power in Evanston. They love to hate on the people of North Evanston but the status quo for those folks rarely changes.
Sergio’s bit about the ‘rest of us hustling’—as if he is the avatar of the working stiff—is so insulting.
He is a white collar state employee so his salary is public record. His individual salary and benefits would put him above the Evanston household median income. That’s without taking into account any income from a spouse, etc…
Is he still a bi-lingual educator? A rudimentary googling shows that (assuming this is the same Sergio we are talking about) made $95227.00 as an educator in 2020, and $55900.00 for the IL State Board of Ed as a consultant in 2019. I assume the consultant gig was on top of teaching? Either way- between him and Biz, the hypocrisy abounds. There's some hustling going on, for sure, but I don't think it's the kind he wants us to think it is.
I don't believe the district actually cares about walkability, they just use that to justify the long override educational reparations for the Fifth Ward.
Heck, look at all the language from 2017 about the importance of TWI that suddenly no longer applies.
All 3 reasons you listed are why I think Orrington will be first to go - best sales price, fewest students impacted, and likely some snide remarks about rich parents being able to afford sending their kids a further distance.
One would think that closing schools would be done in a holistic manner, but the board loves talking about hard decisions without actually making them.
I think the most compelling closure case is for Kingsley. It's 4 blocks from Lincolnwood and 3 blocks from the new school. You could redraw boundaries pretty painlessly. It has some of the highest maintenance costs and the city would probably be very interested in helping to redevelop the land there and mitigate the crossing Green Bay issue.
Closing Orrington would get you a big fuck-north-evanston win but then the bussing costs would be wild because Orrington covers a pretty wide geographic range. From a technical standpoint, it's not a super idea.
Stay tuned. Story coming on this in the next few weeks.
If "walkability" is really the be-all-end-all, why not make King Arts into a neighborhood school and change the boundaries of Dewey, so some in the extreme North of Dewey's area go to Orrington.
King Arts and Dewey are both two blocks away from the Fifth Ward. The area right around King Arts now is part of Lincolnwood's bus zone.
You could reduce the bussing costs and use the offset transport costs for capital improvements.
I'm sure changing King Arts into a neighborhood school would be controversial, but at least you are not bankrupting the district.
Instead of closing Kingsley, why not convert it to a k-5 TWI school? Perhaps some of the existing families would go for TWI rather than leave . They closed Kingsley before, and had to reopen it when population increased. Selling it off might be a mistake.
Kari, I'm glad someone else said this! Kingsley is walkable for many if not most of the ELL students currently attending Bessie Rhodes who live in the 5th ward and it looks likely that they will close it (it's losing nearly 60% of its attendance area to the 5th ward school and the rest could walk to Lincolnwood or Willard). This is why the Bessie Rhodes parents are pushing for a comprehensive closing plan but the district doesn't want to have to admit that there will be room for wall to wall TWI in another building. I believe they really want to close two buildings. As for walkability, if that was really the priority they would absolutely make King Arts a neighborhood school. They bus more kids out of the 5th ward to King Arts than they do to Bessie Rhodes, they spend more per student, and the building has more deferred maintenance costs than Bessie Rhodes. For reason other than what they're actually telling us, they are dead set on closing the bilingual school at a time when the need for ELL for native Spanish speakers is growing and is likely to be for some time. It makes no sense.
I truly hope this information is reinforced to the board at the last public hearing regarding closing BR. I do not believe they are truly hearing what the most important stakeholders are saying. In my opinion, this BOE is committing a dereliction of duty to the parents and students of D65. The public comments regarding how TWI improves outcomes for the most marginalized students went in one ear and out the other for most board members. I applaud Omar for his attempt to engage the other board members in a serious discussion, which they appear incapable of participating in (especially the board president). The board president's response to the comments was simply a deflection and made no sense since he has previously supported the TWI program and used it as part of his "equity agenda". Suddenly, none of the data mentioned during the public hearing or his previous support of the TWI program matters. Why can't the board be honest with the public and the school district's most important stakeholders? They have lied in the past and continue to avoid the important questions that staff, parents, and concerned citizens are asking.
Keep in mind that there was a period in from the ~late 70s through ~early 90s (I don't remember exact dates) where Kingsley was mothballed and there were only three north side elementary schools. I have a friend who started at Willard and later had to be bussed to Kingsley went this went down. You can literally see Willard from parts of northwest Kingsley territory.
TLDR: D65 doesn't care about the Hispanic Latino community. They only care about the outward appearance of helping black students. I said what I said. For D65 you are either black or non black.
As a former d65 teacher, I completely agree. Don't even get me started on our non-Latino brown students....The district does not care about any of them.
I had an Afro Latino student during my time there and I thought it was so telling that the student couldn't check the boxes for both black and Latino on a district form. Smh. Oh and don't forget the ELLs that live in TWI catchment areas but ride taxis to other schools to receive ELL services.
With how much money is spent on DEI consultants, it is surprising that the BOE and D65 administration cannot figure out how to properly manage relations with the diverse residents (and diverse needs) of the community. The BOE and D65 administrators may need additional training in how to better manage community relations. So far, they are doing a lackluster and mediocre job. For reference, see Tom's previous article on PEG.
Stay tuned on this. Some time in the next few weeks I am going to publish a piece about equity and put a stake in the ground. I am staunchly pro-equity but equity has to mean something other than language. My argument: if equity doesn’t improve the *material* lives of those it meant to help, it is merely performative bullshit. Words and language are important, sure, but actions speak louder than words. No example is this clearer than with Bessie Rhodes.
One thing that doesn’t get enough appreciation by the District with its continual evocation of the ‘black and brown kids’ platitudes is how diverse the “Latino” community is.
We have kids in TWI and I would say anecdotally that a third of the kids come from recent immigrant/ working class families where Spanish is the only language spoken at home, a third from liberal English speaking parents who want their kids to learn a language at an early age, and a third from families where one parent is fluent in Spanish and the other is fluent in English. Often the Kids in this group were raised completely bilingually so they come to kindergarten with good knowledge of both languages.
It seems to me that the district has no conception of this latter group and their particular needs. It is all framed through Sergio’s ridiculous binary of the summers in Europe vs scraping by populations.
Oh so much to comment about “We know there are families here in this community …….” Makes me recall the search for communists hiding among us Well THESE FAMILIES aren’t like us Beware of them. They and their “kiddos “ can fly off to Europe and hire tutors because of course the parents don’t help them with homework. So there is the great divide There’s the Black,Brown and working class parents vs “the others”. But.Mr Hernandez wants a framework to build collaboration in the classroom after he has insulted a certain group. And one question Tom while we are dividing children ( not kiddos) into certain groups……..who are non-native English speaking children?
The reason Sergio's response is so incoherent is because the decision to bankrupt the district by building a new school has ZERO to do with the kids' education. They have been quite clear about that since the beginning. Just like the Trump folks, in the face of increasing diversity in the neighborhood they want to Make The Fifth Ward Great again by rebuilding Foster. Any questions about financing, the need for the school while district enrollments are declining, etc... gets met with a grievance politics where 'equity' shuts down any discussion.
The reality is that there is no empirical evidence of a negative relationship between bussing and educational performance. None. There are studies that suggest that bussing actually has a positive impact on attendance.
For District 65 it would have been extremely easy to do a cursory empirical analysis of bussing's impact on educational outcomes. There are many 'black and brown' and low income kids who walk to school. There are others--such as those in the 5th ward--who take the bus.
The District has data for each kid on economic indicators (free-reduced lunch eligibility). They know if a kids takes the bus. They know the race and ethnicity of all the kids. They know the test scores.
You could do a very simple regression model that controls for the race/socio-economc variables to see if there is any statistical evidence of bussing's affect on test scores. Did they even do this? This is an exercise that any first year graduate student could complete in a half an hour.
With all these "Doctors" running around the district admin, why aren't they doing the basic empirical analysis?
As Eric Parsons mentions, there is tonnes of evidence that school-wide language immersion is beneficial.
Sergio was faced with a question from a parent who saw how the program would work for kids. He couldn't square that reality with his MAGA/MTFWGA blinders.
I would have killed to take the bus. My parents wouldn't pay for it. Apparently walking or biking 1.7 miles one way for a 5th grader wasn't that big of a deal. I guess the answer to your question is "it depends on how far and how cold". The kids in my area live 1 mile from Horton Elementary. They aren't going to be walking.
Perhaps you are right about the model. The fact that they didn't conduct ANY empirical analysis is what troubles me.
But I have tried to mine the academic literature on busing and everything I've seen says there is no affect for the type of bussing you see in Evanston.
Here is a recent study from New York City. It finds some issues with very long bus rides--those are normally kids travelling a long way to charter schools. But finds no affect for zoned schools.
Does the District publish/have ANY data on bus times? That would be interesting to see.
Our kids take the bus and it hasn't been a big deal. Yes I would rather walk--but if I had to choose between sending my kids on the bus and having a district with big class sizes, constant layoffs, limited extracurricular activities, limited support services, etc... it would be an easy choice.
I would be amazed if such data even existed. I know there are some fines that the District issues to busses that are late but I don't know if there is any kind of sense of how long individual rides are. I'll have to poke around. In one of my prior posts I dumped all the bills from the bus companies and there is some data in there, I just don't know how good it is. I can't imagine any of the bus rides here are super long but who knows what kind of weird routes they take.
Yeah, point taken. Would be nice to have all of the above - walkable schools without the mess and I still think that's within the realm of possibility. Evanston (and D65) is a very rich town but we make a lot of stupid mistakes!
Skokie parent who lives across a hazard road here -- scheduled bus pick up for us is 30 minutes before Walker starts. For Chute the scheduled pickup is 48 minutes before the bell.
Does anyone know what percentage of the middle school population is bussed? I know all of Skokie is bussed to Chute but I couldn't find any info about middle school bus eligibility on the district website.
Looking closer at the NYC article, the bus time data comes from a data set that includes a variable for morning pickup time and school start time.
District 65 must have similar data since parents are given a pickup time for the bus. It would be curious to FOIA bus pickup times for each route serving every elementary school. They must have it. The district could probably redact stuff like pupil home addresses and names, but I can't imagine there would be any privacy justification for getting a spreadsheet with just the pickup times.
You just subtract pickup times from school start time to get a decent measure of how long kids are on the bus.
For our kids they get picked up about 15 mins. before start time, but there are already kids on the bus. Before this year our kids were going to a "walkable" school. And we gave ourselves 20 minutes to get there (plus another 11-12 minutes for me to walk back home). It is actually nice this year where we just send the kid out the door to get on the bus. They get to schools safely and I can get working sooner.
Our son went to Willard for a year before we got into Bessie Rhodes. From the area of church and dodge the bus pick -up time to Willard was 45 minutes before school started.
That seems like a kind of crazy lead time. According to Google maps, it is a 46 minute walk from Church/Dodge to Willard! Obviously kids walk slower, but still!
According to Google Maps, the average drive from Church/Dodge to Willard is between 7-12 minutes.
If you look at Willard attendance area in the fifth ward, it is quite small. The furthest distance one would have to walk to get from one end of the Willard 5th ward area to the other is .6 miles.
How many bus stops are there in Ward 5 for Willard?
Lets say you had two stops-- one at Darrow and Church and one at Lyons and Dodge. No student would have to walk more than a couple of blocks to the stop and I can't see how it could take more than 25 minutes from the first stop to get to the school.
Unfortunately, the school board has put the district into a financial situation where Bessie Rhodes has to close. Despite the comments from school parents, it’s been a poorly performing school since my kid started in D65 in 2015. As to the “othering”…. 1) D65 spends millions on DEI and “belonging” programs. They must be failing if some kids are feeling othered simply based on what language they speak at home. This is something I never saw in 6 years at Dewey and seems unlikely in a city that’s as left-leaning as Evanston. 2) TWI programs themselves “other” kids. My child went to Dewey where there was one TWI string and the kids in it were invariably called the “TWI kids” because they were together (isolated) for six years and rarely interacted with non-TWI classes, even at lunch. Maybe that’s an argument for an all-TWI school like Bessie Rhodes, BUT when that school is as tiny as Bessie Rhodes, the kids show up at ETHS barely knowing anyone. I’ve never been a fan of TWI for these reasons and because D65 has used the TWI program as an excuse to not offer any foreign language instruction to the non-TWI students until SEVENTH grade which is shameful.
I also have to say that loads of kids come to ETHS from the many private schools in town knowing mainly their classmates. This is not a dealbreaker. Also- King Arts is very much the same- it’s very insular because kids don’t move to the huge middle schools. I attended a k-8 school and managed to figure out how to do ETHS perfectly fine. And my kid will, too. It’s not like kids don’t play AYSO and go to day camps and take rec classes all their childhood where they meet other kids and form friendships. I don’t see the relevance here as to why BR should be closed.
I wish you were right about othering not being an issue in left-leaning Evanston, but you are wrong. I’m glad your child didn’t experience it, but there’s plenty of evidence that racism is a huge problem. For example, nooses hung at Haven in 2022? The comments from Stephanie Mendoza about her students being called the “Spanish kids” at Washington? If you don’t see the racism personally, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Horton was a hammer looking for a nail with that “noose” incident. Too bad the real truth of that story didn’t come out. I wish people would stop referring it as the ultimate proof of racism, because it categorically is not. There exists enough racism without false narratives.
Please do. The truth must come out. Everyone knew within 24 hrs or less —D65 Administration, the Board, EPD —even the Mayor. And yet the emotional toll they inflicted first and foremost on our Black community, knowingly —it’s unforgivable!
Add into it that at that same time swastikas (hate symbol much?) were found in a bathroom at Nichols and according to the EPD, nothing to see there per the Administration….just kids being kids…apparently swastikas didn’t fit the narrative they were looking to tell…🙄
If you (or anyone) has evidence regarding this - my email is open. tom@foiagras.com
The reason that people haven't written about this is because there are almost no source documents available on the subject because it's protected by FOIA exemptions. So it is hard to find evidence backing up the different narratives that people have told me. The police won't release anything claiming that it is covered by a FOIA exemption, I'll have to research if this is legitimate or not.
This is exactly what I mean when I say that the district only cares about performative "action" for black students. Jewish students? Hispanic Latino students? Non Spanish speaking ELLs? Desi students? Nah.
Thanks for this comment, I think for all of us, the best we can do is listen to the experiences that other people tell us. I am glad Ms Mendoza (and Sergio) spoke to their experiences. We should all strive to do better and make our kids do better too. We get a better world one person at a time.
Evanston should take linguistic diversity and its changing demographics seriously and commit to Bessie Rhodes, not shut it down. The equity grifters on the current school board don’t care about the benefits of early two-way immersion for all children, and are moving to shut down the District’s most innovative school rather than figure out how to expand its academic offerings.
I'm currently working on my dissertation on curriculum studies at Depaul. While I'm not a specialist in dual language education, I am a parent of two kids at Bessie Rhodes and did my homework going in. One of the really infuriating things here is that even a cursory glance at the education research via Google scholar reveals that a wall to wall TWI program is an order of magnitude more effective at meeting the needs of EL students, and their families. I cannot conceive of the level of mental gymnastics that Sergio is doing to convince himself that what they are doing by closing Bessie Rhodes will do anything other than decrease equity and inclusion for our Spanish speaking population.
Moreover, as you point out, everything about this closure is, charitably, "penny wise and Pound foolish." It feels a lot like when Daley was telling everyone how great selling off the parking rights in Chicago was going to be.
The statement was self-serving, disingenuous and should have been followed by his immediate resignation. I would like to know what the parents were saying to him after they shut the sound off; the video feed was still going and you could see a couple of angry gestures. The group hug was gross. The BR community has been lied to and used; they went from the “school within a school” to losing their building, their community and their program. Several speakers have actually presented reasonable, doable options to house the BR students but the Board is not interested in hearing any of it. I fear that the last meeting is going to be ugly and I am not so sure that the inevitable vote to close will be unanimous.
I totally agree with others here that the president's rant was very egocentric and centered himself instead of the families who are simply asking for a more clear explanation as to why this closure has to occur. I'm curious why the board won't consider the full scope of the closures needed at the same time? It seems like the newest member Salem wanted to discuss it before being shot down. He also didn't join that performative group hug.
It's time for Mr. Hernandez to resign from the board. His recent statements appeared to be primarily self-serving and somewhat dismissive, which raises concerns about his authenticity and commitment to the needs of District 65 students. His shift in stance from previous support for Bessie Rhodes and TWI, coinciding with his advancement to board president, suggests a disconnect with the community he purports to represent. Matter of fact the whole entire board needs to resign!
Self-serving is the name of the game with this crew. His little cry me a river stunt reminded me of when Joey and Omar hijacked the District email list to show how great they are as being Jewish and Arab friends.
It had absolutely no bearing on their job as Board members and served as a diversion from the budget issues that were recently revealed.
Tom, you've said that you support the 5th ward school because, I believe, the 5th ward kids deserve a walkable school. Do you know if the district ever considered simply redrawing the boundaries so that the south half of the 5th ward goes to Dewey and the North half goes to Kingsley? Did they ever consider this? I don't recall anyone ever talking about it. I live in the 5th ward and feel that either Dewey or Kingsley would be walkable, but our kids are zoned for Willard, which is why we chose a magnet school. By walkable, I mean less than a mile, which King Arts is as well for us. We weren't allowed to go to any of those schools, but we ended up at Bessie Rhodes and we are very happy there. How ironic it is that they are closing our wonderful school to open another one, presumably so we have a school that we can walk to, but they wouldn't let us attend any of the other three schools that are already walkable!
I don't know exactly - the SAP committee had a ton of conversations around this stuff but I wasn't part of those conversations (and haven't seen the minutes) so I don't know. I do think the SAP committee's output was pre-ordained in a way ("we need a new school!") so I don't know to what degree they seriously considered options like this.
It just bothers me that everyone keeps saying the 5th ward deserves a walkable school when we already have several. I understand that this is about reparations, and that's fine, but it just seems like a dishonest argument that its actually about walkability. Anyway, thank you for this blog post (and all your others), you've said what so many of us Bessie Rhodes parents have said. I especially love this part: "This isn’t a zero sum game between Bessie Rhodes Parents and some kind of magical equity utopia."
A lot of people, including the Board I guess are phrasing this like Bessie Rhodes is standing in the way of equity progress. I dont get that sense at all - the fifth ward school is getting built whether BR closes or not. Even if they closed BR today, the financial gains are years out. They are two different things!!
To all the supporters of Bessie Rhodes, thank you. There are a number of ways you can get involved.
One is by signing this letter to US Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eOgl4zlZfExmgOgIbt1oeWD5bcKvfOJr/edit
You can also use this letter as a template for reaching out to your local public officials.
Second, Bessie Rhodes' families are planning to march again on Monday, May 20th. We will meet at Bessie Rhodes School (3701 Davis Street) and start marching at 4:30 pm. We will walk 1 mile down Church Street to Joseph E. Hill Center (1500 McDaniel Avenue), ahead of the 6:00 Public Hearing #3. You are warmly invited to join us. This is a family-friendly protest, with food, music and activities for kids.
Third, we would appreciate the voices of any D65 residents willing to speak during Public Comments at the hearing. The more we can demonstrate this is a district-wide concern, the better. We can provide support to anyone willing to speak: bessierhodesparents@gmail.com.
Thank you again.
Thank you Melissa - I'll make a post and amplify this later in the week. I will also be there on 5/20 with my kid for the protest and then I will also make a public comment in support of keeping Bessie Rhodes open.
That's wonderful Tom. Thank you so much!
Nice touch how the Board will host a meeting where they fail all the BR families (well, they never gave a crap about keeping BR open, I won’t kid myself) AND pat themselves on the back again while they announce the name of the new school (the death knell of BR) in the next breath. Nothing like ending an awkward meeting on a high note, complete with photo ops of the sign they will use for the big reveal of Horton Elementary. This is so the lasting public impression and media attention is on the 5th ward school and how they righted a wrong! Hip Hip Hooray! God those words from 2017 really come back to bite Sergio on the backside. It must tear him apart to have to close BR, a system of education that he (and research apparently) fervently believes is the most effective, but also bank on the fact that in the future, no one will remember what he did to the district financially, so he can profit off of being one of the visionaries that built the school no one else could. I know some other consultants will be putting this on their promotional websites if they haven’t already. SMH.
The demise of Bessie Rhodes is likely due to two factors, both related to the assumption that many of the families who attend BR will end up attending the 5th ward School
1) By sending many of the BR families to a brand new school (sold by the walkability argument), the resistance against the BR closure would theoretically be less than the resistance that would happen at any other school (king arts) that's shut down with no new option as the replacement
2) The 5th ward School is the end all, be all of this board's long term efforts. If the BR kids were given the option to stay put, enrollment at the new school might be dramatically lower and reveal that walkability was not the priority for many families. Rather than risk this revelation and embarassment of low enrollment, remove the possibility of it happening. Especially because of the likely upcoming closure of Orrington, which would be even more difficult if the new school had the lowest enrollment.
As to walkability - is Emerson treated as a hazardous road for walkability purposes? I wonder if a sizable number of children will end up being bused to the new school due to that, just like they are to many other schools that they're within the "walkable" range of.
For a board that considers the fifth ward school such a high priority, I still can't understand why they didn't bother asking about it for .. 18 months from May 2022 to October 2023.
They probably knew and had a back room deal to have no one say anything until the major players found new jobs. Everyone gets to claim a win in building it, the tough financial questions get to be pushed under a rug
Second, I think it's ridiculous if the Board cares about enrollment at the fifth ward school. Like maybe in year 1 the enrollment is low because everyone is at other schools, but there are already Zillow listings for $1m homes nearby talking about the new school. I think if you build it, people will come.
I wish a real life Jake Gittes would look into who bought land or housing on the cheap in the fifth ward during the run up to the vote to build the new school, and who stands to gain from the ensuing gentrification.
I looked into this and didn’t find anything of note
I’ve been saying from the start that all the kids on our block will still be at the same bus stops each morning. This school is not walkable for everyone in the 5th ward. I’d be super excited to have my kid walking home after school yesterday, when automatic weapons were fired just spitting distance from the school just before 4 pm. I guess the gentrification willl eventually clear that up. Plus side.
Orrington is usually the first school that people assume will be closed from my anecdotal conversations. That's always seemed off to me if the district really cares about walkability. It would be a hike for many of those students to Kingsley if it's closed. Under the current set of new boundaries, it's also supposed to gain enrollment, while the other three north side schools (especially Kingsley and Lincolnwood) are projected to lose students. Willard's numbers would likely take a similar dive if its TWI stand was moved to the 5th ward school too (though it would be an even bigger distance commuting to a new school for many of its students relative to Orrington closing).
I get it's the smallest school now, but do people assume Orrington will be the next to go because it's the smallest, wealthiest, the highest valued real estate, or some combination of the three?
This is why I am so baffled. Everyone will say things like this and even Sergio will basically say something like this: "They can take their kiddos to have tutoring and take them to trips -- you know, one-week trips to Europe. And the rest of us are here hustling and trying to work and make sure that our kids are doing their homework. We want to level the playing field at a systems level. That's what we're striving for."
And then .. close the dual language school full of black and brown non-english speakers? That'll teach em?!
You have to wonder how much potential litigation from the parents factors into their decisions and the dynamics of power in Evanston. They love to hate on the people of North Evanston but the status quo for those folks rarely changes.
Reminds me of this meme I made a long time ago: https://imgflip.com/i/8pgrgv
Sergio’s bit about the ‘rest of us hustling’—as if he is the avatar of the working stiff—is so insulting.
He is a white collar state employee so his salary is public record. His individual salary and benefits would put him above the Evanston household median income. That’s without taking into account any income from a spouse, etc…
So cry me a river, dude.
His salary was $ 93,000 last year from the ISBE and $ 89,500 in 2022. Probably enough to afford a week in Europe!
Is he still a bi-lingual educator? A rudimentary googling shows that (assuming this is the same Sergio we are talking about) made $95227.00 as an educator in 2020, and $55900.00 for the IL State Board of Ed as a consultant in 2019. I assume the consultant gig was on top of teaching? Either way- between him and Biz, the hypocrisy abounds. There's some hustling going on, for sure, but I don't think it's the kind he wants us to think it is.
I think he's a full-time equity lead with the ISBE now, but I could be wrong.
I don't believe the district actually cares about walkability, they just use that to justify the long override educational reparations for the Fifth Ward.
Heck, look at all the language from 2017 about the importance of TWI that suddenly no longer applies.
All 3 reasons you listed are why I think Orrington will be first to go - best sales price, fewest students impacted, and likely some snide remarks about rich parents being able to afford sending their kids a further distance.
One would think that closing schools would be done in a holistic manner, but the board loves talking about hard decisions without actually making them.
I think the most compelling closure case is for Kingsley. It's 4 blocks from Lincolnwood and 3 blocks from the new school. You could redraw boundaries pretty painlessly. It has some of the highest maintenance costs and the city would probably be very interested in helping to redevelop the land there and mitigate the crossing Green Bay issue.
Closing Orrington would get you a big fuck-north-evanston win but then the bussing costs would be wild because Orrington covers a pretty wide geographic range. From a technical standpoint, it's not a super idea.
Stay tuned. Story coming on this in the next few weeks.
If "walkability" is really the be-all-end-all, why not make King Arts into a neighborhood school and change the boundaries of Dewey, so some in the extreme North of Dewey's area go to Orrington.
King Arts and Dewey are both two blocks away from the Fifth Ward. The area right around King Arts now is part of Lincolnwood's bus zone.
You could reduce the bussing costs and use the offset transport costs for capital improvements.
I'm sure changing King Arts into a neighborhood school would be controversial, but at least you are not bankrupting the district.
Instead of closing Kingsley, why not convert it to a k-5 TWI school? Perhaps some of the existing families would go for TWI rather than leave . They closed Kingsley before, and had to reopen it when population increased. Selling it off might be a mistake.
Kari, I'm glad someone else said this! Kingsley is walkable for many if not most of the ELL students currently attending Bessie Rhodes who live in the 5th ward and it looks likely that they will close it (it's losing nearly 60% of its attendance area to the 5th ward school and the rest could walk to Lincolnwood or Willard). This is why the Bessie Rhodes parents are pushing for a comprehensive closing plan but the district doesn't want to have to admit that there will be room for wall to wall TWI in another building. I believe they really want to close two buildings. As for walkability, if that was really the priority they would absolutely make King Arts a neighborhood school. They bus more kids out of the 5th ward to King Arts than they do to Bessie Rhodes, they spend more per student, and the building has more deferred maintenance costs than Bessie Rhodes. For reason other than what they're actually telling us, they are dead set on closing the bilingual school at a time when the need for ELL for native Spanish speakers is growing and is likely to be for some time. It makes no sense.
I truly hope this information is reinforced to the board at the last public hearing regarding closing BR. I do not believe they are truly hearing what the most important stakeholders are saying. In my opinion, this BOE is committing a dereliction of duty to the parents and students of D65. The public comments regarding how TWI improves outcomes for the most marginalized students went in one ear and out the other for most board members. I applaud Omar for his attempt to engage the other board members in a serious discussion, which they appear incapable of participating in (especially the board president). The board president's response to the comments was simply a deflection and made no sense since he has previously supported the TWI program and used it as part of his "equity agenda". Suddenly, none of the data mentioned during the public hearing or his previous support of the TWI program matters. Why can't the board be honest with the public and the school district's most important stakeholders? They have lied in the past and continue to avoid the important questions that staff, parents, and concerned citizens are asking.
-Concerned Citizen
Keep in mind that there was a period in from the ~late 70s through ~early 90s (I don't remember exact dates) where Kingsley was mothballed and there were only three north side elementary schools. I have a friend who started at Willard and later had to be bussed to Kingsley went this went down. You can literally see Willard from parts of northwest Kingsley territory.
I assume it because
a) They hate wealthy north Evanston parents and don't make this secret.
b) The land is valuable so closing it and selling the land would be lucrative.
c) What my Orrington pals have said for years is that it needs a significant amount of work as I believe it is the oldest school in the district.
TLDR: D65 doesn't care about the Hispanic Latino community. They only care about the outward appearance of helping black students. I said what I said. For D65 you are either black or non black.
As a former d65 teacher, I completely agree. Don't even get me started on our non-Latino brown students....The district does not care about any of them.
I had an Afro Latino student during my time there and I thought it was so telling that the student couldn't check the boxes for both black and Latino on a district form. Smh. Oh and don't forget the ELLs that live in TWI catchment areas but ride taxis to other schools to receive ELL services.
With how much money is spent on DEI consultants, it is surprising that the BOE and D65 administration cannot figure out how to properly manage relations with the diverse residents (and diverse needs) of the community. The BOE and D65 administrators may need additional training in how to better manage community relations. So far, they are doing a lackluster and mediocre job. For reference, see Tom's previous article on PEG.
https://www.foiagras.com/p/vendor-profile-pacific-education
Stay tuned on this. Some time in the next few weeks I am going to publish a piece about equity and put a stake in the ground. I am staunchly pro-equity but equity has to mean something other than language. My argument: if equity doesn’t improve the *material* lives of those it meant to help, it is merely performative bullshit. Words and language are important, sure, but actions speak louder than words. No example is this clearer than with Bessie Rhodes.
One thing that doesn’t get enough appreciation by the District with its continual evocation of the ‘black and brown kids’ platitudes is how diverse the “Latino” community is.
We have kids in TWI and I would say anecdotally that a third of the kids come from recent immigrant/ working class families where Spanish is the only language spoken at home, a third from liberal English speaking parents who want their kids to learn a language at an early age, and a third from families where one parent is fluent in Spanish and the other is fluent in English. Often the Kids in this group were raised completely bilingually so they come to kindergarten with good knowledge of both languages.
It seems to me that the district has no conception of this latter group and their particular needs. It is all framed through Sergio’s ridiculous binary of the summers in Europe vs scraping by populations.
It doesn't fit their narrative so they simply don't care.
Oh so much to comment about “We know there are families here in this community …….” Makes me recall the search for communists hiding among us Well THESE FAMILIES aren’t like us Beware of them. They and their “kiddos “ can fly off to Europe and hire tutors because of course the parents don’t help them with homework. So there is the great divide There’s the Black,Brown and working class parents vs “the others”. But.Mr Hernandez wants a framework to build collaboration in the classroom after he has insulted a certain group. And one question Tom while we are dividing children ( not kiddos) into certain groups……..who are non-native English speaking children?
The reason Sergio's response is so incoherent is because the decision to bankrupt the district by building a new school has ZERO to do with the kids' education. They have been quite clear about that since the beginning. Just like the Trump folks, in the face of increasing diversity in the neighborhood they want to Make The Fifth Ward Great again by rebuilding Foster. Any questions about financing, the need for the school while district enrollments are declining, etc... gets met with a grievance politics where 'equity' shuts down any discussion.
The reality is that there is no empirical evidence of a negative relationship between bussing and educational performance. None. There are studies that suggest that bussing actually has a positive impact on attendance.
For District 65 it would have been extremely easy to do a cursory empirical analysis of bussing's impact on educational outcomes. There are many 'black and brown' and low income kids who walk to school. There are others--such as those in the 5th ward--who take the bus.
The District has data for each kid on economic indicators (free-reduced lunch eligibility). They know if a kids takes the bus. They know the race and ethnicity of all the kids. They know the test scores.
You could do a very simple regression model that controls for the race/socio-economc variables to see if there is any statistical evidence of bussing's affect on test scores. Did they even do this? This is an exercise that any first year graduate student could complete in a half an hour.
With all these "Doctors" running around the district admin, why aren't they doing the basic empirical analysis?
As Eric Parsons mentions, there is tonnes of evidence that school-wide language immersion is beneficial.
Sergio was faced with a question from a parent who saw how the program would work for kids. He couldn't square that reality with his MAGA/MTFWGA blinders.
I'm skeptical that this regression model would have sufficiently small errors to make a convincing argument either way.
Also, just as a person, taking the bus sucks. Wouldn't you rather walk?
I would have killed to take the bus. My parents wouldn't pay for it. Apparently walking or biking 1.7 miles one way for a 5th grader wasn't that big of a deal. I guess the answer to your question is "it depends on how far and how cold". The kids in my area live 1 mile from Horton Elementary. They aren't going to be walking.
Perhaps you are right about the model. The fact that they didn't conduct ANY empirical analysis is what troubles me.
But I have tried to mine the academic literature on busing and everything I've seen says there is no affect for the type of bussing you see in Evanston.
Here is a recent study from New York City. It finds some issues with very long bus rides--those are normally kids travelling a long way to charter schools. But finds no affect for zoned schools.
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1355933.pdf
Does the District publish/have ANY data on bus times? That would be interesting to see.
Our kids take the bus and it hasn't been a big deal. Yes I would rather walk--but if I had to choose between sending my kids on the bus and having a district with big class sizes, constant layoffs, limited extracurricular activities, limited support services, etc... it would be an easy choice.
I would be amazed if such data even existed. I know there are some fines that the District issues to busses that are late but I don't know if there is any kind of sense of how long individual rides are. I'll have to poke around. In one of my prior posts I dumped all the bills from the bus companies and there is some data in there, I just don't know how good it is. I can't imagine any of the bus rides here are super long but who knows what kind of weird routes they take.
Yeah, point taken. Would be nice to have all of the above - walkable schools without the mess and I still think that's within the realm of possibility. Evanston (and D65) is a very rich town but we make a lot of stupid mistakes!
Skokie parent who lives across a hazard road here -- scheduled bus pick up for us is 30 minutes before Walker starts. For Chute the scheduled pickup is 48 minutes before the bell.
Does anyone know what percentage of the middle school population is bussed? I know all of Skokie is bussed to Chute but I couldn't find any info about middle school bus eligibility on the district website.
There isn't bussing to Haven and I assume the same for Nichols.
Looking closer at the NYC article, the bus time data comes from a data set that includes a variable for morning pickup time and school start time.
District 65 must have similar data since parents are given a pickup time for the bus. It would be curious to FOIA bus pickup times for each route serving every elementary school. They must have it. The district could probably redact stuff like pupil home addresses and names, but I can't imagine there would be any privacy justification for getting a spreadsheet with just the pickup times.
You just subtract pickup times from school start time to get a decent measure of how long kids are on the bus.
For our kids they get picked up about 15 mins. before start time, but there are already kids on the bus. Before this year our kids were going to a "walkable" school. And we gave ourselves 20 minutes to get there (plus another 11-12 minutes for me to walk back home). It is actually nice this year where we just send the kid out the door to get on the bus. They get to schools safely and I can get working sooner.
Our son went to Willard for a year before we got into Bessie Rhodes. From the area of church and dodge the bus pick -up time to Willard was 45 minutes before school started.
That seems like a kind of crazy lead time. According to Google maps, it is a 46 minute walk from Church/Dodge to Willard! Obviously kids walk slower, but still!
According to Google Maps, the average drive from Church/Dodge to Willard is between 7-12 minutes.
If you look at Willard attendance area in the fifth ward, it is quite small. The furthest distance one would have to walk to get from one end of the Willard 5th ward area to the other is .6 miles.
How many bus stops are there in Ward 5 for Willard?
Lets say you had two stops-- one at Darrow and Church and one at Lyons and Dodge. No student would have to walk more than a couple of blocks to the stop and I can't see how it could take more than 25 minutes from the first stop to get to the school.
Unfortunately, the school board has put the district into a financial situation where Bessie Rhodes has to close. Despite the comments from school parents, it’s been a poorly performing school since my kid started in D65 in 2015. As to the “othering”…. 1) D65 spends millions on DEI and “belonging” programs. They must be failing if some kids are feeling othered simply based on what language they speak at home. This is something I never saw in 6 years at Dewey and seems unlikely in a city that’s as left-leaning as Evanston. 2) TWI programs themselves “other” kids. My child went to Dewey where there was one TWI string and the kids in it were invariably called the “TWI kids” because they were together (isolated) for six years and rarely interacted with non-TWI classes, even at lunch. Maybe that’s an argument for an all-TWI school like Bessie Rhodes, BUT when that school is as tiny as Bessie Rhodes, the kids show up at ETHS barely knowing anyone. I’ve never been a fan of TWI for these reasons and because D65 has used the TWI program as an excuse to not offer any foreign language instruction to the non-TWI students until SEVENTH grade which is shameful.
I also have to say that loads of kids come to ETHS from the many private schools in town knowing mainly their classmates. This is not a dealbreaker. Also- King Arts is very much the same- it’s very insular because kids don’t move to the huge middle schools. I attended a k-8 school and managed to figure out how to do ETHS perfectly fine. And my kid will, too. It’s not like kids don’t play AYSO and go to day camps and take rec classes all their childhood where they meet other kids and form friendships. I don’t see the relevance here as to why BR should be closed.
I wish you were right about othering not being an issue in left-leaning Evanston, but you are wrong. I’m glad your child didn’t experience it, but there’s plenty of evidence that racism is a huge problem. For example, nooses hung at Haven in 2022? The comments from Stephanie Mendoza about her students being called the “Spanish kids” at Washington? If you don’t see the racism personally, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Horton was a hammer looking for a nail with that “noose” incident. Too bad the real truth of that story didn’t come out. I wish people would stop referring it as the ultimate proof of racism, because it categorically is not. There exists enough racism without false narratives.
I should publish about this story sometime. I wanted more time to pass because it was such a loaded issue.
Please do. The truth must come out. Everyone knew within 24 hrs or less —D65 Administration, the Board, EPD —even the Mayor. And yet the emotional toll they inflicted first and foremost on our Black community, knowingly —it’s unforgivable!
Add into it that at that same time swastikas (hate symbol much?) were found in a bathroom at Nichols and according to the EPD, nothing to see there per the Administration….just kids being kids…apparently swastikas didn’t fit the narrative they were looking to tell…🙄
If you (or anyone) has evidence regarding this - my email is open. tom@foiagras.com
The reason that people haven't written about this is because there are almost no source documents available on the subject because it's protected by FOIA exemptions. So it is hard to find evidence backing up the different narratives that people have told me. The police won't release anything claiming that it is covered by a FOIA exemption, I'll have to research if this is legitimate or not.
This is exactly what I mean when I say that the district only cares about performative "action" for black students. Jewish students? Hispanic Latino students? Non Spanish speaking ELLs? Desi students? Nah.
Sadly this is the truth. 100%.
For interested folks, how can we find out more information about this?
Thanks for this comment, I think for all of us, the best we can do is listen to the experiences that other people tell us. I am glad Ms Mendoza (and Sergio) spoke to their experiences. We should all strive to do better and make our kids do better too. We get a better world one person at a time.