After months of public meetings in which Evanston/Skokie School District 65 administrators braced the community to prepare for up to four school closures at the end of the school year, the Board of Education found itself at an impasse at its meeting on Monday.
The resignation of Board Member Omar Salem earlier in November left the Board with six members, resulting in 3-3 tied votes and no action on closing schools.
After the Board committed to closing two schools at a previous meeting, its Monday meeting agenda listed options to close Kingsley and Willard Schools or Kingsley and Lincolnwood Schools, The Board also considered closing Kingsley solely, but did not obtain a majority to pursue that either.
The board voted 3-3 to close both Lincolnwood and Kingsley, and 3-3 to close Kingsley, but because neither vote had a majority, both were considered impasses.The district is accepting applications to fill Salem’s vacancy, but whomever the board selects is slated to be appointed on Dec. 16, after the Board makes a binding decision on which school to close.
The Board of Education scheduled a special Board meeting for Thursday to vote on closing Lincolnwood. If the board decides to move forward with plans to close Lincolnwood, the district is required by state law to hold three public meetings to discuss the school closure and receive input from the community. As of Monday, the district has three tentatively scheduled public meetings for the evenings of Dec. 3, 8 and 10.
It is anticipated that the Board will make a final decision at its Dec. 15, 2025 regular board meeting, Superintendent Angel Turner wrote to D65 families on Nov. 14.
Board members Patricia Anderson, Nichole Pinkard and Maria Opdycke voted no to close Lincolnwood and Kingsley, but supported closing Kingsley. Sergio Hernandez, Mya Wilkins and Andrew Wymer voted in favor of closing Lincolnwood and Kingsley, but opposed closing Kingsley solely.
For weeks leading up to the Board’s vote, D65 families, specifically those affected by the proposed school closures, have protested the closures and raised concerns about the Board’s and district’s credibility after former Superintendent Devon Horton was indicted on federal charges for wire fraud, tax fraud and embezzlement for actions that prosecutors say he did while serving as the school’s chief.
Within a week of the announced indictment, then-Board President Hernandez stepped down from his cabinet position, but did not resign from the Board. Anderson was nominated to serve as the Board’s president, which she accepted.
At Monday’s Board meeting, parents and educators crammed into the Board room, which has a maximum occupancy of 116. The district also set up an overflow room at the Joseph E. Hill Early Childhood Center, which at its peak held another 50 people. Over 70 people signed up to give public comment, according to Board Secretary Adeela Qureshi.
Opdycke, a critic of the school closure process, called for the Board to slow the process. “I believe closing schools should be a last resort, and I don’t believe that we’ve gotten to a place where we can say… we’ve uncovered every drop.”
District-wide, enrollment has shrunk nearly 24% since 2018, according to data from the Illinois Report Card. For Lincolnwood, the school had 405 students enrolled in 2018, but now has 286 students, for a 29.3% decrease in enrollment.
Under the district’s scenario to close only Lincolnwood, the Structured Teaching Education Program, a program meant to support students who present with an autism spectrum disorder, will be relocated to Willard. Willard would lose its Two Way Immersion program, which teaches students in English and Spanish.
The pros of that option are that schools will continue to be walkable and students will be minimally impacted. The cons are that only closing one school will have a minimal impact on bringing forward financial stability, and selling the property does not have a strong income potential, according to D65 information on its website.
Administrators have also previously cited experts who say that a school’s optimal utilization rate should hover between 80% and 90%. If only Lincolnwood were to close, the average overall utilization rate district-wide would be below 70%, according to district documents.
To combat the district’s financial and under-enrollment issues, the district implemented a Structural Deficit Reduction Plan in 2023 to cut millions of dollars in expenses, including laying off dozens of employees and to also close Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies at the end of the school year.
Before the start of the school year, the district’s administration held public meetings to discuss what metrics it is considering using to make a decision on which schools to close. With approval from the Board, the district made scorecards for eligible schools to close and ranked them with equity, walkability, geography, building function and financial impact at top of mind.
Initially, the Board was open to consider closing four schools at the end of the school year, which would have been Kingsley, Lincolnwood, Washington and to convert magnet Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Literary and Fine Arts School into a neighborhood school. Over time, the Board narrowed its scope to closing three schools, then later to two schools. By the time the district posted the agenda for the Board’s Monday meeting, however, there was only an option for the Board to close Kingsley.
Turner called that one-school option an “oversight” between the school’s administration and the district’s legal counsel. Turner said the district anticipated for the Board to make a decision on which two schools to close, therefore the option to close Kingsley solely would be redundant and not needed.
Previously at the meeting, Turner strongly cautioned against closing just one school because it is likely that the Board will need to close another school next year, potentially creating a pathway where a D65 student would attend three different schools across three years.
Turner vigorously defended the work of her administration and Student Centered Services, the consultant group hired by the Board to help the district manage its Structural Deficit Reduction Plan.
“The work presented tonight is the culmination of years of tireless effort, strategic planning and, yes, profound struggle. I want the community to know that this decision is agonizing. It has been incredibly difficult, and the struggle to arrive at this point is deeply felt by every member of my cabinet and me,” Turner said.
“This is not a process we entered lightly, but one necessitated by our commitment to fiscal responsibility and continued academic excellence.”
