It took three tries in as many months, but the financially troubled Evanston-Skokie School District 65 finally landed Friday on a school closure plan.
Unanimously adopted by the district’s Board of Education, the plan calls for the process of closing Kingsley Elementary School to begin.
The Board also adopted a wait-and-see stance on whether to close Lincolnwood Elementary School. If the district fails to meet certain conditions by October, the plan calls on the Board to “recognize that proposing to close Lincolnwood Elementary is needed.”
Both schools serve the northwest corner of Evanston. And both became focal points in the successive but unsuccessful previous votes on how many and which schools to close.
“I have to say to the community, thank you for your patience,” Board President Patricia Anderson said. “And to the district, thank you for your work. Because it’s just been a very difficult process.”
Hannah Dillow, D65 communications manager, noted that the Board did not make a decision to close the school but to formally begin the process. Illinois law requires that three public hearings be held, and after those, the Board will vote on the potential school closure at a separate meeting.
Friday’s markedly subdued discussion culminated the winding path to a school closure plan.
The district had just ended 2025 hurtling toward the prospect of having to cut up to 78 positions, because the Board could not agree on a school closure plan. That District 65 would make another attempt at closures so soon had seemed unlikely.
Years of under-enrollment and, more recently, deep financial woes led District 65 to consider shuttering schools by the end of the 2025-26 school year as part of its ongoing Structural Deficit Reduction Plan. During the fall, as the district narrowed its goal to closing two schools, some families looked askew at the proposals.
Those options first came to a vote in November — soon after the resignation of a board member. The Board deadlocked 3-3 on a plan to close Kingsley and Lincolnwood, as well as on shuttering Kingsley alone.
In December the Board tried again to decide on a plan but voted the same way, despite warnings that inaction would lead to scores of eliminated staff positions.
With only one option on the table Friday, the Board centered much of its discussion on the criteria for considering a Lincolnwood closure. And with public comment focused on the district’s decision to end Willard Elementary School’s Two-Way Immersion language program, the closure of Kingsley seemed a foregone conclusion.
The resolution spelled out three requirements for achieving “financial sustainability”: keeping a balanced budget, having at least 90 days of cash “on hand through the course of the fiscal year” and having at least $2.7 million “set aside for capital expenditures related to building maintenance.”
If District 65 has not achieved those benchmarks nor increased its kindergarten through fifth grade “school building utilization rate” to 75% by October, then the Board will consider closing Lincolnwood School. That utilization rate drew some concerns.
“It’s a very specific number that I’m not 100% comfortable with,” board member Maria Opdycke said.
The budget, not the utilization rate, should be the district’s central metric, Opdycke argued, because schools often have more flexible uses for classrooms than reflected in the utilization rate.
Board member Andrew Wymer, meanwhile, called the 75% rate “a step in the right direction.”
The Board will consider “alternative approaches” to reducing the deficit, according to Anderson, who recommended that Board members Opdycke and Nichole Pinkard direct those efforts. It’s unclear what exactly that role would entail.
District 65 will host the three public hearings on the Kingsley closure at the Joseph E. Hill Early Childhood Center in Evanston: Jan. 21 at 6 p.m. and Jan. 22 at 9:30 a.m. and 7:15 p.m. Kingsley would join the Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies in closing at the end of the school year.
Financial problems aside, the district still has an empty seat on its Board. Since the Board could not come to a decision on appointing a new member, the choice has fallen to the regional superintendent of schools, who has until early February to decide.
The district also continues to grapple with the shadow of ex-superintendent Devon Horton, who faces federal charges of fleecing District 65 through a kickback scheme. He and his three accused associates have pleaded not guilty.
Still, ahead of the Board’s unanimous vote in favor of the closure plan, Anderson struck an optimistic note.
“I also know we have a moment now when we can do something pretty spectacular by pooling all these resources and thinking of a way that we can make this happen,” Anderson said. “So let’s get it done.”
