'Not About Avoiding Responsibility': D-65 Wants Consultant To Help With Layoffs, Closures
EVANSTON, IL — As the leadership of Evanston/Skokie School District 65 confronts a looming financial crisis, administrators issued a request for proposals for consultants to help decide what jobs to cut, which schools to close and how to spend less on individualized education and transportation.
District 65 faces declining enrollment, rising costs and a structural deficit that could lead to a state takeover if not addressed. Administrators have pledged to propose more than $12 million in budget cuts in January.
Last week, administrators issued a request for proposals for “structural deficit reduction planning consulting services,” specifically “school consolidation and school closure consulting.”
Find out what's happening in Evanstonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Superintendent Angel Turner said consultants will also be able to determine the most efficient bell schedules to reduce transportation costs, which administrators will be able to present to the board.
“This is not easy work by no means and my team and I are working extremely hard just really trying to sense-make and understand what it entails to really do this level of work,” Turner said.
Find out what's happening in Evanstonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
“When the consultant starts to work, they will have to hit the ground running, in a sense, to really take a lot of information that we are giving them, to be able to synthesize those and be able to come up with some options for us to really think through,” she said.
Proposals are due Oct. 11, and board members plan to award the contract at their Oct. 28 meeting. The board is looking for firms that have had similar contracts in at least three other school districts.
In a statement, administrators defended spending money on an outside firm to recommend ways to spend less money as a good investment.
“This is about bringing a fresh set of eyes to ensure that we are looking at the very difficult yet necessary decisions from every angle,” it said.
“It’s not about avoiding responsibility but gaining additional support in bringing expertise and objectivity to an extremely complex, highly sensitive process.”
District 65 Chief Financial Officer Tamara Mitchell said district officials are looking for firms with relevant or similar experience.
“It’s important to note that the school board is ultimately making the final decisions, the consultant is not making the final decision. The school board is making those final decisions.”
Since it is an RFP, there is no requirement that the board goes with the lowest bidder, Mitchell said.
Board member Biz Lindsay-Ryan emphasized the need for an outsider to recommend a solution to the district’s structural deficit.
“This person is going to need to make recommendations about cuts and so having an internal person making decisions about cutting either their own position or their colleague’s positions is complicated,” Lindsay-Ryan said. “And so having an outside perspective gives us a chance to ensure that that can truly be a objective process.”
If the district’s financial situation worsens, a state takeover could result in the appointment of a financial oversight panel with the authority to make decisions about budgeting, staffing and resources. Such takeovers have occurred in school districts in North Chicago and East St. Louis, leading to significant restructuring of their budgets and operations.
District 65 board members have already decided to close one school. Earlier this year, they voted to shutter the Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies, 3701 Davis St. in Skokie, following 2025-26 school year. Its closure will coincide with the opening of a new school in Evanston’s 5th Ward.
Resident Spencer Stern said the financial issues in the district have been clear for more than a year, though he had been attacked for questioning the rosy financial projections with regard to the new school. He attributed the district’s enrollment decline, which far outpaces other similar districts, with its “uninnovative” response to in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic. About 1,000 students departed the district from the start of the 2020-21 school year to the end of the 2021-22 school year.
“My feeling is, looking retrospectively back at this, that Superintendent [Devon] Horton and CFO Raphael Obafemi really perpetrated a fraud here on the citizens of Evanston,” Stern said. “And I think, from the perspective of the board, you guys did not do a well enough job of asking the tough questions in order to get at the crux of why this school ended up costing so much and why the leasing certificates ended up not saving the school as much.”
Construction is currently underway for the new Foster School, with an estimated cost of more than $48 million. Plans had to be scaled down after the initial designs ran $25 million overbudget.
“The thing that is just very disheartening to me is, due to the combination of the fiscal mismanagement around the Fifth Ward school and students leaving, there will be significant cuts in resources, programs, etc., that I think will more adversely affect the minority students that you guys purport to focus on serving,” he said. “That’s the thing that is going to be, I feel, the unfortunate legacy of this.”
Related:
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.