The projected cost of building the proposed new school in Evanston’s 5th Ward has skyrocketed since the project was approved 19 months ago.
Interim District 65 Superintendent Angel Turner told a special Board of Education meeting Monday night that the K-8 school, originally promised at $40 million and with no tax increase for the voters, is now projected at $65 million, unless another cheaper option is approved.
Plus, Turner said that if the $65 million goes forward, the district would need to sell bonds to help raise the money, which would then lead to a property tax hike.
Operational budget cuts would also be required.
Turner was not superintendent when the board approved the 5th Ward School in March 2022. That was Devon Horton, who has since moved on to another superintendency in Georgia.
Without mentioning anyone by name, board member Joey Hailpern appeared to take a swipe at Horton, and at former Chief Financial Officer Raphael Obafemi, who has left for a finance job with another Illinois district.
“There is just no reason why we didn’t have this information along the way. This is not the fault of most of this administrative team now, because you weren’t in position at that time to have that information to share with us,” Hailpern said.
The current reality “was a result of poor planning, and/or holding certain information which just bult the hype,” he added.
And, there was one more blow to the credibility of the original school board plan.
The promise then was to be able to pay the entire $40 million cost for the school with savings from reduced busing.
5th Ward students have been bused other schools since the mostly Black Foster School closed decades ago.
The total bus savings bounced around somewhat, most recently described as $3.2 million annually from needing fewer bus routes.
But Turner said the actual savings would only be $750,000.
A total of 13 different possibilities are now on the table. They range from a stripped-down, two story, K-5 school at $42.4 million, up to the now $65-million, three-story, K-8 school.
The building could house as few as 600 students or as many as 1,000. (900 had been originally mentioned).
No decisions were made, although four of the seven-member board said they were leaning in favor of keeping a K-8 model, although not necessarily the most expensive option.
Next Monday, the board indicated it will vote on whether to accept a bid for site clearance work, because the site has to be cleared no matter what goes on it.
The assumption is that the bid will be approved, as the board still plans to build a 5th Ward School, whatever it may turn out to be. Determining the building option would come later.
Several board members stressed that the 5th Ward decision needs to be accompanied by a larger discussion of “right-sizing the district,” which may well lead to school closings, in a system with declining enrollment.
Board member Biz Lindsay-Ryan said it’s apparently time to “have the conversations nobody wants to have about how many buildings we need to have.”
This, my friends, is what the other shoe dropping sounds like. The audacity of the board members who approved the lease certificate options saying “we need to have conversations nobody wants to have” is just beyond the pale. Shame on all of you.
The ‘surprise’ of board members is the most cynical and disingenuous reaction we can imagine here.
As soon as the idea for the lease certificates were floated there were COUNTLESS critiques about their lack of viability printed in the various online news outlets like Evanston Now. There is even a random guy whose blog has for months taken a deep dive on the issue of District overspending. None of this is surprising.
Of course the original bad decision was the 2019 superintendent search which was done entirely without public scrutiny of the finalist pool.
Under the cover of darkness they hired a guy with zero experience leading a school district and well-publicized liabilities of tens of thousands of dollars in his real estate business. We later learn that he had filed for personal bankruptcy TWICE before the board hired him.
THIS is the guy the board hired to manage a $170 million budget?
If they had any shame or self-respect Halipern, Biz, and Hernandez, and Soo La Kim would resign.
Randal Richards wrote:
“There is even a random guy whose blog has for months taken a deep dive on the issue of District overspending…”
Here is the blog (if it’s okay to mention it), it is truly eye – opening; it’s well worth supporting as a good local news source (as is *Evanston Now*…):
https://www.foiagras.com/about
“What is FOIA Gras?
This newsletter is concerned about transparency and accountability in government, primarily in Evanston, Illinois, USA. Most of the content of this newsletter are FOIA requests (and occasional opinion) on the local school district, District 65 Evanston/Skokie. Sometimes I might share other FOIA requests I’ve submitted if they’re novel…”
As for this article, even upon quickly scanning it I did not whether to laugh or cry – I simply *cannot* believe the level of financial malfeasance that is openly tolerated in our city and school district…
One can escape a bad dream or a nightmare by simply waking up, but this kind of irresponsible wrong – doing is very, *very* real – and it is only snowballing, to end up in ultimate catastrophe…
Respectfully,
Gregory Morrow – Evanston 4th Ward resident
Duh, we were scammed for three years, but they defended it, so…
Parents, get ready – someone’s school is going to close and our taxes are going to rise… again.
How can they even show up to meetings? Elected by a minority of the citizenry, carrying a legacy of terrible and continuing mistakes, literally scammed by someone who basically drained the district’s accounts and then left before there were consequences.
And they aren’t likely to make a sensible decision and just hire Angel Turner, who has been a welcome breath of competence after three years of grandstanding, chaos and wasted money.
I’ll never understand where this inflated opinion of Turner comes from. She’s cut from the same cloth as Horton. Same organizational roots and another failed CPS flunkout. Hired by Horton with another questionable resume of “accomplishments.” She’s no Horton (thankfully) but so far I’ve seen nothing to be impressed by.
But if we could keep Turner on year by year contract and have the Supt. that we know at least, rather than potentially locking the district into another problematic would-be savior that we don’t know, that could prevent us from getting scammed and hoodwinked again with a new Supt. chosen by this Board. A worker who is earning their job every day like in the competitive open market often produces better work than someone who is vested and protected from accountability.
YES! We shouldn’t necessarily put her on a pedestal because she was able to see the obvious.
What we SHOULD do is demand an OPEN AND TRANSPARENT superintendent search. Part of the reason we got here in the first place is because of the closed door coronation of Horton. The searches for Hardy Murphy and Paul Goren were both conducted publicly and finalists were brought in before a contract was given.
That has to be the absolute minimum now.
It is also strange to me that they are conducting a parallel search for the Chief Financial Officer. As someone who works in a large organization, I would rather see the new superintendent have a say in who the new money guy is.
Now, of course, this is all predicated on the assumption that we get a competent superintendent.
Given this Board’s track record, I’m not holding my breath.
The district should not let the poor (mendacious) financial planning that led to the lease certificate go one step further. District 65 is going into deficit. Bring the 5th ward school proposal to a referendum. Stop pouring money into construction and administration and educational consultants. Put the money back in the classrooms, and focus on educating our kids.
Yes, “put the money back into the classrooms and focus on educating our kids’! Going forward with adding this much debt and the clear resulting need to pull funds from the district to cover the shortfall ( after accounting for the now $750,000 in savings from cutting bussing) we will be taking funds from the classrooms across the district in addition to closing at least one other current school. This will bring us to fewer teachers and aids across the district, as well as more buildings in poor condition for those not in the new school.
And how about telling us now what other schools the district’s analysis suggests will need to be closed shortly after the new school is up and running.
How is any of this legal? The school board’s complete exclusion of the public from this crucial debate is troubling. Operating without a referendum to borrow such a substantial amount casts doubt on their commitment to accountability. This school plan, initially questionable, now estimated at 65 million, may very well surpass 100 million with interest, all while the district grapples with a declining student population. It’s evident the board has been derelict in its duty, seemingly leading to potential gains for banks, underscoring the need for a comprehensive review and a renewed commitment to transparency and integrity.
The $60-65 million is the cost of construction for the new building. They have approximately $40 mil. in the bank to pay for it. Over the life of the lease certificates, we have +/- $18 million in interest which means that all in, we are at a cost of $78-83 million. There is $750K/yr in bus savings (which could be less) which equals $15 million in savings over 20 years. Where they are going to close the $23-28 million gap between the all in cost (interest plus construction) and the money available (lease certificates plus bus savings) is anyone’s guess.
Willie, I can’t disagree with anything you are saying other than the “exclusion of the public” part. This is the Board we and the others in Evanston voted in. They represent us even if they don’t listen to us. There is no mechanism to throw them out prior to the next election. The real culprit here is the Evanston voter who keep electing these untalented representatives. As Mom used to say, “you gets what you asks for so be careful”.
Another example of Evanston not doing correct due diligence. How many new buildings and projects that have been built in recent years that the final cost was MUCH MUCH higher than the original estimate.
Please explain…who issues bonds for a model and entity with no clear path to pay back? And can someone explain the difference in bus math? Is fraud at play here and were laws broken?
Btw, we’ve heard taxes are already going up almost 8%, so after this second increase we truly will be an affordable city!!
Who issues bonds for a model and entity with no clear path to pay back? Someone spending someone else’s money, that’s who.
One Board member says “It’s apparently time to have conversations nobody wants to have” What conversations have you been having all these weeks, months, years? Another Board member says the current realty is a result of poor planning Well that IS your job. All of you ran promising to be good stewards of our schools. Board president couldn’t sing the praises of Dr Horton loud enough at his good bye party. So now we have the stark reality of broken promises. The achievement gap will be closed and everyone will be happy
“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme…”
– Mark Twain
Respectfully,
Gregory Morrow – Evanston 4th Ward resident
An analysis of how many buildings the district needs should also consider whether those needs are filled by siting a new building 2.5 blocks from the 2nd most recently constructed elementary school in the district.
Many of the district’s goals could be filled by making Kingsley the 2nd ward school with a pedestrian plan for mitigating and reducing traffic at the north end of McCormick in order to better integrate the school with the south of the canal neighborhood. A small amount of the $40-60 million dollars freed up could implement an amazing pedestrian plan while leaving money for renovations at Kingsley, and renovations at some other buildings.
For those who believe integration was a mistake, the primary issue is the gerrymandering of the 5th ward into multiple elementaries, particularly the central area that is sent to Willard. This can be handled as a boundary issue rather than one of major construction.
YES! Schools so close that can be better utilized rather than taking an entire district into the toilet.
Building on this, the Willard bussed kids could easily be incorporated into Dewey.
Let’s do some simple, back of the envelope, math (something the District apparently can’t do) using the latest Census data from the American Community Survey.
The Fifth Ward population west of Green Bay is in Census tract 8092. This Census tract has 660 households with children under 18. There are a total of 793 kids between 5 and 14 years old living in that Census tract. That’s about 1.2 D65 aged kids per household.
The Willard bussed population is in a central area bounded by Hovland, Emerson, Church, and Ashland. Much of this area has the waste transfer station, a number of churches and other commercial properties. A quick estimate is around 150 households based on sampling the more residential streets. If you use the census tract average of 1.2 D65 aged kids per household you are talking 180 kids.
According to District stats, right now Dewey has 420 students enrolled. In 2016 they had 538. The furthest point right now from Dewey in the Willard bus district (Hovland and Emerson) is less than a mile away. Thinking of my 180 kids estimate (which includes middle school aged kids), YOU COULD ELIMINATE BUSING TO WILLARD TOMORROW AT ZERO COST. There are households that are now in the Willard Bus zone that are only three blocks from Dewey.
If you bring King Arts into the mix you open up a bunch more possibilities. As it stands now, if you live directly across the street from King Arts you are bused to Lincolnwood.
Like Dewey, King Arts has excess capacity. In 2017 they had 571 students and this year they have 498.
Just making small tweaks to existing boundaries could increase the number of kids walking to school and reduce transport costs. Use the money you borrowed from the lease certificates to pay for deferred maintenance on existing buildings.
If there were no other goals than finding open, nearby spots for everyone, you’d be right.
I’m trying to maintain the board’s goal of creating a school with a majority or significant plurality black population (a goal I’m agnostic on – not opposed, not enthusiastic about rolling back integration either).
You can maintain that goal, but not by sending the “Willard doughnut hole” to Dewey. You have to keep the 5th ward more or less whole.
There is lots of extra capacity north at this point. It would work to send more 5th ward kids to Kingsley, while transferring some of the northern portion of the current Kingsley district.
North of Central, kids east of Green Bay could help keep Orrington close to capacity, while west of Green Bay could go to Willard. My family is closer to Kingsley than any of those addresses, and our kids went/go to Orrington, so geographically this isn’t unusual.
Amen to all these thoughts here!
I think it is worth recapping some history: The 5th ward was stripped of a school in the 60s and 70s. All-black Foster School was converted to an integrated magnet school (King Lab) and Kingsley School was built nearby to be a neighborhood school that would pick up most of the 5th Ward. Soon after, both schools were closed due to declining enrollment and King Lab moved to its current location. After several years, Kingsley reopened, but the revised attendance boundaries did not include much of the 5th ward. Instead many 5th ward kids were bused to other north Evanston schools to help those schools achieve racial diversity goals. Many felt the 5th Ward was mistreated and I agree.
Several proposals were made over the years to restore some type of school to the 5th ward, but none came to fruition. Fast-forward to 2012 when a referendum was held — at a time of greatly rising district enrollment — to build a Fifth Ward K- 5 school and put additions to existing middle schools. I supported that referendum plan as there was clearly a need to add D65 classrooms, with additions already being put on many of the existing K-5 schools. To me, it didn’t seem fair to 5th Ward residents to deny them any investment in school resources. Yet democracy ruled and the referendum failed.
OK so that’s how we got here, and I can sympathize with the board’s desire to find a way to build a 5th Ward school to make up for some unfair history. But there has to be some accountability and fiscal common sense which is followed.
In my opinion, the failure of the board was hiring and enabling an incompetent and unqualified superintendent and allowing him — encouraging him really — to make some really bad decisions. Things like dumbing down the curriculum and eliminating a middle school advanced math class for purposes of “advancing equity”, rather than seeking ways to broaden the numbers of qualified minority kids in those classes. Also, they allowed him to “unapologetically” accuse parents of racism and white supremacy where there was none, simply disagreement over when and whether it was safe to open schools after COVID. In addition, the shameful way they allowed him to politicize the “noose incident” at Haven School was beyond the pale. For those of you who don’t know, the child who brought that item to school was special needs and was not engaged in any form of intimidation. Yet the board allowed Dr. Horton to use that incident to accuse Haven’s parents of “enabling white supremacy” when they dared to disagree with what many thought were his retaliatory transfers of teachers who publicly opposed his policies.
In the three years of his superintendency, almost all D65 principals have left, along with many teachers. Overall student enrollment is down almost 20%, with many parents fed up with the culture he and the board created there.
So bottom line for me, the board failed to uphold their part of the bargain by not properly staffing and enabling/maintaining a successful school district, one that achieves the overarching goal of providing a good education to all. The verdict is in and confirmed by all of the departures that have taken place: now is certainly not the time to embark on a school expansion plan. Finances are in disarray and the damage done to District 65 from the failed tenure of Dr. Horton is far from being healed.
I hope the district can regroup and rebuild the school system of this town and that before long we will once again have rising enrollment and a plan achieved — after referendum — to invest in a new school for the 5th ward. I don’t see this happening under the stewardship of many who now serve on the board, but — hopefully — the Evanston voters will finally wake up and turn out to vote and to put some qualified new members on the D65 board.
The School Board is responsible. I have no reason to doubt that information was withheld from them, but it is responsibility of the board to ask good questions when their admininstrator tells them that constructing a new building is cheaper than busing. My recollection was that the Board was driven to get the outcome of approving construction for a new school. I suspect they did not want to ask to see the numbers on busing costs and get an explanation of what is behind those numbers. It even would have been reasonable to bring in an outside accounting firm to validate incremental savings from reduced bus routes when the new school is built.
This is like really well-written poetry. That being said, who needs poetry when you have the hubris of man?
Joey suddenly wants to look at things critically. Did he want to look at things critically when the superintended wanted around-the-clock security for roughly 600k a year for no real justifiable reason? No, he did not.
Did he want to look at things critically when a hate crime was declared without investigation, ruining the lives of multiple families in the district? No, he did not.
Did he want to look at things critically when a student made a gun threat at Haven? No, he did not.
Did he want to look at things critically when Horton and Obefemi proclaimed they found a miracle to fund this new school to forever defeat racism? Nope. Sure did not. In fact, Joey and the rest of the clown parade over there were falling over themselves, screaming from the rooftops about what heroes they were.
The real issue here is that anyone who looks at things critically is called a racist and viciously attacked by Evanston’s keyboard brigade. The best thing I ever did for my family was get away from this cesspool, Evanston, specifically D65. Good luck with your contract negotiations, teachers; you’ll need a MIRACLE.
Typical Biz and Crew! This is what happens when you secretly hire a guy based on emotion. I wouldn’t trust this board to supersize my meal, let alone make financial decisions that could cripple a town, starting with the very people their $65m virtual signaling was to protect. The irony of their inability to do math is laughable. Invest in actual educational curriculum, teachers, aides, support staff, role models… you know, the stuff that works. The fact that this board needs to sleep on it is mind-blowing, even for a group of people that hired a scam artist as their leader. The sad reality is that 300 people will vote during the next school board elections, and 295 will be from that special interest group that delivered this mess.
When someone (or some people) promise rainbows & unicorns, this is the result. The Board is complicit, and frankly, so are the voters who either didn’t pay attention and show up, or believed the empty promises. We need to address diversity in the district, but listening to Harold Hill and his cabinet was clearly not the way. (And please don’t forget some of them are still here, pulling the strings of power.) The district has been hemorrhaging principals, teachers & staff for the past few years. We have been the canaries in the coal mine, and now the “finding out” phase has begun. Unfortunately, our children’s education is going to bear the brunt of our collective errors, rather than the corrupt and/or obtuse adults in charge.
Foia all communications between D65 board members and administrators and Raymond James, the financial advisor on the lease certificates. There has to be something in there somewhere.
Is this something that can be reported to the IL Attorney General? Would they look into this?
Dist. 65 taxes are 41% of Evanston residents’ real estate tax bill, yet hardly anyone shows up to vote. Those who do, vote on feel-good emotion and not an examination of the qualifications of the candidates to read and understand finances. People, we get the government we deserve.
The only people surprised at this very disturbing financial news are the board members.
Is there any way out of this? There has to be. They cooked the books. Can we take the loss and just stop this plan that we voted against? Never forget, there’s more of us than them. They try to divide us, they try to deceive us and they will always try to lie to us.
We, the people of Evanston, voted against the new 5th ward school. We were called racists. Fine, I’m a racist if something doesn’t make sense financially, my bad.
They went around our backs and did the ole politician “fuzzy math” to make their plan work. We were lied to.
This is what you call ‘rainbows and lollipops.’ In theory I 1000% support a 5th ward school but not with Monopoly money. Joey’s suddenly surprised? Biz suddenly acknowledges the need for conversations based in reality? It reads like an SNL kit with the main and very unfunny problem being the kids and families in the 5th ward who deserve to have a neighborhood school. Once again, thanks Spin Doctor Horton & company. But then again, shame on all of us, i.e., the voters. We are all complicit.
Horton and the former CFO guy should be investigated. Additionally, the entire D65 school board should resign. Between being “surprised” at the financial shortage (it’s your job to know!!) to now this clear, intentional and malicious deception, the entire D65 community, and especially those in the 5th Ward, deserve better!
Resign now!
District 65 should bring back accelerated math. For our school board members.
The first step is pretty clear – incumbents have to get voted out. Evanston is allowing 30% of the voting population to continue electing these absurd scolds into office.
This article makes it clear that there are Board members who literally DO NOT CARE if property taxes get jacked up to a level that will make the town completely unaffordable to the very people they say they are serving.
If this Board stays in power much longer people will just vote with their wallets and Evanston will be an overpriced wasteland. It isn’t that deep.
In some ways I’m more upset about the change in savings on transportation. It is tough to estimate construction costs. But the board should have known exactly what busing costs, and what they’d be eliminating. How much of the continuing cost is because they’d have to bus Rhodes kids to a new school that is too far away?
I’d note that just a couple months ago, we were treated to stories of how awful it was for 5th ward kids to be bused, having to wait on cold street corners…
My kids were bused to Orrington for years (though they started walking as they got older.) They spent less time in the cold waiting for the bus for 5-10 minutes than most kids who walk to school.
Anyway, the bottom line is that we were told busing was awful. Are we now being told that busing the Rhodes kids will be great, well worth the cost?
We have 4 buildings built more than 100 years ago and another 2 built more than 90 years ago.
Yet we’re siting this building 2.5 blocks from the newest elementary (Kingsley), and apparently busing in kids in order to close the 3rd newest (Rhodes).
This age ranking excludes Park, special needs, built more recently than Rhodes; and Hill – Headstart/Early Childhood – which was built just 20 years ago.
Hill School is named for an African American former principal and then superintendent of District 65.
Honest question for all the many highly educated citizens, and surely many lawyers, in this college town… why has there been no legal opposition to this to date? Is there not a good legal grounding for a lawsuit based on the dubious lease certificate approach? Is it the fear of being labeled and called nasty things by the venomous and vocal equity over everything else supporters?
Does this new information change anything to open up new legal avenues to stop the bleeding? To punish those that seemingly knew they were misleading the public about the use of public funds for their own personal political or career advancement?
I am repeatedly sickened by the way in which so many Evanston elected and appointed officials conduct themselves, but this just confirms what anyone with a half lick of sense already knew was the inevitable outcome. If we had any choice in the matter we’d move far far away from here. Unfortunately, family and finances prevent us from moving, so I honestly want to know what can be done to prevent these ‘leaders’ continuing down this terribly irresponsible and possibly illegal path to financial and academic ruin for all kids. we can’t wait for the next election.
Ryan and JP I couldn’t agree more!!!! Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Is it possible to recall board members?
Can only blame ourselves for electing and re-electing board members whose policies and approaches have led to division in the community, rapidly declining academic outcomes for all students and plummeting enrollments. Woke policies are not liberal or effective at achieving the outcomes they seek.
Maybe the Board can pay Dr. Horton, as a consultant, to come back to Evanston to explain how we have got it all wrong.