Evanston/Skokie School District 65 is educating 10% more homeless students in the current school year than it did last year.
According to a report prepared for Monday’s school board meeting, “324 students are considered homeless” in D65 this school year up from 292 last year.
That makes the homeless 5% of the district’s total enrollment of 6,388 preK-8 including Park and Rice special needs schools, and is part of an ongoing trend of fewer children in D65 overall, but a higher percentage coming from low-income families.
The Opening of Schools Report says 40% of the district’s students come from low-income households, a 2% increase from the previous year.
The report is a statistical snapshot of a variety of enrollment data, but there is no analysis of the reasons for the changes.
Homelessness for school purposes is defined under the federal McKinney-Vento Act as “students who do not have a fixed, adequate or regular nighttime residence.” Those children are eligible for a number of support services.
The report also notes the continuing dramatic decline in District 65 enrollment. The all-programs total of 6,388 is nearly 1,000 fewer than the 2020-21 figure (7,372).
And, while the rate of decline is expected to decline itself, the district is still projected to keep shrinking in future years, putting some uncomfortable decisions about closing school buildings on the table.
District 65 officials have said the school system already has too many buildings for the number of students.
And on Monday night, the board is scheduled to vote on closing the Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies, once the Fifth Ward School opens, now targeted for Fall 2026. Approval of the shutdown is anticipated, based on prior unofficial straw votes.
Rhodes was supposed to move its entire K-8 program to the new building, as a so-called “school within a school.”
But that idea was dropped to save money, as the original cost estimates for the 5th Ward structure turned out to be wildly inaccurate, and the 5th Ward School plan was downsized, from K-8 to only K-5.
Final design for that downsized school is also on the Monday night agenda, with a “yes” vote totally expected.
Does anyone check the accuracy of the numbers or the accuracy of the claims
of being homeless ?
“According to a report prepared for Monday’s school board meeting, “324 students are considered homeless” in D65 this school year up from 292 last year…”
This is a tragedy. Yet we have an administration that unwittingly supports a corpulent NGO (Connections for the Homeless), allowing this outfit to operate a transitional homeless shelter (The Margarita Inn), where at least 90+% of the clients are non – Evanston residents (I know this because I worked there, and as part of my job I reviewed every resident’s HMIS case file). Additionally, a number of Margarita residents are single males, simply using the place as a “party pad”, with no real goal of improving their life or housing situations (despite the claims of Connection’s well – oiled and funded PR flummery machine)… IMO a huge waste of resources…
OTOH our YWCA Evanston/North Shore has two robust and essential housing programs (Mary Lou’s Place and Bridges) for homeless women and children, and we need more such programs for out most vulnerable. I’ve personally worked with YWCA staff and their clients, and I’ve been impressed by the integrity, metrics, and excellent outcomes of these programs:
https://www.ywca-ens.org/what-we-do/domestic-violence/shelter-and-longer-term-housing/
We can do far better for our deserving homeless District 65 families – at the least the Margarita Inn should be solely devoted to serving the needs of homeless children and their parents…
Respectfully,
Gregory Morrow – Evanston 4th Ward resident
How about we take some of that $48M we’re spending on an unneeded new school and invest it in these families?
Gregory Morrow says: “We can do far better for our deserving homeless District 65 families”.
No way to argue with that.
The “spin doctors” a.k.a. Elected officials, Connections, Interfaith Action Council, and others, want us to believe Evanston has some over the top issue with homelessness, only to serve their narrative designed to obtain more funds from government agencies and donors.
Clearly, Evanston’s heavy concentration of regional social services agencies and programs serving primarily non- Evanstonians is at the expense of our deserving homeless District 65 families and children.
And why are we building a 5th Ward school (40 years too late) while closing Bessie Rhodes if enrollment keeps dropping?
Would this rise be contributed to the migrants being enrolled into D65? Just curious, not trying to cause a storm or anything.