A group of Evanston/Skokie District 65 parents who are attorneys sent a demand letter to interim Superintendent Eric Witherspoon and the school board Friday evening threatening to sue the school district over the school closure process.
At Monday’s school board meeting, District 65 administrators said that despite accidentally overstating spending by millions in their five-year financial projections, they are not making any significant changes to their plan to close Lincolnwood and Dewey elementary schools and cut non-mandated programs. A vote is scheduled for Nov. 9 to approve the budget plan and trigger the state-mandated hearings ahead of official school closure votes.
If the vote proceeds Nov. 9, parents will file the suit Nov. 10, said Christopher Grohman, one of the parents who signed the letter. He will be the lead attorney on the lawsuit, should it proceed. (The letter notes that signatories represent only themselves, and not their law firms.)
A Colorado judge issued a stay after Boulder Valley School District families filed a lawsuit on similar grounds earlier this year.
“When the board does not represent the community’s voices, and when the administration does not listen to the community, it means that we have limited avenues to present our argument. And frankly, one of the most obvious answers to the situation becomes litigation, not by desire, but by necessity,” Joshua Stern, a Dewey parent and one of the attorneys involved in the letter explained.
According to the demand letterthe parents believe District 65’s approach in creating a budget plan is “inconsistent with its obligations under Illinois law” and if it proceeds, it “risks producing closure decisions that are legally invalid.”
In a statement sent Saturday morning, District 65 spokesperson Melissa Messinger wrote that the district is reviewing the matter with its legal counsel.
“We recognize that potential school closures are deeply personal and impactful for our families and school communities and we appreciate the continued engagement and advocacy,” Messinger wrote. “We will provide a more detailed response once we have had an opportunity to fully review.”
See above for the full demand letter sent Friday evening.
What does the letter say?
The letter has six demands for the district:
- Provide an independently reviewed financial analysis.
- Evaluate alternatives to additional school closures.
- Conduct and disclose a “comprehensive equity analysis.”
- Provide an assessment of educational and programming impacts (with particular attention to the Dewey Two Way Spanish/English immersion program and the STEP program for students on the autism spectrum at Lincolnwood).
- Investigate Foster Elementary School savings representations.
- Ensure meaningful public participation before substantive closure decisions are made.
Stern said that the district’s approach to school closures has made it seem as though the outcome of the vote scheduled for Nov. 9 is “predetermined,” saying that, in his view, the board is in “lockstep” with administrators. Stern said that parents are concerned that there may be “a pressure campaign” to push the plan taking place behind closed doors.
Parents say that this could violate Section 10-22.13 of the Illinois School Code, which states that three public hearings must be held to discuss proposed school closures before an official vote to close schools can take place. Parents argued that there are “substantial concerns” that the closings of Dewey and Lincolnwood are being treated as “predetermined outcomes.” That could “undermine the purpose of the statutory hearing requirement” before the hearings have even been held.
The letter cited the district’s focus on implementation, such as continued discussions about school boundaries, as evidence that the plan is a foregone conclusion. It also cited board members’ requests for further information and review as evidence that the plan has not been appropriately evaluated.
As previously reported by the RoundTable, board members have asked for certain stipulations before they will vote on the proposal to move the budget plan forward, including a request by Maria Opdycke to have an outside expert analyze the district’s financial projections.
“These circumstances suggest that the Administration has developed and advanced a financial strategy premised on the closure of two specific schools without first completing the analyses necessary to evaluate the proposed closures and reasonable alternatives,” the letter says.
Stern and Grohman also said that the district needs to “investigate the basis for the 2022 representations” that opening Foster Elementary School would generate $3.25 million in annual operational savings.
“Although we do not allege wrongdoing by any current Board member, we believe that the Board has a responsibility to address these historical representations and ensure a full accounting of the basis for those projections and the actual transportation costs and savings realized since Foster School opened,” the letter says.
The district’s own forensic financial report, released Oct. 13, detailed findings from Crowe LLP that the district could not provide documentation supporting the memo with calculations used to reach the $3 million savings number.
Concerns about equity
The demand letter also cites ongoing concerns about the way the new boundaries proposed by district administrators have “the potential to alter the racial and socioeconomic composition of schools” in District 65, impacting “equitable access to educational opportunities.”
Grohman said that the district is legally required to consider measures that prevent segregation when revising school boundaries.
“One of the requirements of the law is that [the district] analyze the potential disparate impact on minority communities, you know, in this case, the African American community, as well as the Latino community,” Grohman said, adding that the district has “failed to meet” some of those legal requirements. He said the parents have a Stanford University professor “on retainer” looking into this issue for them.
All records about changing district boundaries are also required to be accessible to the publicStern said. Stern provided a Freedom of Information Act request to the district in which he did not receive any equity analyses, though the response noted that several documents were not sent to Stern because they were considered “predecisional,” and therefore exempt from FOIA.
“The problem we all have is that we don’t really understand the needs of the district and its priorities, and there are shifting explanations of what is occurring, the nature of the debt, the nature of whether it is structural or not, the speed [with which] it must be addressed, and so forth. It seems haphazard and designed to confuse the board and mislead the public. So the problem we have is that we get $17 million errors, and it goes all over the news while we’re trying to get a new superintendent. It looks horrible,” Stern said. “And the community’s screaming and the district says it’s going to go through with it anyway.”
Senior reporter Alex Harrison contributed to this story.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a statement from District 65.
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Source: evanstonroundtable.com
