New Boundaries, 5th Ward School Included In D-65 Assignment Plan

EVANSTON, IL — The Evanston/Skokie School District 65 board is due to vote Monday evening on a plan to redraw the district's attendance boundaries and build a new school in Evanston's 5th Ward.

If approved and implemented, it will mark the first time District 65 has adjusted its elementary and middle school catchment areas in more than 25 years. And, for the first time since 1966, Evanston's 5th Ward, historically the center of the city's Black community, will have its own neighborhood school.

The proposal emerged from a student assignment committee formed by the district in May 2021, which includes community members, district parents, administrators, teachers' union representatives and other stakeholders.

The group held monthly meetings as a subcommittee and with District 65 facilitators, according to a memo to the board from director of student assignments Sarita Smith.

District officials said the construction of the school will be financed through lease certificates and paid for by the district using money saved by reducing the number of students who need to be bussed outside their neighborhoods, about $3 million in expected annual savings.

"The advantage of lease certificates is that there's no tax increase for taxpayers, we find the money from the savings that we will pay for transportation, so we use these savings from transportation to make the payment," Chief Financial and Operations Officer Rafael Obafemi told board members last week at a committee meeting.

That means it will not require the district to issue general obligation bonds or put a referendum question before voters. A 2012 referendum on whether to borrow money to build a 5th Ward school failed by a vote of 55-44, and the district has currently reached its borrowing limit — roughly the equalized assessed value of all property tax-paying properties in the district.

"At the end of the day, we have a maximum amount we can borrow using taxpayer money," Obafemi said. "So with that said, we've actually hit that cap, and we wouldn't have and other space to be able to issue additional taxpayer-funded bonds until 2036."

Lease certificates work for school district buildings like a "lease-to-own" agreement would for a car. The district will make lease payments incorporating a fixed interest rate for the approximately 20 years it takes to pay off the full cost of the building, at which point it would take over its title.

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The 5th Ward has been without a neighborhood school since the former Foster School was closed as part of the district's efforts to desegregate and racially balance its schools in the 1960s, according to the Evanston RoundTable.

District 65 would also save money under the plan by closing the Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Students at 3701 Davis St. in Skokie and selling the building.

The Bessie Rhodes school community would then be located at in the same building as the new 5th Ward neighborhood school but would operate independently, Superintendent Devon Horton said in a last week in a message to the community.

The district's other magnet school, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Literary and Fine Arts School at 2424 Lake St., would remain a K-8 magnet school, Horton said.

The changes will not take effect until the 2024-25 school year. Decisions about programming at the new 5th Ward school and across the nearly 7,200-student district will be made with input from the community over the next 18 months during the implementation phase of the new student assignment plan, according to the superintendent.

Horton said the new attendance boundary maps were created to reduce busing across the district, align with physical barriers and reflect the students who would be attending the new neighborhood school, which is due to be located at Foster Field, the district-owned property at the southwest corner of Simpson and Ashland avenues.

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There are no changes proposed to the feeder pattern for middle schools.

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The District 65 board is due to consider the student assignment plan at its meeting 7 p.m. Monday at the Joseph E. Hill Education Center, 1500 McDaniel Ave., Evanston.

"We know any changes to the make-up of our school system will have impacts across our community. Change is never easy. And yet, this is a necessary process that is decades overdue," Horton said. "I truly believe that with partnership and collaboration across our community that we will positively impact student outcomes, more efficiently use our school buildings over time, and maintain financial stability. "