Fifth Ward STEM School Plan Promises Equity

The Fifth Ward of Evanston, the historic heart of the Black community in the west-central part of the City dating to the days of redlining, has not had a District 65 neighborhood school since Foster School was converted to a magnet in 1967 as part of the District’s then-novel desegregation plan.

It has not had a public school of any sort since Foster School, by then renamed as Martin Luther King Jr., Experimental Laboratory School (now King Arts), moved to its current location in the Second Ward in 1979. And for more than four decades, students in the Fifth Ward have been bused to either King Arts; the District’s other magnet school, Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies; or one of several attendance-area schools in mostly white sections of north Evanston, carved up based on a gerrymandered-looking map designed to achieve diversity.

There have been at least four previous attempts to revive the issue of a Fifth Ward school since February 1979, when the School Board, over objections that the burden of busing to achieve integration should be shared by white students, voted not to reopen the former Foster School building as an attendance-area school and later sold it to community organization Family Focus.

The Evanston Human Relations Commission put forth a report in May 1979 that noted while Black children comprised just one-third of the K-5 population, they totaled more than two-thirds of those bused for distance. “Blacks clearly bear a disproportionate share of the burden of busing, which, bluntly put, is the burden of having no neighborhood school,” the Commission wrote.

In 1992, the District’s own long-range planning committee declared a 10-year goal to close the achievement gap among white and Black children and recommended that if the District established a new school, it should be located in the Fifth Ward. That recommendation was not adopted.

The administration in 2002 proposed leasing space to establish a K-3 school in the old Foster School building, but the Board voted that down – and subsequently allocated 20% of new admissions to Bessie Rhodes (then known as Timber Ridge) to students in the Fifth Ward.

Then, in 2012, the Board put a referendum on the ballot to provide funding and technology for a new school in the Fifth Ward, which lost by roughly 55% to 45%. The RoundTable editorialized in favor of the referendum for the purpose of restoring a neighborhood school to the City’s central core.

“A neighborhood school will substantially reduce involuntary busing. It will foster parental involvement and student engagement in learning. It will provide an opportunity to develop an education model and a pipeline of services to ensure that all children enter kindergarten ready to learn and enter middle school on track to college and career readiness,” the editorial read.

“By taking this stand, we do not in any way question the decision to desegregate the District’s schools. That was an important decision for this community. We, as do many Evanstonians, continue to value diversity in our schools. Forty-five years later, though, it is hard to justify busing hundreds of African American and Hispanic students from their neighborhood to Evanston’s north-end schools in order to diversify those schools, if their parents would prefer to send them to a school in their own neighborhood,” the editorial continued. “Our support for the new school is predicated on the Board’s decision that all parents in the central core will have a choice to send their children to the new school or to the current attendance-area school. This is crucial to our support of the school.”

Backdrop for the Latest Proposal

The concept of restoring a school to Evanston’s Fifth Ward has surfaced in the early 2020s for what is now the fifth time since King Lab was relocated, this time as a proposal for a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) magnet school that would serve the entire District but likely give some level of preference to students in the neighborhood.

A 501-c-3 nonprofit group called STEM School Evanston has come forward with a plan to privately fund a building for a K-8 magnet that the group hopes will open by the 2023-24 school year. District funding likely would be needed for ongoing operations, but after the failure of the 2012 referendum for such a school, the organizers and District agree that another referendum is not on the table.

(The Evanston Public Library is holding a two-part discussion on the history of school segregation in Evanston and plans for the new school this Thursday, May 13, and next Thursday, May 20, respectively. Both will be held on Zoom at 7 p.m.; registration is available online.)

The current proposal comes up at a time when the District is now projecting deficits that could reach $15 million by fiscal year 2026. The administration and Board are contemplating closing “underutilized buildings” and redrawing school attendance areas also partly due to declining enrollment, which the District projects will fall by more than 300 students to a little more than 7,000 by the 2024-25 school year.

“Considering decreasing enrollments and new financial reality, the District will try to eliminate the structural deficit by reducing its footprint and substantially reduce operating expenditures,” wrote Kathy Zalewski, business manager and treasurer, in a Jan. 30 memo. “Unfortunately, before this financial stability is achieved, difficult conversations with the community and difficult decisions will have to take place.”

During the next year, the District will undertake a Student Assignment Project to consider new attendance areas, which will include a look at “how to open a 5th Ward school in a fiscally responsible manner,” a Facilities Master Plan to “assess existing capital needs and conditions of existing buildings,” a Demographic Study to provide accurate enrollment projections over time, and community surveys to obtain input on all of the above.

“Addressing the structural [budget] deficit must become one of the District’s priorities, however, it must be done in accordance with the community standards of equity, including racial and social equity,” according to a recent Board presentation on the matter.

According to the most recent Illinois School Report Card, District 65’s student population is 43% white, 23% Black, 21% Hispanic, 9% multi-racial and 5% Asian, as well as 37% low-income and 15% English learners. In 2019, the aggregate (3^rd through 8^th grade) achievement gap between white and Black students was 45% on English and language arts state exams and 54% on mathematics. Between white and Hispanic students, those figures were 38% and 43%, respectively. Between low-income and non-low-income, they were 43% and 45%.

Details of the STEM School Proposal

The concept of a STEM-focused magnet school arose during a District 65 School Board meeting three years ago when Henry Wilkins, a 15-year resident of Evanston, heard community members speak out about the need for a Fifth Ward school. Mr. Wilkins said he had not known the history but became energized and set in motion the effort, which now involves more than 20 parents.

“We think it should be a magnet school that prioritizes families in the central core but is open to all families, similar to King Arts,” he said. “That attendance model is a winning proposition. Considering the gentrification of the Fifth Ward, it makes sense,” with the 2010 Census revealing that the community was only 41% Black. Although Mr. Wilkins added, “The Fifth Ward will still have one of the highest concentrations” of Black people in the City.

STEM School Evanston has received two grants totaling $50,000 from the Evanston Community Foundation to kick-start feasibility work and hire a firm to start looking at locations as well as estimates on how many square feet would be needed, what it might cost, and how to fund it.

Having looked at legal, real estate and financial considerations with the first of the two Evanston Community Foundation grants, STEM School Evanston is planning to use the second $25,000 allotment for “the development of “nonlinear” funding strategies, modeling 10-year capital costs and operations, financial structuring and projections, with presentations made to numerous community stakeholders for feedback,” according to the grant application.

Part of this funding will go toward a contract with consulting firm Equity Schools, Inc., which will “include modeling capital costs, operations, financial structuring, and projections,” the proposal reads. “With a goal of creating a school in the Central Core while precluding a financial burden on School District 65, Equity Schools will develop design concepts that afford revenue stream opportunities, such as lease income through innovative and complementary partnerships.” The overarching concept is to finance the building of the school through a combination of debt and private funding. The building would then be leased backed to the District to operate on a long-term basis, while providing an opportunity to sublet space for ongoing, alternative revenue sources to reduce the operating costs. 

Mr. Wilkins, who was recently selected to participate in District 65’s Student Assignment Advisory Committee, said the group has been adamant about two things: that no referendum be pursued, and that the new school not end up prompting the closure of a school elsewhere. The group envisions a K-8 school to which children throughout the District could attend, participating in project-based learning that would weave in all the typical elementary- and middle-school subjects.

Mr. Wilkins notes that STEM jobs are plentiful, the United States lags behind other industrialized countries in math and science achievement, and STEM education provides a good foundation for learning. “Kids that go to STEM schools, they’re excited about going to school. They love it,” he said. “You don’t have to be locked in to a STEM career. It still provides a good foundation no matter what you pursue.”

Bessie Mbadugha, a former chemistry professor at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and St. Mary’s College of Maryland, previously lived in Evanston as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern and had known children were bused out of the neighborhood.

“That broke my heart, kids having to get up earlier, having to do all this extra effort” to get to school, said Dr. Mbadugha, who has since returned to Evanston and is part of the STEM School Evanston effort. “Access is a huge priority. People may opt to stay at the school they’re at. But to have the chance to be at a school where I can walk, and build a true sense of community in the neighborhood – it takes talking to people face-to-face to understand the realities for these kids, being bused around town.”

Dr. Mbadugha, who is leading STEM School Evanston’s community engagement research, would like to bring STEM education to more Black and brown students, and said she values her own children’s experience attending a STEM-focused public charter school in North Carolina.

Nichole Pinkard, a Northwestern University education professor, Fifth Ward resident and adviser to STEM School Evanston, has been part of a group of faculty from NU’s School of Education and Social Policy that has been operating an after-school STEM hub called MetaMedia in the Family Focus building, in partnership with the McGaw YMCA. NU’s McCormick School of Engineering also provides programming at Family Focus, although not through MetaMedia.

“STEM programming needs to take place in the Fifth Ward,” Dr. Pinkard said. “The same way someone wants to learn to play basketball, if you want to teach kids STEM, they need to be able to do it at school but also at home with their friends. It has to be as accessible as a sport.”

Families that have the resources can provide such access, she said, but other children face an inequitable scenario, said Dr. Pinkard, who also will participate in the Student Assignment Advisory Committee.

“It has to be ‘both-and’,” she said. “You can bring in a STEM school, and that same school can be open to the community in the evening. It can allow parents to engage. They’re imagining a STEM hub and bringing access to the community. The research tells us you have to layer these experiences. … Just taking a STEM class one hour and 48 minutes a day is not necessarily going to lead to life opportunities. You need to make it part of your lifestyle.”

In leading the engagement research, Dr. Mbadugha places paramount importance on finding out what the community wants. “I don’t know exactly what the feeling is,” she said. “I’m very interested in finding out what people want.”

To begin with, Mr. Wilkins said, “The community might say, ‘We’re OK without a school.’ We want to understand what the community believes is a form of redress and repair. And we’re going to seek input beyond just the central core.”

Dr. Mbadugha said the group plans to solicit input from a broad spectrum. “We don’t want to just hear the voices of people who speak up the most,” she said. They’re doing surveys and focus groups, partly over Zoom, but plans are in the works to have outdoor events and gather written hard-copy responses to “make sure we reach people who don’t necessarily do Zoom, or e-mail,” she added.

“It’s an interesting model. The District isn’t saying, ‘We will tell you what to do,’ ” Dr. Pinkard noted. “They’re willing to listen to the community. … What is the vision? What do we need to bring this forward? The District is not stopping us. They’re saying, ‘Bring forth your creativity.’ ”

Leadership Reaction to the Proposal

Although he is relatively new to Evanston, District 65 Superintendent Dr. Devon Horton said he is well-versed on the history of the closure of Foster School and what’s followed in the decades since then. “When you think about a community, and how do you bring better culture and enrichment, schools serve as a hub for that,” he said. “When a community doesn’t have that entity, it’s problematic. We are also requiring African American and Latinx children in the Fifth Ward to carry the burden of diversifying the rest of the District by getting on a bus. Students never have the chance to go to school with each other, because they are divided up.”

Dr. Horton said he cannot commit to details like the timeline, the decision about magnet vs. attendance area, or the proposed STEM focus until the District’s various aforementioned planning processes play out. But he’s clearly smitten. “I’m in love with the idea,” he said. “The biggest thing for me is making sure all students in the Fifth Ward have the opportunity to attend a neighborhood school. … We may commit to the Fifth Ward, but the STEM piece may take some additional work. It’s important from my experience to have community buy-in with regard to what type of school.”

The 2023 timeline might or might not end up being realistic, Dr. Horton said. “I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” he said. “The most important thing is the student assignment planning, to get our ducks in a row. We have to take care of the entire district. My responsibility is to every single campus.” But, he added, “I love the go-getter spirit of the [STEM School Evanston] committee. That helps us to move faster.”

Dr. Horton said he envisions a number of options on how a magnet school could be carved up in terms of a Fifth Ward overlay. “It would be selling ourselves short if we felt that every family in the Fifth Ward wanted to go to that school,” he said. “We want to be open, creative, survey and conduct focus groups with families to see how they feel. We want exposure that’s heavier than 20%, for sure. Some [magnet schools] have 40% of seats for children in the local community.”

Having said that, Dr. Horton said he believes that a STEM focus “would fit in nicely” and knows that such schools have been successful elsewhere, in part due to the tie in with future careers. He said he could imagine a STEM school co-existing with the District’s two current magnets, rounding out their focuses on arts and world languages. “That gives families more choice and more options,” he said. “You also could have a school with multiple magnet programs within it.”

Anya Tanyavutti, District 65 School Board President and a mother of three children, two of whom attend District schools, said she will be thinking about the Fifth Ward school concept through two lenses: whether the idea will be beneficial for the District financially and pedagogically, the answers to which await the ongoing assessment work; and based on the experiences of Black and brown children in the Fifth Ward.

That group of children has had a “very different schooling experience than their peers, in the schools they attend,” said Ms. Tanyavutti, who will participate in the Student Assignment Advisory Committee. “It has not been beneficial to them and their families to have to begin their day and end their day an hour earlier and an hour later to obtain transportation to schools that are further away than many other children have to attend.”

Ms. Tanyavutti said she believes the Fifth Ward school would be an opportunity for social justice. “It’s broadly speaking been a racist experience, and a racist structure, and a racist policy, for the purposes of diversifying and desegregating homogenous, white and high-wealth schools,” she said. “That set-up is not good for our District. I don’t think it indicates to families the values of inclusivity, of equity, of appreciation and care.”

Ms. Tanyavutti said she sees value in a subject-focused magnet school, but she wants to ensure such a school would have value to the surrounding neighborhood. “There’s a certain amount of cohesiveness in the magnet structure,” she said. “But … there needs to be seats available, and not hoarded away from, the residents of the Fifth Ward.”

Whether or not a STEM school makes sense is a question that Ms. Tanyavutti would want to leave to the families and community members who would be most impacted. “Science, technology, engineering and math are excellent fields for integrating additional information in terms of English, and language arts – they interlay very well,” she said. “In addition, STEM fields classically have not had demographically representative employee structures.”

Joey Hailpern, a District 65 School Board member and father of four, whose three eldest children attend District schools, said he has appreciated the ability to walk to Walker Elementary with his kids, build community before and after school, and easily make it to school events.

“Building camaraderie around neighborhoods, that filters into the middle schools and high school,” he said. “The fact that there hasn’t been a school in the neighborhood that’s been fractionally displaced the way it has, for so long, is a story that’s been told over and over again. … It’s something I saw as a student, something I’ve seen as a parent, and something I’ve been vocal about as a Board member.”

Mr. Hailpern has mixed feelings about a magnet school, but he likes the idea of a STEM school, although he would prefer to expand the concept to ‘STEAM’ to also include the arts. A principal in Skokie School District 69, Mr. Hailpern said he believes a school down the street could help boost students’ academic performance.

“Everything that we’re trying to do is not just about fairness and about what’s right, it’s also about putting kids in a position to have the best opportunity possible, specifically Black and brown kids who have borne the burden of long bus rides,” he said. “Sometimes people stay after school to ask for help, or come in early. You can’t do that if you rely on transportation that moves on a block. I want a place for parents to volunteer, hang out, build community.”

Mr. Hailpern said he figures the specifics will evolve and change as the concept moves forward. “You dream a plan, you put together a blueprint, and some things have to change as you actualize the plan,” he said. “I’m excited about the energy that Henry [Wilkins] and the STEM School Evanston team bring to this idea. I’m excited that they’re engaging community members in supporting it, that they’re trying to draw in resources that actualize the plan.”

Board member Soo La Kim said she is fully supportive of returning a school to the Fifth Ward, echoing others in noting that students in the Fifth Ward would be able to socialize, feel a sense of belonging, and partake in enrichment activities before and after school, which Ms. Kim believes would boost their academic performance, as well.

As a mother of two children in the District, she said, “having a neighborhood school has been beneficial for my kids, being able to connect with friends and their families, and the independence you can foster when you can start walking to school, and the community you develop. I can see why families who don’t have that would want that.”

Ms. Kim said she likes the concept of a magnet school that would draw from across Evanston, but she wants to ensure that “the school is first and foremost for the Fifth Ward community.” She sees the value in a STEM-focused school as long as it’s well-rounded enough with offerings in literature, the arts and other subjects. “It’s a selling point,” she said. “I would want to hear what the Fifth Ward community wants, the parents there. If we are keeping equity as our focus for the District and for that school, how is that served?”

Donna Wang Su, president of the District 65 PTA Council and a newly sworn in School Board member, has two children in the District and says she believes every ward deserves to have a neighborhood school. “It’s an equity thing,” she said. “Once you start talking about transportation, what kind of enrichment programming do they have accessible to them before and after school? If you’re in the neighborhood, you walk five or 10 minutes, and you’re there, and you have a full 45 minutes to enjoy STEM programming, literacy, books and breakfast.”

Ms. Su said she supports the concept of a STEM school, although she has mixed feelings about whether it should be a magnet school. “It’s good that there would be a school in the Fifth Ward,” she said. “You would want preference for those within certain boundaries.”

Although the Fifth Ward is divided into several attendance areas, Ms. Su said she wonders if some families took that into account when deciding where to locate. “There is the random circle on the map that goes to Willard,” she said. “I understand if you bought a house in that little circle, and you were reliant on the Willard school [area] as part of your decision-making – looking at its Great Schools ranking, or anything of that sort.” Creating a magnet school “would appease those who bought in the Fifth Ward for the Willard designation, but it doesn’t address the larger picture.”

Community Reaction to the Proposal

Outgoing Fifth Ward Alderman Robin Rue Simmons, who has served in that post since 2017, comes from a six-generation Evanston family and said she has always supported a Fifth Ward school. Her mother and other relatives attended Foster School, and she attended King Lab and “had a great experience there.”

When Ms. Rue Simmons returned to Evanston 20 years ago to raise her children, “I saw this through the lens of a parent wanting to enjoy the same livability as my white friends and neighbors in town,” she said. But her children were bused to Willard and walked a distance to Haven, “which meant that they were not enjoying the same sense of place. Not having access to a neighborhood school informs social development, and relationships, and play dates. There are clear disadvantages.”

Ms. Rue Simmons said she supported the referendum in 2012, and now with the current proposal, she sees a Fifth Ward school in the context of the reparations legislation she shepherded through Evanston City Council early this year. “We had a robust series of stakeholder and community meetings to hear what forms of reparations they would like us to prioritize,” she said. “There were many recommendations in Evanston, including a Fifth Ward school.”

While Evanston was one of the first cities in the nation to desegregate schools, it did so at the expense of an historically Black neighborhood, Ms. Rue Simmons said. “It checked the box of diversity, but it damaged the neighborhood that lost that important resource,” she said. “Now, in 2021, our neighborhood children continue to be bused outside the neighborhood to diversify our schools. It’s not justice. We’ve learned so much and grown so much since we desegregated schools. It is past time to advance and fund a neighborhood school.”

Ms. Rue Simmons said she has no doubt that such a school would advance academic achievement in addition to other goals. “No matter how we program, and how we adjust curriculum, and what educators come into the school, we continue to have, in 2021, disparate academic success in the Black community,” she said. “If we had a neighborhood school, I’m confident that learning would be enriched, and the sense of place would allow our students to have more confidence, and to feel heard.”

The STEM idea is exciting to Ms. Rue Simmons, she said. “I love the concept. STEM-focused curriculum provides a pipeline to a viable career path and opportunities after Evanston schools that should be developed more. It is a nice complement to King Arts and Bessie Rhodes. … I believe that it will enrich our students, and therefore enrich our neighborhood families, and further our community.” If the school is to be a magnet, Ms. Rue Simmons said she would like to see a minimum of 40% priority for Fifth Ward children.

Fifth Ward resident Ndona Nyomo Muboyayi, who recently ran for District 65 School Board and has two children at Evanston Township High School, said she would like to see a school in the Ward but does not agree with all the reasoning of the advocates. “I do believe that a Fifth Ward school would be a good idea,” she said. “The children are bused to so many different schools. But I don’t believe the busing affects whether or not a child can learn. A lot of things are being added to the narrative that have no place there.”

Ms. Muboyayi says she agrees that a neighborhood school would create more community, yet she recalls walking to Lincolnwood and Haven growing up and never thinking twice about such things. “We didn’t always take the bus,” she said. “There was never a conversation about, ‘We have to do this because the white people won’t allow us to have a school.’ It was never, ‘Why are we getting up so early because there’s no school in our neighborhood?’ ”

And she said she never felt like she was leaving her community when traveling to Lincolnwood or Haven. “Not at all,” Ms. Muboyayi declared. “A lot of these people are exaggerating the story. I never thought, ‘Oh my God. I can’t go to a school down the street.’ It would be great – but it was never in my mind as a child.”

David Johnson-Niari, a Fifth Ward resident and parent who attended Willard and Haven, sent his daughter to those same schools, and has a son who goes to Oakton, said that a Fifth Ward school would be a nice option for children in the neighborhood and a point of pride for older generations who have felt the absence of a school community. “A new school in the community would be a new experience for the new generation,” he said.

But growing up, Mr. Johnson-Niari said he did not care about being bused – he often rode his bike, anyway – and it did not deter him as a parent, either. “I never really realized that I was leaving my community and going to another community,” he said. “I didn’t begin to see the history until I grew up and understood what Foster School was, that my mother went there. That became my community center – that’s where we would go for community fun, for after-school events.”

Orrington parent Kiera Kelly said she would view a state-of-the-art STEM magnet school in the Fifth Ward as a welcome development for the Ward, District and City. “Over the years, it has been clear that the lack of a neighborhood school here and the busing of kids outside of their own area has taken away a community touchstone that bonds families and neighbors together, and likely created barriers in participation and a sense of belonging,” she said. “There is a lot to be said about how proximity to school can add to a positive school experience.”

Financial Considerations

As the STEM School Evanston proposal moves forward, the District and Board will have to figure out how to fund ongoing operations, even if the nonprofit group successfully raises money for the building; whether opening a Fifth Ward school would mean closing one elsewhere, or if savings could be found in other ways – to begin with, there could be savings in busing costs – and how such a move might impact the District’s historic commitment to diversity.

Mr. Wilkins said he understands that his group has some work to do – and that the District and Board are looking at the larger picture as his group homes in on the Fifth Ward school. “We see ourselves as a separate train from the School District’s train,” he said. “We’re going to seek input from residents, seek buy-in, and provide the School District an option on how to pay for this without a referendum. … We have some heavy lifting to do our own end.”

Although the STEM School group has some general thoughts about possible locations, the site of the former Foster School is not an option, Mr. Wilkins said. “It’s $2 million to $3 million per floor to upgrade that space,” he said. “We’ve scrapped that idea and assumed that it’s a no-go.”

Once the group completes its feasibility study, it will be time to round the corner into fundraising mode, and Mr. Wilkins expressed optimism about interest from corporations and foundations. “Funding would be coming from the private sector for capital and any upgrades that are needed. It wouldn’t be coming from tax revenue,” he said.

Dr. Horton said he agrees with Mr. Wilkins that “we’re definitely not in the game of asking for a new referendum” to pay for the building. He said he imagined that perhaps unexpected funding sources could materialize. “The federal government has stepped up in unique ways to find dollars that we’ve claimed not to have” in the past, he noted.

The City Council’s recommendation that the District consider a Fifth Ward school as part of reparations did not come with a promise of funding, Ms. Rue Simmons declared. “Not at all,” she said. “The implication there is … a nudge for our institutional partners to do their part. I passed along feedback to both Districts 65 and 202, informing them of our community’s concern about education. This is not a suggestion, and certainly not a commitment, that the City of Evanston would fund it.”

Dr. Pinkard is not in a position to say whether Northwestern might go beyond in-kind educational contributions to putting in hard dollars to support such a school. “It’s above my pay grade, what involvement with Northwestern would look like, in building the building,” she said. “Once you build the building, there are so many ways you can support it. I know we will partner in making it happen and making it run.”

Ms. Muboyayi describes the District’s current budget situation as “a mess” and says she wonders how the Fifth Ward school can happen in the face of the deficits that are looming for the next several years. “I am for a Fifth Ward school, but to be honest, how are they going to come up with the money?” she said. “If cuts are going to be made, let’s talk about cutting some of the positions that are unnecessary, and the Board spending on things that are unnecessary, before talking about closing a school.”

Mr. Hailpern said he believes the District needs to find the funds to make it happen. “It’s about doing what’s right,” he said. “A budget is a moral document. If we really believe in this, it’s something we have to make space for, in terms of being able to afford it.… It’s also important that we don’t just respond by saying, ‘We love the idea; and if you find a way to pay for it, we’re behind it.’ I definitely would like to contribute.”

Ms. Kim says she wants to have all funding ideas on the table. While she is aware that the STEM School Evanston group is seeking private funding for the building, “Operating the school has to come from somewhere,” she said. “We are doing these different audits to get a more accurate picture of the financial situation that we’re facing – a buildings audit, a student assignment project. Those will be really critical in assessing a total financial picture.”

Implications for Facilities

Given the District’s financial realities, Dr. Horton said he expects opening a school would have domino effects elsewhere, “I would be hard-pressed to believe we can add a new building and keep everything else the same,” he said. Committing to a Fifth Ward school “will require adjustments to other facilities. I don’t know exactly what that will look like.”

An RFP put out this spring for master facility planning will provide information about the current conditions of buildings and expenditures required to get them up to code, as well as the efficiencies of different scenarios in terms of redrawing school boundary lines.

“Then, we can make informed decisions and have discussions with the community, advisory board and [School] Board,” Dr. Horton said. “We have to make sure we are not shooting ourselves in the foot with underutilizing facilities and putting money into campuses that may never be up to code.”

Ms. Tanyavutti said it is too soon to talk about possible school closures. “We do not have all the analysis and reports we would need to make that particular decision,” she said. “Whatever decision we do make, we want to be rooted in what is equitable and what is sustainable. The fiscal sustainability of the decision has to be a factor, as well.”

Opening a Fifth Ward school could lead to a closure elsewhere, Mr. Hailpern said, adding that it is too early to think about such a decision. He says he wonders whether creating efficiencies by co-locating programs like Two-Way Immersion or special education services could ease the budgetary picture.

But he also thinks closing a school could make sense, and he has raised the idea before—at a December 9, 2020, District 65 Finance Committee meeting—although in the context of the district continuing forward with a virtual school option for those who want it, as opposed to opening a Fifth Ward school. At that time, he discussed physical deterioration of certain school buildings and specifically mentioned the leaky basement in Orrington Elementary that sometimes leads to the evacuation of kindergarteners.

But in an interview more recently, Mr. Hailpern said he did not have a specific school in mind. “I don’t know what building that could be. It’s not pre-determined,” he said. “We might have some that would have greater value in terms of purchase price, and tax dollars, and continued revenue. We also need to look at enrollment—who’s coming in, are we growing, are we shrinking, how do we plan for the long-term pathway? … We can’t just be adding – we have to find a way to take away somewhere.”

Ms. Su said she favors a broad look at budget and enrollment figures before making major decisions. Her new Board colleagues “would like to consider all potential options. That strikes me as both refreshing and scary at the same time,” she said. “What’s refreshing is the possibility of the Fifth Ward getting a school. … The scary part is redrawing boundaries. There’s a lot of residents who – this may ruffle quite a few feathers. This could change their property value. Or, what does it mean if you’re currently at this school [that is closing]? For any kind of transition that might happen, there would need to be strategic planning, budget and timeline.”

As the District considers opening a Fifth Ward school, Ms. Kelly hopes the Board has not already decided that it must close a school in another neighborhood, although based on comments she’s heard in meetings, she fears it’s already a “foregone conclusion.”

“If that should happen to Orrington School, which has been mentioned or hinted at by some on the Board and now a new committee, that would mean a large area of Evanston will not be served by any District 65 public school” within one-and-one-half or two miles, she said. “Closing neighborhood schools would result in not only all of the downsides we now know, but may also impact enrollment in District 65, or even whether families want to stay or move to an area without a school. Some Realtors say removing neighborhood schools could impact property values, thus also tax revenues that are so important to the District.”

The District should consider closing one of the existing magnet schools, “instead of removing beloved neighborhood schools, and [creating] the feeling of a punitive move,” she said. She is also concerned about enrollment-related decisions being made immediately after the pandemic- and remote-school-related departures of students, some of whom might return once in-person schooling resumes. “I hope there will be wise analyses and decisions that prioritize equity and continue to offer a District 65 neighborhood school to all families,” she added.

Ms. Tanyavutti said no conclusions are foregone. “The stories that have been circulating that we have said we’re going to close a school are inaccurate and unfounded,” she said. “That’s not a discussion we’ve had at the board level. We don’t have enough information to come to a conclusion at this point. That is speculation.”

Outreach to wards in north Evanston that were lukewarm to the 2012 referendum is part of the plan for Mr. Wilkins, who has held or has planned meetings with the PTAs from Lincolnwood, Willard and Orrington schools. “These are the schools that could potentially be impacted with the opening of a central core school,” he said. “Kids are being bused in to provide diversity. Some of those communities have said, ‘We want the diversity. We want to keep doing that.’ Others have said, ‘That’s not fair. It’s on the backs of the kids standing at the bus stop.’ ”

The Value of Diversity

Dr. Horton might not object if the establishment of a new school and possible closure of an existing one led to an unbalancing of the District’s decades-old diversity initiative, which historically was built around the guideline that no racial or ethnic group comprise more than 60% of students in any one school. (That precise standard had to be scrapped after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in the case Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, which invalidated the use of race in making school-attendance decisions.)

“It’s premature for me to commit to sticking with it or not sticking with [a diversity goal],” Dr. Horton said. “With student assignment planning, we’re going to be surveying the community. There will be hard questions asked: ‘What are your priorities as a community member, a parent, a staff member? Is it diversity? Is it school choice? Is it programming?’ … Then, that decision will be made.” But he predicted: “The Evanston community has the appetite for it. We’re ready to tackle this issue. I’m anticipating a lot of support, collectively, to make this work out.”

Ms. Tanyavutti said she believes the conversation about redistricting is overdue. “The District has redistricted and reevaluated restructuring many times before, but never through the lens of racial equity. As a result, racist busing patterns have persisted. That is not in alignment, broadly speaking, with the values of our community,” she said. “The busing patterns to maintain an arbitrary percentage of diversity have not served our most vulnerable student population in ways that are reifying and affirming for them.”

All Evanston parents value having neighborhood schools for the proximity and the community they build, Ms. Tanyavutti said. “It is not the responsibility of the children of the Fifth Ward alone to maintain a perception of diversity,” she said. “It will certainly improve their experiences, and their sense of belonging, and their sense of representation and value. It will improve their parents’ experiences, and their parents’ sense of belonging and representation and value. It will also logistically change children’s experiences very significantly.”

Mr. Hailpern says he believes that taking away some diversity from existing schools could be a price worth paying. “My hunch is, we have a number of neighborhood schools currently that draw from natural boundaries that still would stay the same [diversity-wise],” he said. “If the ‘Willard island’ were taken out, that would change Willard a lot. But giving kids an hour of their day back, for me that’s worth the exploration. It’s also something we need to engage that community on. … We need to do an explicit listening tour, and make sure we’re building a school that they want.”

Ideally, Ms. Kim said she would like to maintain integration across all District 65 schools, but in the most equitable way. “If people are saying, ‘I don’t want my predominantly white school to be all white,’ that shouldn’t be on the backs of Black families, that diversity in your school,” she said. “We have to ask the hard questions about, what is integration for, and who does it benefit, if we feel an integrated, diverse environment is important for all our students. And I do, in general, believe that’s true.”

Busing children simply to create diversity is unjust, Ms. Muboyayi believes, although she does not assume that opening a Fifth Ward school would impact the District’s current school by school diversity that significantly. “The Fifth Ward is no longer majority Black,” she said. “It still would be a very diverse school, based on the fact that we’re no longer a majority in this neighborhood.”

Ms. Muboyayi said she suspects Black parents in Evanston might have felt more strongly about diverse schools 50 years ago than they do today. “The only issue is if the quality of the education is not the same,” she said. “That’s one of the problems we had during the time of segregation. Many Black people wanted separate but equal, but because they knew the quality of the education and materials would not be equal, they opted into desegregation. If separate-but-equal were a reality, I don’t think [the amount of diversity] would matter.”

Given the increasing diversity of the Fifth Ward – and the movement of the Black community to different parts of Evanston over the past 50 years – Mr. Johnson-Niari says he is unsure how precisely targeted a Fifth Ward school would be, in terms of bringing equity to the current generation of Black children.

“It’s no longer a Black community in the same sense it was 40 years ago,” he said. “My one neighbor’s white; my other neighbor’s Hispanic. … I don’t see how many of those [equity] rationales, that might seem simple, would apply in Evanston. It’s already been brought to the state where it’s pretty diverse. A school in the community is not going to change much.”

If Foster School had been around when he was growing up, Mr. Johnson-Niari reflected that he would have attended school with more children from his immediate neighborhood – but he would not have experienced the same diversity.

“I grew up believing that diversity made me a better person,” he said. “I do believe that being in a diverse atmosphere was essential to who I am today. We live in a certain kind of world. For an African-American student to be in a place where – this is a representation of the world, and of America. To work with all kinds of people … is something you have to prepare for. This is what Evanston prepared me for. It was a beautiful thing. It’s why I moved back to Evanston, to give [his children] exactly what I experienced.”

Ultimately, Ms. Kim notes, the District and Board are in the very early stages of exploring a multitude of angles. “People have a lot of questions,” she said. “They’re nervous. The focus should be on that question of, ‘Does every student in the District have access to what we consider a good education?’ And since one of those [aspects] seems to be access to a neighborhood school: ‘How can we provide that to everyone who wants it?’ ”

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Ed Finkel is an Evanston-based freelance writer whose children attended District 65 schools from 2004-2020. He wrote about the mid-2000s attempt to bring a school to the Fifth Ward for the Chicago Reporter magazine.