The Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Board of Education on Nov. 20 unanimously rejected a proposal to close Lincolnwood Elementary School at the end of the school year at a special Board meeting.

With a limited number of days remaining to cast a binding vote on which schools the district will close at the end of the school year to balance the district’s budget, the Board committed to revisit previous school closure proposals at its next meeting.

At a Nov. 17 meeting, a tied 3-3 vote on the Board meant that the district will not move forward with two options that were on the table: closing both Kingsley and Lincolnwood elementary schools or closing solely Kingsley, at the end of the year. As it stands now, both schools will remain open.

The Board committed to take up those same two options, and reconsider closures, at another special board meeting on Dec. 1, but it’s not clear whether any Board members have significantly altered  their positions.

“I don’t want to close any schools,” said Board President Patricia Anderson. “But I want to maintain financial stewardship over District 65.”

“I have first hand experience of what school closure looks like,” Anderson said, pointing to her experience at District 65’s soon-to-close Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies.

The calendar, as established by the Board, will create a window between the Dec. 1 vote and a binding Dec. 19 vote for the district to host at least three public hearings on school closures.

Illinois law requires three public hearings for each school the district will consider closing. The district could schedule two public hearings on the same day if the Board decides to close two schools at the end of the year.

The Dec. 1 vote will take place before the Board can appoint a new member to fill a seat vacated by Board member Omar Salem, who left the Board before it could pick a path on which schools it would close. The Board is anticipated to appoint a new member at a special board meeting on Dec. 16.

Superintendent Angel Turner said any further postponement for the Board in making a decision will result in no further school closures at the end of the 2025-26 school year, apart from Bessie Rhodes, a K-8 magnet school which the previous Board voted in 2024 to close.

Turner read out loud a letter penned by D65 school principals who said they have “deep disappointment and growing concern” that the Board has yet to come to a consensus on school closures. Turner did not say which of the district’s 18 principals wrote the letter.

“As building leaders who are responsible for the daily safety, academic growth and wellbeing of every student and staff member in our care, we must express that the Board’s ongoing inability to reach a decision on the school district’s structural deficit reduction process is actively undermining the stability of our schools,” they wrote.

“… The consequences are not abstract, ” the principals wrote. “If the Board reaches the point of state intervention, as becomes more likely with continued indecision, the impacts will be devastating and immediate.”

In 2024, the district’s financial consultant warned the previous Board that if it did not make major cuts, the district would likely be headed to a takeover by the Illinois State Board of Education. Under that scenario, the district and its finances would not be controlled by the locally elected board, but by the state.

In 2023, the district began a Structural Deficit Reduction Plan to cut millions of dollars in expenses, which has resulted in cuts to dozens of teaching and administrative positions, the closure of Bessie Rhodes School and the consideration of more school closures.

At the Nov. 17 meeting, the board also voted on a measure to close Willard Elementary School and Kingsley. That measure, however, was voted down unanimously by the board.

Board members Sergio Hernandez, Mya Wilkins and Andrew Wymer have previously voted in favor of closing Kingsley and Lincolnwood, with Wilkins saying she is trying to cut down on the possibility of future uncertainty in the district.

Board members Maria Opdycke, Anderson and Nichole Pinkard have previously voted to only close Kingsley at the end of the school year, with some saying they will keep an open mind at looking at new data sources and the opening of Foster School next school year to see if the Board will need to consider closing an additional school next year.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/21/evanston-skokie-d65-board-will-keep-lincolnwood-open/