In an Oct. 16 letter that came as a shock to parents of students at Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies, Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Superintendent Angel Turner announced that the school’s seventh and eighth grades will be terminated in mid-November and the students transferred to other schools.
That news was followed by a thwarted attempt to hold a meeting with parents, a letter from the mayors of Evanston and Skokie saying “families are reeling” and asking the district to delay the class closures, and complaints from parents that the district lacks transparency and made its decision to shut down the grade levels with no public input. Parents have planned an Oct. 28 protest march.
Turner’s letter said the seventh and eighth grades at Bessie Rhodes will be shut down at the end of the school’s first trimester, or Nov. 15. The financially troubled school district’s Board had already voted in June to close Bessie Rhodes, the district’s sole bilingual school, as of July 1, 2026.
Hannah Dillow, the district’s communication manager, said the Board of Education did not vote to eliminate seventh and eighth grades at the school.
“This was a pragmatic, administrative decision,” she said.
Bessie Rhodes has about 40 students total in its seventh and eighth grades, and a “limited team of educators do not provide the consistent, well-rounded learning environment that our students need and deserve as they prepare to enter high school,” per the letter, which said students will continue in seventh and eighth grade at their neighborhood middle school.
Superintendent Turner’s Oct. 16 letter announcing the grade closures invited affected Bessie Rhodes parents to a group Zoom meeting scheduled for the evening of Oct. 17, but at about 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 17, a subsequent letter from Assistant Superintendent of Instructional Leadership Katie Speth and Chief of Schools Charmekia McCoy said the meeting was canceled after the Zoom link was compromised.
The Speth and McCoy letter said that in lieu of that meeting, the district would hold individual meetings with students’ families over Zoom from Oct. 18 to Oct. 22, and they asked parents to schedule a meeting time.
On the afternoon of Friday, Oct. 18, the mayors of Skokie and Evanston sent a public letter to District 65 saying they were “startled and concerned” and “uneasy” with the district’s actions.
At about 5:30 p.m. Friday, the district sent an email telling Bessie Rhodes parents the school their child would be attending starting on Nov. 18.
“Requests to change schools will not be considered,” the letter said.
Dillow, the D65 communication manager, said the district does not provide bussing for middle school students, except for students with certain individualized education plans and students who attend Chute Middle School and live west of McCormick Boulevard.
“The transportation department will be reaching out to impacted Bessie Rhodes families who are eligible for transportation with the necessary information,” she said.
“We fully recognize the many feelings that have come in the wake of this news. Mental health professionals, Family and Community Engagement (FACE) Liaisons, and our district Culture & Climate team have been onsite to help students, families, and staff process this news. We have put a significant amount of thought into this decision and care to ensure a smooth transition over the next six weeks. We are continuing to take in families’ concerns and thoughts and are working to address those needs to the best of our ability,” Dillow said.
Parents of students at Bessie Rhodes are feeling a sense of frustration for what they see as a lack of transparency and communication between them and the district, they told Pioneer Press.
A protest march to “fight the eviction of our 7th and 8th graders” is scheduled for Oct. 28, according to one of the protest’s organizers, Michele Neuendorf. The march will begin at 4:30 p.m. at Bessie Rhodes School, 3701 Davis St., Skokie, and proceed to the district’s offices at Joseph E. Hill Early Childhood Center in Evanston to present public comment at the next Board of Education meeting.
Neuendorf, a parent of a fourth grader at Bessie Rhodes, said “we don’t know that much, because we haven’t been told that much.” She said she is looking into open records requests to pursue answers, because of what she called a lack of communication. By contrast, when the district announced Bessie Rhodes was going to be closed, it held three public meetings.
“The Board has not issued a statement, held a meeting, nothing. I don’t know how that isn’t in violation of the Open Meetings Act,” Neuendorf said.
Katawna “K” Tyler, a parent of an 8th grader at Bessie Rhodes, said she was angry and in shock when she found out that the school would no longer teach her child after Nov. 15.
“I had been in conversation with people from the superintendent’s office… and they always kept saying ‘we’re working on something.’” she said.
“The decision’s made the school is closing, but how they’re handling this, it feels like we’re being bullied,” Tyler said. “They’re not telling us the truth about how they implemented it — just to push it through and get it done and kind of just bulldoze over us.”
Tyler said she was aware there was a shortage of teachers for 7th and 8th grade classes, “but we don’t need 1,000 teachers. We probably need three teachers to fix this problem.”
The news of the closures rocked the Evanston and Skokie areas.
Skokie Mayor George Van Dusen and Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss sent a joint letter to Turner and the District 65 Board of Education on Oct. 18.
“We were startled and concerned to see Wednesday afternoon’s announcement that the 7th and 8th grade sections of Bessie Rhodes will be closed as of November 15th. We were further troubled to learn that the meeting with Bessie Rhodes families that had been initially planned has now been canceled in favor of a series of individual discussions,” the letter said.
“Of course, you are, at least, as aware as we are of how disruptive it is to remove children from their school in the middle of the year, particularly in the emotionally and socially challenging middle school ages. This is exacerbated by the short notice, the choice not to hold an open discussion with the affected stakeholders either before or after the decision was made, and the lack of clarity about what drove this decision and why you believe it to be necessary. Families are reeling.”
“We recognize that District 65 is in a very difficult financial position, and we fully understand that you know far more than we do about the District’s challenges and the options available to address them. But it is precisely these difficulties that make us uneasy with the approach you have taken on the Bessie Rhodes 7th and 8th grade issue. Right now, across our whole community, District 65 families who have long been well aware of the tough choices that will be required to right the ship are asking themselves: ‘If they’re willing to throw a bunch of kids out of their school two weeks before Thanksgiving, what on earth are they going to do next? What’s going to happen to my kid?’”
“The best way to avoid that potential panic is to be fully open with all stakeholders, both about the problems and a full menu of potential solutions, before taking dramatic action. For this reason, we are respectfully requesting that you at least temporarily reverse your decision and facilitate that discussion. Our community is passionate about public education and loves its schools, and…we believe that people will rally around a solution that they believe in and had a role in shaping.”
More school closures are expected to be announced in the near future to tackle the district’s budget crisis that saw the last three school years end with deficits greater than $10 million. At a September school board meeting, the district’s Chief Financial Officer, Tamara Mitchell, announced a five point deficit reduction plan that will close schools, lay off staff, and cut special education and transportation costs.
The district earlier said it will hire a consultant to assist the district draft and implement the plan before the end of the month.
