Evanston residents showed up to a special Evanston/Skokie School District 65 Board of Education meeting Oct. 15, some furious because they had heard a rumor that the Board of Education was considering pausing construction at Foster School.
But according to staff and Board members, there was no truth to those rumors. According to the district’s Communication Manager, Hannah Dillow, a motion to pause construction a the school district’s only school in Evanston’s historically Black Fifth Ward was never presented to the board on Tuesday. Dillow said the special meeting was called to address the concerns of residents who might be concerned that construction is coming to a pause at Foster School as the district overall is looking to cut $13.2 million in expenses before the start of the next school year.
In a prepared statement to the public, Board President Sergio Hernandez said, “I believe the board has a responsibility to be here today to engage in public discussion on Foster School, knowing that our financial landscape has changed since the approval of the new school design (which saw Foster School convert from a K-8 to a K-5). We must reiterate our commitments to this new school and what it means to our community while acknowledging our financial reality.”
Board member Joseph Hailpern said the board received a memo from the district’s financial advisor to consider pausing construction. “I just think we should talk about it as a board publicly,” he said, before clarifying that he did not support pausing construction.
District 65 has operated on budget deficits greater than $10 million for the last three school years. The board plans to address the school district’s financial woes through a deficit reduction plan that will result in further school closings, teacher layoffs, and budget cuts to special education and transportation. The plan will be presented to the board in January.
Board member Mya Wilkins said discussing pausing construction at Foster School felt disingenuous, given that other options had not yet been explored.
“What we’re going to do is what seems like the easiest and, once again, sacrifice a community that has literally gone 50-60 years without a school because that’s the easiest and most obvious thing to do,” Wilkins said.
Several public commenters also argued that pausing construction at Foster School would contradict the district’s progress, especially because the original Foster School was closed after it was integrated in 1966.
Roger Williams, a member of Championing Racial Equity Work in District 65, said “pausing opens the door to a complete stoppage and the continuation of a historic wrong.”
“We believe that building a building in the Fifth Ward that the children can walk to is the best solution for all children in that neighborhood. The Fifth Ward is the only ward in Evanston that does not have a neighborhood school,” Williams said.
None of the board members spoke in favor of pausing construction. “It doesn’t sound like we’re stopping this at all,” said Hailpern. “But rumors are swirling that we’re going to build, that we’re not going to build, and then we wait too long (to address the topic).”
Board member Donna Wang Su said the rumor of the board being hesitant to keep construction moving forward did not come from the board itself, but from “people that are out there hiding behind their computers and on YouTube and all the social media comments about why we should pause.”
“I challenge them to come up here, stand in front of the podium and tell me why — and go publicly with their face and name and everything — why we should pause,” Su said.
The board did not need to officially vote on keeping construction at the same pace because it was not presented as a motion.
