The Board of Education for Evanston/Skokie School District 65 announced in September it would hire a consultant to assist the district in school closures, teacher layoffs, and other expense cuts to reverse the district’s millions in budget deficits from the previous years. The board announced on Oct. 7 it would hire the consultant by the end of the month.
The last day consultants could have applied to assist the district was on Oct. 11, and the board will vote to approve the consultant on Oct. 28, according to the district’s CFO Tamara Mitchell. A special board of education meeting was scheduled for Oct. 15 to discuss the district’s deficit reduction plan and updates on the incoming Foster School.
“Additional support is necessary, given the short timeline and magnitude of the work that is ahead of us,” Mitchell said. “Also consultants will bring expertise and objectivity to the process.”
Mitchell presented to the Board of Education the outlines of a five point deficit reduction plan they will want the consultant to focus on. The five points include school closures, staff layoffs, finding new revenue sources for the construction of Foster School, making special education classes cheaper, cutting transportation costs via changing the start and end times of the school day, and in some cases, eliminating bus routes.
Mitchell said the consultant will work alongside the administration and will be hired based on previous experience and references.
Superintendent Angel Turner said the consultant could also assist the district in finding out what the priorities of the deficit reduction plan should be.
“This is massive work,” she said. “When the consultant starts the work, they will have to hit the ground running in a sense to really take a lot of information that we are giving them to be able to synthesize (the information) and be able to come up with some options for us to really think through.”
In September, Robert Grossi, another consultant hired by the district, said the Board of Education would need to make “bold and immediate” decisions to cut expenses. Failure to do so would put the district on a path of fiscal insolvency, starting a process that could potentially culminate in the state stepping in for oversight, he said.
Grossi had been appointed to serve on previous state Financial Oversight Panels on a volunteer basis and served as recently as 2012, Jackie Matthews, executive director of communications for the Illinois State Board of Education, previously confirmed.