District 65 board will not vote on budget plan Monday

The Evanston/Skokie District 65 school board will not vote Monday to advance the district’s budget plan, according to an email sent to the community late Friday afternoon.

For weeks, parents have been calling on the school board to delay the vote, which would trigger the implementation of the budget plan, including kick-starting the official hearings necessary before the board can officially vote to close schools.

According to an email that District 65 board Vice President Chris Van Nostrand sent to Dewey Elementary parent Adam Freeman early Friday afternoon, the board will delay the vote by at least a week “to try to re-assess the information the board has been provided.”

The district officially announced the change in an email sent to the community at 4:45 p.m. Friday, signed by board President Nichole Pinkard, Van Nostrand and interim Superintendent Eric Witherspoon.

“Given the significance of the decisions ahead, board leadership and district administration believe it is important to allow additional time for discussion and consideration of the proposed financial sustainability plan,” the email states. “Our discussion will continue at the November 9 meeting, with a vote anticipated on November 16 regarding whether to commence the public hearing process for possible school closures.”

The lack of a vote Monday is an unexpected reversal. At the Oct. 26 board meeting, administrators maintained that, despite accidentally overstating spending by millions in their five-year financial projections, they would not be making significant changes to their plan to close Lincolnwood and Dewey elementary schools and cut nonmandated programs.

In the days since that meeting, the district announced that it will no longer be cutting the School Age Child Care program. The district also said, following inquiries from the RoundTable, that the estimated $17 million error disclosed last week was, after further study, found to be $27.35 million — a $10 million difference. The district also told the RoundTable that it incorrectly did not include payments on the lease certificates used to build Foster Elementary School in its financial projections.

District 65 parents who are lawyers threatened to sue the district if the board voted Nov. 9. They received a message from an attorney for District 65 on Thursday calling their threat to sue “premature,” but the letter indicated that the board planned to vote Nov. 9.

The board is set to meet in public session at the Joseph E. Hill Early Childhood Center at 5 p.m., Monday, Nov. 9. A protest sponsored by the Illinois Education Association is scheduled to take place at 4 p.m., prior to the meeting.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include the district’s email to the community Friday afternoon.

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District 65 board will not vote on budget plan Monday

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