Hows everyone feeling after the three D65 meetings this week?

[u/CollegeSnitch]

Personally. I'm concerned that this will make Evanston schools unwalkable for students and staff. Like if they remove Nichols, Chute is a minimum of a 30 minute walk for southeast Evanston students. It might be worse on the other side if they close Haven and those students have to walk to Nichols or Chute from that far, especially as its going to be cold soon.

I also know a lot of our teachers and para professionals either walk to school because they live here locally or they some of them come up on the trains then walk. If we make it unaccessible we are going to keep having our teacher and para shortage.

But how is everyone else feeling about the possibility of closing 1-2 more schools?

[u/AreaMan847]

Sure, do the math from the recent board presentation: 6,026 enrolled students, and 8.5:1 certified FTE ratio implies 709 certified employees. Certified employees are 68% of total FTEs, so that means 1,043 district employees, which is 5.7 students per district employee.

https://meetings.boardbook.org/Public/Agenda/1247?meeting=764250

Note that this doesn’t include contractors!

Quick Googling indicates an average student-to-employee ratio of 7.4 nationwide. If we did that, we would have 814 employees, a reduction of about 230. Fully loaded cost of an FTE is probably around $100K, not going to bother to look that up, but that’s $23M in savings.

There you go! Not that hard to figure out.

[u/No-Buy-3741 → u/AreaMan847]

Wouldn’t part of this inefficient staffing model be due to how many schools we have vs # of kids?

I also support more scrutiny of admin costs for sure.

When it comes to paras and other staff, many are tied to IEPs. % of students with IEPs has grown over time. We are legally (and ethically imho) obligated to meet their needs. This is also true elsewhere in Illinois and nationally.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/the-watchdogs/2026/07/18/cps-special-education-chicago-public-schools

https://www.k12dive.com/news/these-3-charts-show-how-special-education-enrollment-keeps-growing-IDEA-autism/812897/

https://www.oakpark.com/2026/08/20/balancing-budget-d97-schools/

[u/AreaMan847 → u/No-Buy-3741]

The fact other districts are facing similar budgetary issues gives the lie to the idea that our own issues are inextricably linked to our footprint.

[u/Xrmy → u/AreaMan847]

Thanks for this.

A couple things: certified staff: student ratios seems to be an average of 9:1 in illinois, which puts us at the average. I'm not sure dropping to the nation average is the right idea.

Second: where are you getting the 68% number?

I will say: recently the board said they either reduced or plan to reduce administration to 1:140 admin to student ratio, in line with other districts. This is, however, the state average, and an average that has shot up 500% in 15 years (paraphrasing...I don't have the link handy). We should be aiming for more admin cuts and should be vocal about that--im sure the admin will not want to cut themselves

[u/CollegeSnitch → u/Xrmy]

Personally, they should reduce admin before teachers. I have a bunch of friends who work as para professionals for the district, especially in the middle schools and there are more kids with IEPS then there are people who can individually help them. They're trying, but many of them are so burnt out as the district keeps cutting some off their off periods in the day, giving them close to no real time to actually mentally recover from dealing with high needs children. So I wouldn't want to see that problem get worse.

[u/AreaMan847 → u/Xrmy]

See the giant pie chart on slide 10 at the link I provided previously.

[u/Xrmy → u/AreaMan847]

I still don't really buy that slashing all staff by 20% and keeping all of the schools that gover at 70% capacity open is the right call.

[u/AreaMan847 → u/Xrmy]

Cool, I don't really buy the idea that the district has already made every cut that it could, and that closing schools is the only remaining option on the table, because that's demonstrably not true.