North Shore School District 112 voted Thursday to begin withdrawing from TrueNorth Educational Cooperative 804, joining several other area districts in a move that could ultimately dissolve the special education organization.

D112’s Board of Education voted unanimously to leave the cooperative effective June 30, 2027, following warnings from district officials that TrueNorth’s 17 other member districts have also indicated plans to withdraw.

If D112 were to remain the only member district that hadn’t indicated intent to withdraw by July 1, 2025, it could have potentially become liable to absorb all of TrueNorth’s assets and its 120 staff members.

D112 Superintendent Michael Lubelfeld said he plans to work with other member districts and TrueNorth’s independent leadership counsel in the coming two years to revise the cooperative’s bylaws in hopes of encouraging members to remain.

Other districts have become frustrated with the cooperative’s financial model, which charges all districts membership fees while some benefit more heavily from the services provided than others, D112 Board Member Lisa Hirsh, the district’s liaison to the cooperative, previously said.

If a revised financial and governing model can be developed that satisfies its members’ needs, Lubelfeld said he will later recommend D112’s board reverse its withdrawal.

As a precaution, however, Lubelfeld urged D112 board members to leave the cooperative. Remaining in the cooperative without other members, he said, would negatively impact the district’s 15 students enrolled at TrueNorth and create financial and legal risks for the district.

“This past year has been incredibly difficult, watching a once strong cooperative begin to crumble,” said Hirsh, a parent of a child graduating from TrueNorth next year. “The decision I make tonight is deeply personal, but I also know that I must separate what’s best for my own family and what is best for the district as a whole, especially when it comes to financial responsibility.”

D112 was a founding member of TrueNorth in 1960, one of the first special education joint agreements in Illinois. Until recently, D112’s administration recommended staying in the cooperative and blocking others from withdrawing.

TrueNorth provides an array of specialized services at its two Highland Park campuses and on-site school grounds to North Shore districts who don’t have independent resources for programs such as early childhood support, speech therapy and adapted physical education.

TrueNorth will continue servicing its students and employing its staff in the upcoming 2025-’26 school year, according to a May 28 letter to families from former Superintendent Kurt Schneider.

Lubelfeld said Schneider plans to resign as TrueNorth’s superintendent effective July 11. Schneider’s departure will likely require the cooperative to hire an interim superintendent to navigate the ongoing deliberations. 

Districts who initiate the two-year withdrawal process are still allowed to revisit their decision to withdraw, Schneider wrote. This gives districts time to create support plans for their students who currently receive services from TrueNorth moving forward.

Glenview Community Consolidated School District 34 has already gained approval to withdraw from the cooperative on June 30, 2026. Glenbrook High School District 225 is seeking to withdraw that same date. New Trier Township High School District 203 is seeking to withdraw effective June 30, 2027.

The Record is a nonprofit, nonpartisan community newsroom that relies on reader support to fuel its independent local journalism.

Become a member of The Record to fund responsible news coverage for your community.

Already a member? You can make a tax-deductible donation at any time.

Citing a decline in student enrollment, North Shore Education District 112 will close Red Oak Elementary School in the 2027-’28 school year and consolidate its dual-language program into Oak Terrace Elementary School. 

D112’s Board of Education voted 5-2 on Thursday to approve the plan, with board members Art Kessler, Melissa Itkin, Jenny Butler, Lisa Hirsh and Bennet Lasko voting in favor. 

Lori Fink and Jaret Fishman — two newly elected School Board members — voted in opposition and echoed concerns voiced by local parents that the district moved too quickly toward consolidation and bypassed concerns from families who will be most impacted by the school closure.

At the start of the 2026-’27 school year, all dual-language kindergarten students will attend Oak Terrace. In the 2027-’28 school year, all dual-language students, from kindergarten through fifth grade, will attend Oak Terrace. D112’s early childhood program will return to Green Bay School.

Defending the decision, Board President Kessler said the district must confront the truth that overall enrollment in the dual-language program has dropped by 29% between 2018 and 2024, and a recent demographic study projects a continued 21% drop over the next 10 years. 

The sustained decline— particularly among Spanish-dominant English-learner families, a key population for the dual-language program’s 50/50 immersion model — is due in part to circumstances like “construction patterns” outside the district’s control and unlikely to reverse, Kessler said. 

The board president argued consolidation will ultimately strengthen D112’s dual-language program and noted Oak Terrace was recommended to house it because the school has the physical capacity, was recently updated and is geographically closer to a larger concentration of Spanish-speaking families.

“For more than 30 years, District 112 has been deeply committed to dual-language education,” Kessler said. “This commitment to the program has not disappeared. It’s precisely this commitment that is driving my decision.”

The slated closure of the 67-year-old school building, however, came after sustained pushback from parents who questioned the consistency of the D112’s projected enrollment numbers and argued the district could better support its dual-language program to see it grow. 

“Do you as board members believe that this plan is as well thought out and as thorough as it can be to move forward?” Cathy Curran, a D112 parent, asked on Thursday. “Where in your plan are you going to address the fact that parents feel lied to, feel that no matter what they say, it doesn’t matter?” 

Student enrollment drops

Red Oak first opened in 1958 as a junior high school before it transitioned into an elementary school in 1979. 

D112’s dual language program launched at Oak Terrace in 1996 with the goal of helping students become bilingual, biliterate and “develop positive attitudes toward language and diverse cultures,” a district website says. Red Oak became a full dual-language school in the 2018-’19 school year.

There were 54 kindergarten-level Spanish-speaking English-learners in D112’s dual-language program in 2018. That dropped to 38 in 2024, according to the district. Total enrollment in the program has reportedly dropped from 695 students to 523 between the 2020-’21 and ’24-’25 school years.

D112’s June data anticipates total enrollment will continue to drop to a total of 509 dual-language students in the upcoming school year.

D112 projects a consolidated dual-language program would house 457 students at Oak Terrace in the ’27-’28 school year.

Enrollment dropped at Red Oak from 260 dual-language students in 2020-’21 to 225 this past fall. Oak Terrace had 435 dual-language students in the 2020-’21 school year and 298 in the fall. 

Backing their decision

Kessler argued the district did not arrive at consolidation through a rushed process because the administration has monitored its dual-language enrollment over the past five years and first recommended closing Red Oak in early 2022. 

Itkin said the decision might seem sudden to parents who do not regularly follow School Board meetings, but she believes the process has moved at an “appropriate pace.”

In terms of declining enrollment trends, Lasko added that nationwide falling birth rates have led to a reduction in the overall school age population, and challenges to immigration and increases to the local cost of housing have made the district less viable for new families. 

In Lasko’s view, taking more time to consider closing Red Oak will likely only make the process more painful in the event of budget cuts deriving from further enrollment drops. 

Kessler further argued that modifying the program to an 80/20 model won’t change the demographic shift or incentivize more Spanish-speaking families to enroll. There are no plans for increased class sizes at Oak Terrace and there are funds in place to further support the school grounds, he said.

The Oak Terrace building received “substantial upgrades” during the first phase of the district’s long-range facility plan, including new mechanical systems, enhanced security, renovated main offices, and additional classroom restrooms, a district memo said. 

‘I don’t think we did everything right’

Fink, who was elected to the school board in April, asked the board to pause and only move forward weighing consolidation after engaging more families. The board member lodged that the district has reversed commitments instead of celebrating the program’s successes.

“In trying to solve one problem, uncertain enrollment, we’ve created another: division in our community, a loss of trust in how we engage our families, and the risk of weakening a program that reflects our district’s highest values of equity, inclusion and global readiness,” Fink said.

Fisher said the district should not ignore how “too many families feel unheard.” He wished the Superintendent’s Task Force, which will launch in August and incorporate community members to help with the transition, formed in 2022 instead when conversations about consolidation accelerated.

Curran argued during the meeting’s public comment session that families feel the task force members will be handpicked by the district to purposely leave out those who have been most vocal, and that the administration approached studying consolidation with predetermined notions.

During past board meetings, parents argued dual-language student enrollment was down because families are hesitant to enroll their children in a program that appears to lack committed support from the administration, and that the district has repeatedly underestimated enrollment by relying on capped pre-kindergarten numbers or information skewed by the pandemic. 

Members of the audience spoke out against Hirsh when she spoke during the June 12 board meeting in favor of the D112 administration’s formal recommendation to close Red Oak, and audience members again interjected from the gallery on Thursday by accusing Lasko of speaking “lies.”

Lasko acknowledged closing a school is the “third rail of school governance” and this process has caused anguish for families. After the vote, Fink said the district should review how to make families and school staff feel more included about this type of process moving forward, and Kessler agreed.

“I look back on this process myself in terms of how it played out and I don’t think we did everything right,” Kessler said. “I think we could have done some things better and I think a lot about that.”

The Record is a nonprofit, nonpartisan community newsroom that relies on reader support to fuel its independent local journalism.

Become a member of The Record to fund responsible news coverage for your community.

Already a member? You can make a tax-deductible donation at any time.