‘Crunch Time’ for District 65: Kingsley to close at end of school year

(Editor’s Note: Hope Perry reported this story for the Evanston RoundTable, a neighboring independent newsroom. It was shared with The Record as part of an ongoing collaborative effort.)

The Evanston/Skokie District 65 School Board voted 6-0 on Thursday to close Kingsley Elementary School at the end of this school year.

“This has been a heavy lift for all of us,” Board President Pat Anderson said in remarks before the vote, adding, “I am looking forward to getting out into the community from behind my laptop and behind my phone and back into the schools.”

The district has been considering school closures amid financial crisis and a need to cut $10 million to $15 million by fiscal year 2030 following several years of budget deficits.

The special meeting and vote to close Kingsley took place Thursday immediately following the third of three required closure hearings. That vote also included the approval of new school attendance boundaries.

The final decision closes a chapter that included months of deadlock, when four closure options repeatedly came before the board but could not garner the support to pass.

It wasn’t until Jan. 9 that the board voted unanimously to start the Kingsley closure process, after the community had been told the deadline for the board to decide to close a school had passed.

The board and the district are now faced with the challenge of closing of two schools at the end of this year, Kingsley and the Skokie’s Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies, in addition to opening the new Foster School in the fall.

Requests from the Kingsley community

Over the course of two public hearings on Thursday, one in the morning and one directly before the vote, Kingsley parents and students consistently asked the board to prioritize student and teacher well-being during the closure process.

“I want the teachers to be treated fairly,” said June Dvorak, a second-grader at Kingsley.

Kingsley parent Katy Shapiro spoke to the board as a representative from the Kingsley PTA Executive Committee, reiterating requests for two-way feedback sessions.

“Kingsley families have been processing this closure for a long time and understand the rationale,” Shapiro said. “But we haven’t had a chance for real questions to be answered about things like transfer requests and the criteria for approving those.”

She also asked that the board prioritize Kingsley staff and have a plan to help students transition to their new schools. The new boundaries approved by the board on Thursday will send Kingsley students to four neighboring schools.

Quinn McNamara, a third-grader at Kingsley, said that she was at the meeting to remind the board “you work for us, the children at these schools.”

In addition, members of the Legion of Data Nerds parent group informed the board that they had sent out a survey to the Kingsley community.

Lauren McNamara said that the survey had received 120 responses from Kingsley parents, and that the results showed a “strong alignment” between Kingsley families and the new attendance boundaries proposed by the district.

“This decision can’t just be about managing next year’s budget next year,” said Kingsley parent Peter Bogira, who spoke at all three hearings. “It needs to be a call to action to articulate a multiyear vision that the community can actually get behind.”

Board members respond

Board member Mya Wilkins, the board’s liaison to Kingsley, faced criticism from community members during the three public hearings this week. Multiple community members said that she had not reached out.

Wilkins did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.

“At the end of the day, as a board member, I am committed to do as much as possible to ease this transition, and I know everyone up here, administration and board members, are as well,” Wilkins said before the vote.

Board member Andrew Wymer called the closure of Kingsley at the end of this year “crunch time,” acknowledging the fact that the board’s delay in decision making — pushed back from Nov. 17, 2025 — put Kingsley and District 65 administrators in “a difficult place.”

“I heard clarity, empathy and engagement was the request from us as a board,” School Board Vice President Nichole Pinkard said, adding that she looked forward to working on next steps with administrators and the PTAs of Kingsley and the four schools that will receive former Kingsley students.

In his remarks, board member Sergio Hernandez called the vote “very, very difficult.” He apologized to the community for the way that the timeline of the decision created uncertainty for families.

Board member Maria Opdycke asked the board to commit to granting the four requests from the Kingsley PTA.

“I would love to see us commit to granting those asks and being committed going forward to doing a great job at transitioning our various communities,” Opdycke said. “I’m glad that we are past the process of deciding so we can dedicate ourselves to that work now.”

Next steps

The resolution the board approved Jan. 9, which began the Kingsley closure process, proposed a three-pronged measure of financial stability for the district: establishing and maintaining a balanced budget, maintaining at least 90 days of cash on hand through the course of the fiscal year, and maintaining a minimum of $2.7 million set aside for capital expenditures related to building maintenance.

If the three criteria are not met by October, and the districtwide average building-use rate in kindergarten through fifth grade is below 75% (excluding specialized schools and programs), then the board will consider closing Lincolnwood the following year.

In the short term, Kingsley families still have lots of questions about how the next few months will unfold, including how requests for permissive transfers — requests to attend a school different from the assigned attendance area school — will be handled. District 65 has planned two information sessions for the Kingsley community next week.

Families also have questions about how the district will handle the transitions to new schools in the fall, including the new Foster School.

“We were encouraged by the transition planning the administration presented today and look forward to them collaborating with the PTAs to ensure an empathetic and timely transition strategy based on feedback from Kingsley families,” Liz Wolens of Invest in Neighborhood Schools wrote in a text. “And, we are hopeful for the future of D65.”

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