Hundreds of Evanston/Skokie School District 65 parents and students staged a rally before the Oct. 26 School Board meeting, asking the district to delay a scheduled Nov. 9 vote to shutter Dewey and Lincolnwood Elementary schools and lay off over 200 staff to reduce its deficit. At the very least, they want a delay until the district’s financial data can be confirmed as reliable.
That’s because two parents combed through the district’s budget and found a $17 million math error that essentially doubles the amount of money the district expects to spend on their buildings over the next five years. In other words, the district expects to have more money than what its budget states.
While parents viewed the error as extra funding the district can utilize to keep both schools open, District 65 CFO Eric Miller dashed their hopes by saying that the money is projected in a specific fund and can’t be used for other purposes. Thus, the district’s plan to close the two schools remains in place.
Illinois law limits the ways in which school boards can transfer money between funds, according to the Illinois Association of School Boards website.
“The ($17 million) correction lowers projected expenses, but does not change the structural gap or facility obligations,” Miller told a Board room overflowing with district parents, who argued during public comment that administrators are moving too quickly on the budget proposal, resulting in erroneous data.
The money comes from the district’s fund balance, which can be thought of as a savings account, and is used for purposes like having a certain amount of days of cash on hand. Because it is a separate account, it is not used for operational expenses.
Dewey parent David Azari initially spotted the error last week after reviewing publicly available documents the district published about its budget proposal, according to emails he sent to Miller that were forwarded to Pioneer Press.
In an open letter circulated to interim Superintendent Eric Witherspoon and administrators Oct. 23, Azari wrote that the error “markedly increases the amount of money that D65 plans to spend on maintaining and improving its buildings over the next five years, essentially double-counting those expenses.”
“That error overstates costs,” Azari continued in the letter, “which means it also overstates the savings D65 must realize to achieve its financial goals.”
Azari forecasted the error to be “at least $12 million and possibly much higher depending on the exact mechanics of the correction,” he wrote in the letter.
Miller confirmed the error in an email sent to Azari Oct. 24, stating that a correction of the double-counted capital funds would reduce spending by $1 million in FY28 and $4 million each year from FY29 to FY32, totaling to $17 million.
“We’ll take approximately the next 14 days to refine the five-year projections, incorporate this correction and other updated assumptions, and prepare the revised figures for public release,” Miller wrote over email Oct. 24.
Azari declined to comment on the findings, referring back to the open letter he penned to administrators.
Assistant Superintendent Stacy Beardsley previously told the Board closing Dewey and Lincolnwood Elementary at the end of the 2026-27 school year would result in an estimated $2.9 million in yearly savings, or $14.5 million over five years.
While the savings that will result from school consolidations are less than the $17 million the district double counted, Miller confirmed Monday that the error does not mean any of the proposed budget cuts will be reversed.
If the district does not cut $20 million from its budget for 2028, it is expected to completely run out of its fund balance, or savings, by 2030, Miller and Witherspoon told parents at the meeting.
“This is a symbol of a rushed process without enough checks and balances,” Dewey parent Alexandra Miller told Pioneer Press in a statement Monday.
Miller, who is no relation to CFO Eric Miller, worked with Azari to review the district’s fiscal projections, which led to the miscalculation discovery.
More Top Picks Best Kids Microscopes For Beginners
“The Board and community need more certainty about all the related financials before a vote can take place,” Alexandra Miller added. “There’s no way to continue to speed this process to a vote and get to an outcome that we can trust.”
Alexandra Miller was one of 75 speakers who took to the public comment podium Monday in protest of the district’s proposal. Community members cited concerns over student disruption, repeated boundary changes and an overall lack of trust from school leaders.
“You are sitting here asking the community to trust decisions built on fundamentally flawed information,” Vic Filippini, a parent of three District 65 students, voiced to the Board.
“The Board needs to get it right, not do it fast.”
Bo Maddox, a fifth grader at Lincolnwood School, stood before administrators to voice her own disappointment with the plan.
“I find myself back in this room fighting for the same thing,” said Maddox, who transferred this year from Kingsley Elementary School, which shuttered in June due to prior budget cuts.
“Kingsley was my favorite place. I loved it so much that when I was in an ambulance having an allergic reaction, I asked if I could go back to school the next day. When Kingsley closed, my mom told me to be brave and give Lincolnwood a chance…You keep asking us to be brave, but when will the admin and Board be brave enough to listen to us?”
Robin Telander, Maddox’s mom, added that she’s “lost confidence in this leadership” and demands a “resignation, an independent financial review and a pause on closure votes.”
While several Board members cited an appreciation for CFO Miller in addressing the error rather than hiding it, many agreed that more transparency needs to be taken by leadership to instill a renewed sense of trust in the district.
“My goal is to turn D65 into one of the top performing K-8 districts in the state,” Board Vice President Chris Van Nostrand told parents Monday.
That will mean conducting a cultural realignment that “requires… acknowledgment of the depth of the district’s past corruption, criminality and incompetence,” Van Nostrand said, referring to former District 65 Superintendent Devon Horton’s federal indictment and guilty plea this month, for a kickback scheme he led while holding the leadership role.
“Restoring trust means listening to the people who bestow that trust in the first place, all of you. But I hope you will also listen to all of us…Sacrifices will have to be made at this point. And to be clear, I support our administration’s comprehensive strategy.”
Board member Maria Opdycke said as a consequence of the financial error, she’d like to request further evaluation of the district’s financial projections.
“I never want anyone to think they have to hide a mistake. Mistakes can be forgiven and we move forward,” Opdycke said.
“I think the difficulty in this moment is that there is such scrutiny over every single number that we have and so I think prior to a final decision, I would like to ask that we have an independent evaluation of our projections, just to ensure that we don’t have any additional errors,” she added to a sea of public applause.
Board member Sergio Hernandez also suggested the district create a public finance committee of interested parents and community members who can support colleagues and staff in assessing the district’s finances to maintain an improved sense of transparency.
“That’s not a bad idea at all,” CFO Miller responded. “I think the finance committee definitely could define a scope and select an independent school finance reviewer.”
Despite parents’ repeated calls for a delay, the Board is set to vote on its deficit reduction plan Nov. 9.
Board President Nichole Pinkard said Monday there may have to be a special meeting arranged before that final decision date, given the level of community interest.
Families had earlier argued the district’s proposed $20 million in cuts will do irreparable damage for the children that rely on programs on the chopping block. Those programs include the before- and after-school child care program and Head Start and Early Head Start.