5 Comments
Oct 7Liked by Tim Daly

I run a substack about Evanston: foiagras.com

I'd love to tell you more sometime!!

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OK here's a more complete comment on what I believe is going on in Districts like Evanston (which I write about) and similar Districts like Ann Arbor, etc.

1) Bad Long Term Facilities Plans - In particular, because of the universities, many of these towns took education super seriously in pre-WW2 era. Hence, we have a ton of old buildings from that era which are very expensive to maintain and replace. Things like lead pipes, asbestos, etc are prevalent in these buildings and prior Boards kicked the can on maintenance/asset replacement until it's too late.

2) Mismanagement of ESSER Money. This is true in Evanston and Ann Arbor and many large Districts - the influx of COVID relief money was largely wasted on hiring administrative staffing. Evanston, for instance got $10 million in relief and used it almost entirely on salaries and spent $0 on things like HVAC systems (see #1 above). The money stopped this year and all of a sudden you have 2-3x the staff you had before.

3) Wasteful spending on Equity programs. Both Evanston and Ann Arbor have spent over $1 million dollars with single vendors like the Pacific Education Group (PEG) on diversity training for staff. In Evanston at least, it has had zero impact on test scores or the achievement gap, but makes the Board feel like they're "doing something"

4) The proximity to big Universities means that the curriculum is a constant moving target - whatever the next hottest thing is becomes the thing the District buys. Evanston is hurdling towards insolvency but we just spent $1.3 million on new reading curriculum, and then subsequently dumped a big part of it.

5) Insane COVID policies causing enrollment to plummet. Evanston lost 20% of our students alone due to COVID policies - we stayed closed longer than any District around us while all the liberals fought about who is putting Black lives at danger the most. The theatrics hurt kids and families and a ton of people left. Declining enrollment has a ton of secondary effects on budgets that I don't think people expected, such as massive drops in state reimbursements for special education.

6) In Evanston, at least, we had a Superintendent who was less than scrupulous: he awarded contracts to friends, spent millions on personal security, and fucked up the construction of a new school by lying about finances. Our Board backed him until the very end for racial equity reasons, which created a massive rift in the community.

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If you haven’t already read it, Benjamin Herold’s book from last year called Disillusioned is all about challenges in suburban education and interestingly, Evanston is one of the communities he focuses on.

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We are moving to Florida soon and the school vouchers are a big part of the decision. When you’ve got three kids between the taxes and the vouchers you’re looking at saving a million dollars.

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Nobody wants to admit P.J. O'Rourke was right: "The problem isn't school budgets, or teacher's unions. It's not curriculum, or technology, or school uniforms. The problem is your damn stupid kid."

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