D65 enrollment continues to drop

Evanston/Skokie School District 65 has lost more than one-fifth of its students since 2018-19, the last academic year before the COVID-19 pandemic.

A report for Monday's school board meeting says that the actual enrollment as of October 1, 2024 was 5,783 K-8. That's a 22% drop since before the pandemic.

The latest report itself only goes back to 2020-21, but pre-pandemic is available on the district's website.

Reeshemay Bennett, the district's manager of student assignments, says that kindergarten enrollment was "already on a slow decline since the beginning of the 2013-14 school year," with the biggest loss in the 2020-21 COVID period.

Bennett also cites the high cost of living in Evanston, downward trend in birth rates, and families opting for private schools or homeschooling as reasons for the D65 decline, although some of those factors, such as birth rate, are an issue everywhere

Looking ahead, K-8 enrollment is expected to drop to 5,313 students in 2029-30.

Bennett notes that "at the kindergarten through fifth grade level, all schools with the exception of King Arts ... are projected to decrease enrollments."

The enrollment totals for each year do not include preschool and the Park and Rice special education programs. There are 387 students in those programs this year, pushing the D65 enrollment total to just above 6,000.

To help plan for the future, the district plans to hire a demographer, and start conducting exit interviews with parents who leave the school system.

The ongoing decline is a further sign the district may need to close more buildings than just Bessie Rhodes.

Bennett says the enrollment drop "necessitates a reassessment of our building, staffing, and section numbers...."

Superintendent Angel Turner is expected to present school shutdown possibilities in her deficit reduction message in January.