Foster School: Site work is finally under way
July's symbolic groundbreaking at Foster School has given way to actual groundbreaking, as bulldozers, backhoes, and demolition workers are at last clearing what used to be a playfield to make room for a new school.
The work is more than two years behind schedule.
The original plan had the District 65 school already open by now, but as Evanston painfully knows, other than returning a neighborhood school to the 5th Ward, everything else about the proposed building: size, number of students, inclusion of the Bessie Rhodes program, price tag, and the ability to pay for it, all turned out to be a mirage.
But, there is still a school to be constructed.
On Sept. 18, the building's design firm, Cordogan Clark, held a contractor information session at Fleetwood Jourdain Center, next to the new school's site.
The hope is to attract local firms to bid on various aspects of the work.
An electrical contractor and Evanston resident, Matthew Off, was one of the potential bidders who showed up to learn more.
"I went to District 65," the old King Labs school, he explained, as well as to ETHS (District 202)
Off also has a daughter at Haven Middle School, and a son who went there.
While that may be sentimentally nice, Off, who has done electrical work at other schools on the North Shore, said that to get a Foster School contract, "I have to be the lowest qualified bidder."
Earlier in the week, Kirby Callam, project manager for the school district, told the school board that there's more to the project than just clearing the area and putting up a building, because the site itself has challenges.
"The soil is very unstable," he explained, so that has to be taken into account.
He also said that D65 plans to ask City Council to approve a change in scope for the school, adding track and field lighting, with the city paying part of the cost.
Of course, the cost of the overall project has been controversial, to say the least.
Originally promised to come in at $40 million, a massive cost overrun ballooned the price to $65 million.
The tab was then cut to $48.4 million by shrinking the size of the school, having fewer kids, and not including Bessie Rhodes.
Critics have had a field day, particularly with D65 facing a $13.2 non-capital deficit
A scathing editorial in Thursday's Chicago Tribune said that "Letting elementary-age kids go to school in their own neighborhood is a laudable goal. But the problem is that the overall enrollment in the district taken as a whole did not merit a whole new school ...."
A number of Evanston Now readers have said that D65 should simply apply the Foster School money towards the extensive renovation needs in other district buildings.
But even if the Board of Education wanted to stop Foster School (which they don't), and use the money to fix up other facilities instead, they can't.
The money was borrowed.
Under the form of borrowing used, called lease certificates, the money can only be applied to new construction.
And even if the board just quit building Foster, they'd still be on the hook for the loan.
Imagine you take out a mortgage for a new house, then decide you don't want to build it.
You still have to repay the bank, house or not.
Once District 65 used the certificates, D65 financial consultant Robert Grossi told Evanston Now, it became a "mathematical certainty" that they had to pay both the principal and the interest, which became $3.2 million a year for almost the next two decades.
Using lease certificates let the school board get around having to submit a bond issue to the voters. Lease certificates can be approved by the board alone, which is what happened.
But at least there will be a school to show for it, finally returning a neighborhood school to the majority-Black community which has seen its children bused to other parts of town for decades, in the name of desegregation.
Foster School, named to honor the former segregated school in the ward, is now slated to open in the fall of 2026.
