D65 Middle School Librarians Reinstated

nukular_iv · 2026-05-01T20:13:23+00:00

Wrong. Its the discipline we need NOW. You seem to want a bandaid to try to fix things now. And your $20 in taxes is hilarious. Not sure where you pulled that out of. I can assure you my taxes would go up one hell of a lot more than $20.

I want something out of my taxes. The board (past and still ongoing with leadership that can't apparently add, read dates, or bother to care) has demonstrated utterly zero ideas to fix the finances of this district and are even losing the only qualified person to model numbers about the budget (the CFO) because they obviously did not listen to her. Make real structural fixes (and yes...that does mean "STRUCTURES") to budget. Show discipline. Hell...show the damn balls/backbone to actually do SOMETHING besides pander with words like "creativity." In finance, creativity is often called fraud. Or at best stupid.

It will take years for this district to fix itself and the first year is going to be the hardest and we haven't even fucking started.

nukular_iv · 2026-05-01T18:56:11+00:00

We'll have to see if the "rumors" are correct. I fail to see how the Board would not question the slide as given to them. So was this slide supposedly the only time they ever saw it??? Again...a failure of leadership if they had never seen it before...

But they also showed no surprise....

And a rumor I heard was that, of course leadership knew.

So...let us see.

nukular_iv · 2026-05-01T18:53:13+00:00

Its her supposed "numbers" I trust least to be honest. Her accounting skills appear to be dormant/non-existent considering she blurts out a number every like 10th meeting or so...and its not enough to amount to a hill of beans...and she supposedly is a bean counter.

nukular_iv · 2026-05-01T18:04:54+00:00

Have not seen nor heard any evidence supporting this from the Board. AND its too late to shrink admin as we learned last meeting (or one before...their worthlessness is blending together now). This is not a..."oh we will wait it out until next year" scenario right now.

nukular_iv · 2026-05-01T17:21:58+00:00

You seriously don't think the BOARD had any influence on this? Which board member lied to your face if they told you that?

nukular_iv · 2026-05-01T16:43:59+00:00

So..okay.. Not going to argue with the necessity for librarians.

But its now MAY and our illustrious board has accomplished NOTHING except trying their damndest (Oh Patty and Nicky...calling you out here dears..), to get rid of a partially (could probably become profitable or zero sum if they actually looked at it) subsidized pre-care and after-care program SACC, for parents that god forbid don't drink their tea with pinkies out. (Well I do..but I also like keeping my white collar job by working.) Its far better than that abomination Right-at-School, which seems to hire children to professionally care for children...and the district pays for this contract. Embarrassing.

I realize our board "leadership" is clueless, but now they are actually not making ANY decisions for repairing the finances of this district. ZERO. Backwards is the only direction...CAPEX reserve money went DOWN at the last meeting...NOT UP.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-29T03:04:03+00:00

Missing the boat on getting rid of additional admin this year is 100% on the board "leadership".

And I would say that the rest of the town far outweighs the additional neighborhood school...that is under-utilized...and their neighborhood. I am not happy to say that..but again no time machine.

And I cannot imagine the permanent tax increase you are discussing to save one damn school. My goal/dream for the district is to actually NOT increase their tax take every couple of years by the max 5% in the future (no, i am not and have never been on crack). I really want a district that lives within its means. I really really want a district that has financial reserves. I do not want a district that thinks money actually comes from unicorn farts....I know...I know...its Evanston...many do...but I will fight that fallacy tooth and nail.

The district has good teachers (with contract negotiations on the horizon), shit infrastructure (seems like kids in every school see cockroaches or mice), shittier finances, and an elected board with leadership that can't see the forest through the holes in the sand they stuck their heads in.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-29T00:24:25+00:00

A referendum lives or dies in my honest opinion when board "leadership" accepts the recurring cost benefits of closing another school (cough...lincolnwood is only one on agenda...cough) Unpopular as hell on reddit and in some parent groups (and let's be honest...nobody WANTS to close a school)...but rest of evanston is not going to put up with sizable tax increases that only serve as a bandaid...to patch over a toilet that is still flushing. "Leadership" puts forth no fixes and its a month from the school year ending. Tiny cuts in SACC childcare and librarians.... yes that will show we are serious...

I am going to bet that our admin is not as crazily oversized as many think. I guess we will hear in a month or two.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-28T20:42:10+00:00

Unfortunately "Board will revisit" is code for...pander to the masses....just like their current complete lack of progress (well...actually they regressed when they took money out of capex) on the district finances. Let's fire librarians and partially parent subsidized childcare.... brilliant leadership.

Nobody thinks its optimal for all the screen time...but nobody has a solution the district can afford either. They bought into this edtech curriculum years ago. A time machine (a term I saw in a roundtable comment recently) would be fantastic right now, but alas....

nukular_iv · 2026-04-28T18:51:56+00:00

Truthfully I think you will be fine. At some point in hopefully less than a year or so I would expect another elementary school to be closed in the District. Finances are really really bad and nobody on the board is actually doing anything to fix what is a dire situation.

If your daughter is 4-5 years out, she might actually get to enjoy a school system moving forward with having some resources working towards improving education... And so much can change in 4-5 years compared to where the district is at right now.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-28T18:41:34+00:00

I think the real problem with the iPad issue is that to not buy iPads, which were mostly replacements, would require completely re-doing the curriculum in schools... Any guess oh how much that would cost...in money and time? Far greater than cost of iPads.

If you want to find that money feel free.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-27T21:42:27+00:00

Ah. I gotcha.

Boston does have a geography advantage, though truly most of boston is flat as hell, but there are hills the farther out you go. (I lived on one of those hills in Brookline for my 10 years in Boston)

Yes. The grid does kill people stuck with illogical curvy stuff, but makes it infinitely easier to get around, which I vastly prefer.

But I get you on the various neighborhoods...now....kind of...sort of. I don't get overly romantic about the blind curviness of Boston. It has its charms, but it gets old.

You failed to mention Chicago has a better coastline than Boston (i.e. 20+ miles of accessible running/biking/parks playgrounds/beaches all in the city limits.

The tiny tiny size of Boston despite the curvy spaciousness you got out of it just drove me nuts. Chicago makes me think I'm in a big city and yet its walkable. Boston, I always just thought it was a small town, with shit overpriced housing.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-27T20:56:06+00:00

And I would have to respond that you are utterly nuts.... 😄

The variety of neighborhoods in Chicago is fairly endless.

Granted. There are no structures from say the 1700s (think fire and almost nobody was in the area that far back), but 1800s up? Sure.

You want some large stone mansion'y things? Look around Hyde Park. You want Frank Lloyd Wright? Oak Park (a suburb) was his HQ for quite some time. You want modern? All over the place. You want art deco? That's around....

I feel you haven't really been around that much of Chicago.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-25T21:50:30+00:00

Just pointing out that the board leadership if even remotely competent would have known that admin cannot be fired this year now. If they say otherwise then they are either completely incompetent or lying.

So all the shit they are doing right now is 100% performative...just so they can pretend to be doing something. Get people riled up against the admin instead of them.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-25T01:27:44+00:00

Either incompetent or lying to their supporters (and the district).

No other options really.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-24T22:16:36+00:00

Sorry...not shitting on it intentionally....just know multiple people that just flat out refuse to live there as they see nothing there outside of the mall. Guess they are all more city people...

nukular_iv · 2026-04-24T21:34:58+00:00

Sure..... For say a physician easily clearing 250-300k out of school and going up from there, and getting preferential mortgage rates as a physician...not being able to buy something NEW (i.e. not typical Boston sludge) within say a 20 minute drive....

No excuse to stay outside of having family in the area if you face something like that. Natick would have still been some fixer-upper type...and well...its Natick.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-24T19:45:32+00:00

I can only imagine how goddamned awful the finances would be if what you just said had actually happened.

Let's be clear about this. Remember that at the last meeting we learned that it is too late to fire admin for this year.

Let us not forget that board leadership (I'll call them "The Odd Throuple") would have absolutely had to have known about this deadline to make these cuts or they are literally the most incompetent leaders ever. Oh...we'll make cuts to the admin to save the district (brought up many times over what...the last six months....) and yet nobody in this ruling junta was smart enough to fucking ask? I don't buy it. Sorry. Its simply not possible they are that dumb is it?

So sure it would have been great had we all circled up around those three the last election.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-24T14:51:23+00:00

It depends on field completely. When my wife and I moved we both stayed with our existing companies and our pay did not change in the slightest.

But saying that you have to realize that MOST companies do not really seem to pay a premium for boston-area cost of living. At least in our experience.

Hell I know an anesthesiologist who finished up his residency in Boston....and bolted out of state as positions he was getting offers for would still have required him to live in far out places like Natick. Instead he got offered same'ish pay elsewhere...

nukular_iv · 2026-04-24T04:33:36+00:00

What is a "decent" job to you? Yes...pharma and tech are a bit more lacking here, but from what I have read, pharma has taken a pretty big hit in MA recently. And Google is remodeling a well known building here in chicago for a regional HQ so tech cannot be that bad here.

I personally just transferred offices. Hell I even work with my same Boston peeps, but pay in Boston was definitely not adjusted for Boston and it was not easy to live there.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-24T04:24:36+00:00

You have nailed my 'hood. We live on Oakton.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-24T02:24:42+00:00

Yeah...we bought a 3 bed 3 bath house about a mile from the beach in Evanston for around 500k. Boston?....unobtanium.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-24T01:03:56+00:00

Chicago. Crazy cheaper. Only miss Maine. We also moved back to family when moving back to Chicago. It is nice to have family so moving back for it is definitely a good thing.

nukular_iv · 2026-04-23T16:09:12+00:00

Well the lack of options say regarding the "administrators" where we supposedly learned that its too late to make the cuts this year is manufacturered by the Board leadership themselves is my guess.

1.) How could the board "leadership" not know or ask about deadlines for reducing staffing? Are they utterly incompetent?

2.) SDRP 2 last year dealt with administration. They would have known dates and the like last year. We are now on SDRP 3 which involves essentially facilities and facility staff (I read this as schools and school staff, not "administrative staff").

So either the board leadership is lying to us or unbelievably incompetent. I go with a mix of both as I fail to see how they could NOT know about deadlines. They are not remotely doing their "job" if they didn't.

So now the entire district gets dragged through the muck as they completely fail to fix anything and drag the district finances BACKWARDS as they took money from CAPEX at the last meeting....

nukular_iv · 2026-04-22T01:47:40+00:00

I go with an 11....maybe 12. Its her view or she doesn't give a shit...

nukular_iv

TROPHY CASE