Parents target school boundaries in Winnetka
Group launches effort to change decades-old system
After Gretchen Rakowicz paid nearly $1.3 million for a five-bedroom home in southeast Winnetka last year, she assumed her kindergarten-age son would attend nearby Greeley Elementary School, less than a mile away.
But Rakowicz, a single mom who moved to the North Shore from Chicago in April, said she was shocked to discover that the school district boundaries included her small neighborhood in Winnetka among those in Wilmette, Northfield and Glenview assigned to Avoca School District 37, not Winnetka School District 36.
Unhappy with the prospect of her kindergartner facing a roughly fourmile commute to Avoca Elementary School in Glenview each day, Rakowicz said she enrolled her son in the private Catholic school just blocks from her home.
“I saw the Avoca district on the real estate listing, but I thought it must be a mistake, because Avoca Elementary School is all the way in Glenview, several miles away from my home,” Rakowicz said. “When I called District 36, they told me if I wanted my son to go to Greeley, I could pay $25,000 a year for out-ofdistrict tuition, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m already paying $34,000 a year in property taxes.’”
Rakowicz’s frustration is shared by about a dozen local residents with the citizens group Winnetka United, which recently hired a Chicago-based consultant to lead a campaign to change what they call “antiquated” boundary lines. The group declined to say how much they have raised for the effort.
The school district boundary lines were established in 1987 when the unincorporated neighborhood just south of Hill Road and east of Locust Road was annexed into Winnetka.
The affected neighborhood includes about 50 homes in the village, and the residents leading the campaign do not have children attending Avoca schools, but are concerned about the boundaries affecting their property value, said Emily Pevnick, a consultant and spokeswoman for Winnetka United.
Pevnick acknowledged that both the Avoca and Winnetka school districts are among the top-ranked districts in the state, likening them to the Ivy League’s Harvard and Yale.
But despite the status of the two high-achieving North Shore districts, Pevnick said Winnetka United is determined to keep both the neighborhood children— and the roughly $1 million in property tax dollars paid to Avoca — in Winnetka.
In addition, Pevnick said residents like Rakowicz say it undermines the local community by sending a small group of children to schools outside of Winnetka, when most of their friends from club sports and other social activities attend neighborhood schools in the village.
“The point of Winnetka United is to have a policy change, and we understand there will be challenges, but we want to take a fair and reasonable approach to a boundary change,” Pevnick said.
“We understand District 36 cannot unilaterally impose an Intergovernmental Agreement on District 37,” Pevnick said. “Rather, we are looking to create the environment in which District 36 and District 37 agree to come together to discuss the issue.”
Winnetka School District 36 spokeswoman Kate Hughes said officials have not met with the citizens group and “are still early in the process of learning more about Winnetka United’s request and implications for both Avoca and District 36.”
At Avoca School District 37, Superintendent Kevin Jauch said the Winnetka United proposal is nothing new, and for decades, officials have had random requests that the neighborhood be removed from Avoca and assigned to Winnetka.
“It seems like this issue rears its ugly head every couple of years, and it’s always a different group of people,” Jauch said. “I’m not sure why they want a boundary change, because Avoca is a fantastic school district, which is the ironic thing.”
According to the 2018 Illinois School Report Card, test scores for the 741 students attending the two District 37 schools — Avoca Elementary School in Glenview and Marie Murphy Middle School in Wilmette — ranked far above the state average last year in both English-Language Arts and math. In addition, both Avoca and Marie Murphy schools were rated “exemplary” — a distinction achieved by only 10 percent of the schools in the state.
In nearby Winnetka School District 36 — a much larger district, enrolling 1,668 students — all five schools were rated “commendable,” and like Avoca, student test scores also far exceed the state average.
In Avoca District 37, about 76 percent of students were rated proficient in English-Language arts and 72 percent in math, according to the state. In Winnetka District 36, about 66 percent of students were proficient in English-Language arts and 65 percent in math, according to the state.
Jauch said what sets Avoca apart from Winnetka and the other highly rated New Trier High School feeder districts is the relative ethnic and economic diversity of the Avoca students. According to the state report card, about 58 percent of Avoca students are white, 25 percent are Asian and nearly 8 percent are Hispanic, with 5 percent of students from low-income families.
In Winnetka School District 36, about 89 percent of students are white, 5 percent are two or more races, 3 percent are Asian and 2 percent are Hispanic, according to the state report card. Only 0.4 percent of students in the Winnetka district are from low-income families, according to the state report card.
Statewide, 49 percent of students are from low-income families, according to the school report card.
“The beauty of it is, when you look at the school report card, you don’t see differences between Avoca children who are getting free and reduced lunches and those living in million dollar-plus mansions,” Jauch said. “We are all just Avoca, and it’s not about who lives in this neighborhood or that neighborhood.” Jauch said if Winnetka United is granted its request to change the school district boundaries, the financial impact on his district would be devastating.
Currently, more than $1.1 million in property tax revenue is collected by Avoca from the southeast Winnetka neighborhood, representing about 8 percent of the $15.5 million in funding Avoca receives from property tax revenues.
The complex process required for the “detachment of territory” from the Avoca district and an annexation to the Winnetka district would begin by filing a petition with the executive director of North Suburban Cook Intermediate Service Center, said Jackie Matthews, a spokeswoman with the Illinois State Board of Education. After a petition is filed, the executive director selects a threemember hearing panel, which Matthews said is tasked with holding public hearings and taking testimony about the proposed change.
Jauch, who has been Avoca’s superintendent for eight years, will head to a new job July 1 — as executive director of the NSCSC, according to the government agency’s website.
Last, the hearing panel would issue a decision either granting or denying the petition, with any party unhappy with the outcome allowed to contest the hearing panel’s decision through the Cook County Circuit Court, Matthews said.
But some experts suggest that the resolution of this North Shore school boundary has repercussions that go beyond the impact on the two school districts.
“It’s very natural and understandable that parents will seek any advantage they can for their children in the educational system,” said Simone Ispa-Landa, an assistant professor in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. “But any decision on school boundaries should be made with the mindset of equity, and ensuring some measure of diversity, even in a majority white district.”
She added that her “hope is that whatever they do decide is based on what’s best for all of the students, not just a small group of community activists.”
For southeast Winnetka residents like Sarah Balassa, hearing about the boundary change initiative during a recent phone call from the citizens group was troubling.
Balassa, a mother of two and a Winnetka native, said she has fond memories of her days as a student at District 36 schools, including Crow Island Elementary School and Carleton Washburne Junior High School. When she and her husband decided to leave the city and raise their children in the suburbs, Balassa said they headed back to her hometown — a life change bolstered by the stellar education she received at District 36 schools and New Trier.
But despite her son and daughter having a positive experience in District 36, when she and her husband relocated from their first home in the village to a vintage home in southeast Winnetka, Balassa said the couple was not concerned their children would need to transfer into the Avoca school district.
“It’s not that the Winnetka district is not a great school district, but you only do this once with your kids, and when I checked out Avoca, everyone was so friendly ... it’s small, and the superintendent knows all of the kids’ names,” Balassa said. “My kids have excelled at Avoca, especially with its outstanding science program. They’ve also kept all of their old friends from the Winnetka district, so I’m just scratching my head at this request to change the boundaries, because I just don’t get it.”