Starting Monday, Evanston/Skokie School District 65 will celebrate its second LGBTQ+ Equity Week dedicated to exploring topics such as identity, family structures, gender expression, stereotyping and the contributions of LGBTQ+ people throughout history.
Superintendent Devon Horton, D65 Vice President Elisabeth “Biz” Lindsay-Ryan and D65 President Anya Tanyavutti said in a March 25 letter the LGBTQ+ Equity week was created to help create an inclusive school environment.
“In District 65, we take our responsibility seriously to create an inclusive, welcoming environment where every child can feel safe, valued, and has the support and encouragement to reach their full potential,” the letter read.
The first Equity Week was in 2019 after Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a bill mandating the inclusion of LGBTQ+ history into all public schools by 2020.
Candidate concedes in tight aldermanic race evanstonnow.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from evanstonnow.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
District 65, District 202 elect new school boards
Unofficial results show voters re-elected Joey Hailpern, Soo La Kim and Elisabeth “Biz” Lindsay-Ryan, the board’s current vice president, to serve on the Evanston/Skokie School District 65 board. Newcomer Donna Wang Su is also projected to win a seat in the race, though Marquise Weatherspoon trails her by 46 votes.
Kim has over 20 years of teaching and administrative experience in higher education, and is currently the assistant dean of graduate programs in the School of Professional Studies at Northwestern. She is a founding member of Lincoln Elementary School’s equity committee and has been on the board since filling a vacancy in April 2020.
School candidate has two-week wait to see if she won
Donna Wang Su trailed in early returns but pulled ahead as ballots from Skokie precincts were counted.
Donna Wang Su.
Donna Wang Su says “she stayed up pretty late last night, refreshing the page” that had election returns.
Those returns came in much slower than expected, but when the counting was finished, Su took the fourth and final seat on the Evanston/Skokie District 65 school board, base on numbers released by the County Clerk’s office this afternoon, by just 46 votes over Marquise Weatherspoon, 5,438 to 5,392.
But because mail-in ballots postmarked by election day will still be counted if they arrive in the next two weeks, Su says she’s still “a little on the nervous side. I don’t feel comfortable” declaring victory quite yet. There’s still a chance that Weatherspoon could win. In fact, on her Facebook page, Weatherspoon posted that she “has not given up hope.”