A Look Back at 2023 and
What's Ahead in 2024


As the year draws to a close, New Trier Neighbors celebrates six years of bringing you community information and programming you won’t find anywhere else on the North Shore.

The coming year will bring more opportunities to raise awareness on how we can improve the quality of our local schools and institutions, as well as be good neighbors to communities in other parts of the Chicago area.

In 2023, we brought you a diverse range of speakers on topics such as teen mental health, parental rights, free speech on campus, the state of Illinois, and the rise of gender dysphoria among teen girls. Speakers included: 

  • Jeremy Adams, teacher and author of Hollowed Out
  • Professor Dorian Abbot, University of Chicago and Heterodox STEM
  • William Estrada, Parental Rights Foundation
  • Legendary columnist John Kass and AM560’s Dan Proft (event pictured above!)
  • Dr. Michael Bailey (Northwestern) and Dr. Lisa Littman (Institute for Comprehensive Gender Dysphoria Research) 

This year, we also partnered with GameChangers Foundation, which hosted a screening of the powerful 2018 film GameChangers about the famed 1965/66 championship basketball rivalry between New Trier High School and the West Side’s Marshall High School. The event brought many of the Marshall players featured in the movie to New Trier for the very first time. The wide-ranging panel discussion which followed was led by Joe Dondanville, the film’s director, and delved into race relations and other issues in a constructive way that could serve as a beacon for civil and constructive discourse on any important topic.

New Trier Neighbors then launched an effort with GameChangers Foundation to expand its grant program to the South Side. With your support, New Trier Neighbors was able to provide two $1000 grants for students from Project HOOD for their post-secondary education. 

Additionally, New Trier Neighbors covered numerous examples of politicized and/or agenda-driven assignments and policies in our local schools, including “Gender Unicorns,” “The Genderbread Man,” “Teaching While White” teacher training, profane short stories and pronoun policies in our schools. 

Good news alerts: New Trier High School now allows opting students out of questionable assignments; teachers are now instructed to NOT require students to give pronouns; and Crow Island parents reinstated “Jingle Bell Rock”! This is all good news, and evidence of your impact through your support of New Trier Neighbors. 

As we look ahead to the new year, we invite you to join us in continuing to make a positive impact on the world around us, especially the world closest to home. We appreciate any financial support you can provide to help us to continue bringing you quality programming and information. 

Would you like to help us in 2024? Donate here!
Celebrate National School Choice Week at our first program of 2024!

"The Power of Agency - Lessons in Transformation from the South Bronx"
 
An Evening with Ian Rowe of
Vertex Partnership Academies,
American Enterprise Institute and
Author of “Agency”


January 22, 2024 | 6:30 pm
Loyola Academy McGrath Family Performing Arts Center
1100 Laramie Avenue, Wilmette


Click here to register!

The past few years have demonstrated the increasing need for school choice options as many have realized their local public schools are simply not the best fit for their children. Falling achievement scores in reading and math across Illinois underscore this need, with even formerly “good” school districts losing ground. Recent announcements by Chicago Public Schools to end selective enrollment and charter schools will only accelerate the demand for school choice.

New Trier Neighbors, with a grant from the National School Choice Awareness Foundation, is pleased to bring a leading voice in the school choice movement, Ian Rowe, to the North Shore on January 22, 2024, for a discussion with Ted Dabrowski, President of Wirepoints and board member of New Trier Neighbors.
 
Ian Rowe is the founder of Vertex Partnership Academies, a network of character-based International Baccalaureate high schools in the Bronx. For ten years before that, Ian was CEO of Public Prep, a nonprofit network of public charter schools based in the South Bronx and Lower East Side of Manhattan. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at the Woodson Center, and is the author of Agency.

Registration required! Click here to register.

Presented by New Trier Neighbors and the National School Choice Awareness Foundation