Artificially Low Numbers From Hinsdale D86: Watchdog

HINSDALE, IL – A watchdog says Hinsdale High School District 86 is providing artificially low numbers for building capacities at Central and South high schools.

Burr Ridge resident Alan Hruby said the problem started in January 2018 when a new consultant stopped including physical education space as part of the available space for students.

This made it appear as if both schools were more crowded than they really were, Hruby said.

In April 2019, 61 percent of voters decided to allow the district to go into debt by $140 million for Central and South building improvements.

In a video earlier this month, Hruby said that before the referendum, officials described Central as overcrowded and South as not having enough space to take students from Central's zone.

In response to that narrative, South residents launched a "Fill South First" movement. They argued for using Hinsdale South's space before adding classrooms to Central.

Hruby and others in the South zone have called for balancing enrollment between the two schools. As it stands, Central has twice South's enrollment. Because of that, Central's course selection is considerably more.

For years, the Central-dominated school board has resisted the idea of a boundary change. Residents in the wealthy Central zone fear their home values would plunge if the attendance boundary shifted north.

According to a January 2018 building study, Central's 2,786 students exceeded the reported building capacity by 271.

But unlike past building studies, it excluded PE space, even though the overwhelming majority of students spend one period a day in that space.

The study showed South's 1,483 students were in a building that had a capacity for 222 more.

Hruby, though, said that with the PE space included, Central would have space for 288 more students, more than wiping out the gap in the study.

South, meanwhile, would be able to add another 162 students with the PE space, he said. That would bring South's total extra capacity to 384 students.

Arcon Associates handled the building capacity studies before 2018.

At a 2017 school board meeting, Arcon's Jeff Huck explained his firm's methodology, which included PE space.

"This is using rules of thumb that architects who work with school districts use," he told the board.

A few months later, the district replaced Arcon with Cotter Consulting for building capacity studies, though Arcon still provides architectural services.

Patch left messages for comment with Arcon and Cotter.

In his 34-minute video, Hruby called it "plain nonsense" to exclude PE space from capacity studies while sending thousands of students out of classrooms into PE classes.

"It is time for District 86 to end this nonsense, which contradicts architectural rules of thumb and is based on a flawed, imaginary model in which District 86 students never leave classrooms to take PE courses," he said. It is "an illusion that derails our best thinking about how to leverage unused capacity at each school, and in particular at Hinsdale South, to assure that all D86 students receive equal education opportunities."

A reader of the 2018 study would have no idea that PE space was removed for the first time, Hruby said.

He pointed to a "cryptic" footnote that he said requires someone to investigate a source document. Then the reader may stumble upon the realization that the district excluded PE space, he said.

Offices are excluded from building capacities because they are not considered areas for students.

In an email to Patch on Thursday, former Superintendent Bruce Law said the Cotter study sought to measure the amount of classroom space available for instruction and to assess the utilization rate of those classrooms.

"If one were measuring the amount of square feet in a school, of course, the gyms would be included," said Law, who left as superintendent in 2019. "Because the amount of available space was linked to utilization rates of those spaces, not including the gyms had no bearing on the conclusions about whether the amount of classroom space at that time was adequate."

He said determining which spaces to measure could also depend on the conclusion one was trying to prove.

"I can only speak for our motivation at that time, which was to measure as accurately as possible the amount and use of classroom instructional spaces to make decisions about how many classrooms should be built," Law said.

However, Hruby said the study should have been labeled a "classroom" capacity study if that were the case, not a "building" study.

"I cannot view silence on the part of the D86 school board on this issue to be anything other than a conscious willingness to perpetuate a mistaken public belief that Hinsdale Central and Hinsdale South building capacities are significantly smaller than they truly are," he said in the video.

The board's membership has completely changed since 2018. No member has served longer than 2½ years.

For the last few years, Hruby has created videos documenting what he sees as South getting the short end of the stick.

In 2021, he analyzed the course selection at the two schools and found the gap was much wider than the district portrayed. The district later admitted its error, calling it "a little oversight."