Is D-86 Leader Right About Changing Boundary?

HINSDALE, IL — Lawyers for Hinsdale High School District 86 told the school board last summer it could change the boundary between South and Central using a number of legal justifications.

The lawyers gave a detailed presentation on whether the district met legal requirements in providing equal opportunities.

Some South residents are demanding the board change the attendance zones to balance enrollment. They say South's dramatically lower enrollment means a smaller course selection for their students.

However, some Central residents fear their property values will plunge if their neighborhoods are reassigned to South.

School board President Kevin Camden, a South resident himself, has expressed no interest in changing the boundary.

After the law firm's presentation, Camden, an attorney himself, suggested legal barriers stand in the way of some residents' desire to redraw the boundary between Central and South.

"The reality is comments about redrawing boundary lines and other things ignore the legal requirements that this board has discussed for three years that I have been on the board," he said.

He did not indicate which legal requirements would prevent a boundary change.

Patch left two email messages with Camden in the last few weeks about what he meant. He has not responded. Last year, Camden announced he would no longer answer constituents' emails, though he has told Patch he has loosened that policy.

Patch asked the district's spokesman, Chris Jasculca, about the boundary requirement. He wrote back, "Our attorney has confirmed that there is no legal requirement that prevents or promotes changing boundaries."

In the presentation, attorneys for Arlington Heights-based Hodges, Loizzi, Eisenhammer, Rodick & Kohn, which gets hundreds of thousands of dollars from the district every year, listed 11 legal justifications for changing boundaries. Among them are socioeconomic status, school capacity, the boundaries of feeder elementary districts, geographic proximity of students and number of students in a neighborhood.

Socioeconomic status is an obvious one between Hinsdale Central and South. Central is based in one of the richest towns in the United States. According to the Illinois Report Card, just 5 percent of Central's students are considered low-income, far less than South's 24 percent.

In a video titled "The D86 Squeeze," Burr Ridge resident Alan Hruby focused on Camden's statement and compared it to what the district's own lawyers said.

Hruby said socioeconomic status would be a good reason to change the boundary. He said it's not good policy to provide more curricular opportunities at an affluent school than at a school with nearly a quarter of students considered low-income. Checking out the legal applications, he said, "you will discover that socioeconomic status is deemed a rational basis for assigning students to schools, not to perpetuate socioeconomic segregation, but to eliminate it."

Hruby also said other legal justifications apply to District 86. South, with half of Central's enrollment, has an abundance of capacity. And parts of Central's zone includes neighborhoods closer to South, Hruby said.

In the April 6 election, 10 candidates are running for four seats on the school board. Only one of them — 2017 South graduate Justin Baron — has come out in favor of revisiting the boundary issue.