Hinsdale D-86 Numbers Hide Bigger Disparity

HINSDALE, IL — The complaint among those in the Hinsdale South High School area is that the much larger Hinsdale Central offers a lot more choice in courses.

In March, though, Hinsdale High School District 86 officials presented numbers that showed the differences between the schools were not all that bad: Central would offer 15 courses next school year that would be unavailable at South. And South would offer 11 that would not be provided at Central.

That's a disparity for sure, but a gap that seemed relatively easy to close.

But there was a problem: The numbers were way off.

In late June, the district admitted the error, calling it "a little oversight." By the district's count, about 90 courses next year would be unique to Central and about 40 to South.

This acknowledgement followed a conversation between Chris Covino, the district's assistant superintendent for academics, and Alan Hruby, a Burr Ridge resident who has served as a watchdog over the schools' inequities.

Hruby, who released a YouTube video on the subject last month, found Central would offer 251 different courses next school year. At the same time, South would offer 170. Central's enrollment doubles South's, while South has significantly greater percentages of low-income and minority students.

Hruby's analysis means that Central would offer 81 more courses, providing students nearly 50 percent more choice.

In an email to Hruby in late May, Covino, who gave the March presentation, said his interaction with the details of master scheduling had been limited since he was hired last summer, although he had done such work for other districts.

"The current practice in D86 is for the individual buildings to do all the actual schedule development," Covino said.

In an interview with Patch, Covino said the district plans to offer a unified curriculum for both schools by 2024. This effort, he said, shows the district understands that lesser choice at South is a problem.

He said the unique courses listed in the March presentation were intended as a representation.

"It was at worst misleading," Covino said. "We absolutely 100 percent recognize there are more classes being offered at Hinsdale Central. If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't be doing this work. We have discrepancies between the schools."

Covino's and Hruby's numbers still differ, but not as much as they did initially. Hruby said he closely followed the district's own documents in counting the different courses offered at each school.

Covino noted that students can commute between the schools to take courses not offered at their own. This is a common point brought up by District 86 in such discussions.

In an email to Patch, Hruby rejected this as a viable option for students.

"Commuting burdens students, not only with planning the logistics of their own transportation, but also with the sacrifice of one or two periods for traveling," Hruby said. "This has a chilling effect upon a student’s interest in commuting to the other school."

Hruby said meeting the goal of a unified curriculum would be difficult.

"The harder problem is what to do when the demands of curriculum equity require the deployment of more teaching resources at the smaller school," Hruby said in the email to Patch. "For example, consider the six Social Studies courses ... that next year will be offered exclusively at Central — Global Issues, World History Honors, African American History, East Asian Studies, Western Civilization and Philosophy Honors. No amount of curricular housekeeping is going to fix this inequity. What then could possibly be the solution? Drop them from Central? Or maybe add more faculty at South so that they could run at a reduced class size?"

Hruby and others in the South area have long demanded the district change the boundary between Central and South to equalize the enrollment of the two schools. But Central property owners near the boundary object to such a move, saying their property values would plunge if they ended up in the South area.

In an election debate earlier this year, only one of nine participating candidates raised his hand when they were asked whether they were open to a boundary change. Of the seven school board members, six live in the Central zone. Despite that, the board has talked about forming a task force to look into the inequities between the schools.

Patch asked Covino whether a boundary change would make unifying the curriculum easier. Covino declined to comment.

"As the chief academic officer, I'm hyperfocused to deliver a world-class curriculum for all District 86 students," he said.