Hinsdale D86 Plan Defies Math: Official

HINSDALE, IL – Hinsdale South High School is poised to remain on the short end of the stick with course offerings next year. And one school board member seems frustrated about that.

Meanwhile, the wealthier Hinsdale Central is expected to continue enjoying a bigger selection of classes because its enrollment is nearly twice South's.

District officials have vowed to fix the imbalance in offerings, but have struggled.

At a presentation earlier this week, Hinsdale High School District 86 revealed that it expects Central's enrollment to drop by 74 students, to 2,379 next year. And it projects South to fall by 47 students, to 1,311.

Under the district's plan, Central and South would employ 159 and 90 teachers, respectively. That's down one at Central and two at South.

According to the presentation, six low-enrollment courses would not run at Central next year, compared with 20 at South.

Alan Hruby, a Burr Ridge resident who has long highlighted the inequity, doubted the district would ever equalize offerings with the current differences in enrollment and staffing.

In an email to Patch, Hruby said the district's staffing request does not tell the whole story. Central, he said, would see an additional 26 unique courses, compared with seven at South.

He questioned how South's 72 general education teachers would teach all the new courses next year when they cannot cover all the common curriculum offerings.

"What will happen next year at this time?" Hurby said. "I believe South’s 'low enrollment courses not running' list will then take up two pages."

At this week's meeting of the district's Human Resources Committee, school board member Cynthia Hanson pointedly questioned how the district could say it would align course offerings.

Cheryl Moore, assistant superintendent of human resources, conceded the difficulty.

"When you have 1,300 students and this many options, the math is only seven periods a day. You will not have all these classes filled, it's a mathematical improbability," Moore said. "It is a problem, and it will be a problem every single year we do staffing."

Hanson, who is the only member of the seven-member board in the South zone, agreed.

"It's actually not proper to increase choices knowing that it will never run for one school mathematically," she said. "It is not appropriate. I really struggle with the concept."

Over the years, Hruby and others have argued for a boundary change to equalize enrollments. But Central residents near the boundary fear their home values would plunge if they become part of the South area. As a result, the issue is considered politically untouchable, though Hanson raised it last year.

Hanson is not running for another term in the April 4 election. Only one of the five candidates in the race lives in the South zone. So it's possible that the board could be made up entirely of Central residents.

On Wednesday, Patch obtained the photos of the slides of the presentation on staffing from a reader. While the district posts many such presentations online, it shies away from doing so for the staffing issue. That leaves members of the public to take photos of the screen.

The school board is set to take up staffing at its meeting Thursday. The presentation was not included in the board's online packet.