More Proof Of Hinsdale Central-South Disparity

HINSDALE, IL – Hinsdale High School District 86 officials have said it's a fact of life that schools at times will deny students' course choices.

But it's a fact of life that happens a lot more at Hinsdale South.

In response to a public records request, the district released numbers this week showing that the district could not honor 215 course requests at South.

By contrast, at Hinsdale Central, 35 course selections were denied.

These denials happened because the district canceled courses due to low enrollment.

The public records request was filed by Burr Ridge resident Alan Hruby.

He has long pushed for changing the boundary between the two schools' zones as a way of balancing enrollment.

With a smaller enrollment, South is unable to offer as great of a course selection as Central.

While most school officials do not publicly verbalize that logic, two recently did. They were Cheryl Moore, assistant superintendent of human resources, and Cynthia Hanson, the only school board member from the South zone.

"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 at a district committee meeting.

The district has touted its new unified program of studies, with the goal of offering every student the same course selection. But Hruby said this won't work because South has far fewer students and thus fewer teachers.

Hruby said the board appeared to cover up the data during a presentation on staffing two weeks ago.

"How is this not a sad reflection of the noxious relationship between (1) a school board that puts the nonacademic personal self-interests of a political faction ahead of the best interests of South students and (2) members of its well-paid administrative staff trying to spare their bosses public exposure to the obvious prejudice embedded in a Staffing Framework that they approved?" Hruby said in an email to the board.

He added, "How can we look at that same evidence and not conclude that the Staffing Framework is not only highly prejudicial to South students, but also targeted in its punitive impact upon them as well?"

Editor's note: An earlier version of the story included percentages of students who saw at least one of their requests denied. Those percentages were incorrect. Some students may have had more than one request denied.