Hinsdale D86 Data Confusion Upsets Leader

HINSDALE, IL – The president of the Hinsdale High School District 86 board took officials to task Thursday for what she called "intentionally vague data."

Earlier this month, Patch pointed to widely varying statistics over the last six months for course conflicts at Central and South high schools.

The most recent data was presented as the administration contended the district has largely wiped away course disparities between the schools. The smaller South has long gotten the short end of the stick.

"We can have a million details, but if they don't reconcile, it's no good. There cannot be intentionally vague data," the board's president, Catherine Greenspon, said at a board meeting.

She said she listened to the recording of a committee session in which the administration referred to its "intentionally vague data." She did not say which meeting.

"I don't feel comfortable with that," Greenspon said. "I'm not sure it will ever be productive to refer to any data set that is being presented to the board or a subset of the board as intentionally vague."

Doing such things, she said, "completely erodes and degrades the trust in our district."

Board member Bobby Fischer said the district needs a written procedure for reporting on metrics from year to year.

"We owe it to the community to include detailed data sets to support those numbers," Fischer said. "We can get ahead of these (Freedom of Information Act) requests, simply put, by providing the details to support our numbers and, if there's a mistake in the detail, owning that mistake and fixing the number."

During a board committee meeting in December, officials reported that Central was able to grant 89 percent of course requests the previous school year. At South, that number was 68 percent.

But at a committee meeting earlier this month, officials told board members that for the next school year, both schools "satisfied over 98% of total requests and over 80% of students had all of their requests filled," according to the minutes.

The district originally did not answer Patch's inquiries about the widely varying numbers, which occurred at a time when the district made no major changes. (A local watchdog has provided data that contradicts what the district is putting out.)

After Patch's story appeared, a district spokesman said the December numbers were described incorrectly. He said they actually referred to the percentage of students who had all their course requests honored.

At Thursday's meeting, Fischer said the district offers more listed courses than similar school systems.

"We should feel good about that," he said. "But we should feel bad about the number of courses in the catalog that are never run, and we need to work on that."

During the discussion, Greenspon said the district should provide the public with information presented at meetings beforehand, unless it has a legal or other reason not to do so.

"We've had this discussion over and over and over and over with administration, and I'm holding board chairs responsible," she said. "The documents need to be forward-facing. There should be no pushback."