Uncertainty On Hinsdale D86's 'Fantastic' Leap

HINSDALE, IL – Hinsdale High School District 86 is attempting to paint a positive picture of any possible discrepancy in course opportunities between the two schools.

But the district's latest statistics on the issue are drawing criticism. One of the critics is the school board president, Catherine Greenspon, who said last week that the data was "intentionally vague."

Patch reviewed the audio recording from the June 17 meeting of the Availability and Opportunities Committee. It is a panel made up of three school board members as well as residents.

The panel was formed to address the longstanding gap between Central and South high schools. It's a disparity that officials now argue has largely been eliminated.

At the meeting, the committee's chairman, board member Bobby Fischer, said the panel was founded with the idea that Central students' course requests were honored at a much higher rate than their South counterparts.

"We ended up learning that was less true," he said.

Committee member Kim Notaro called the new data showing the gap has nearly closed "fantastic" and "impressive."

"We're fulfilling course requests at 98 percent and 99 percent. That's insane," said Notaro, a Hinsdale resident. "We're almost at 100 percent delivered. I can't believe we got there. I don't know how we got there."

She noted a district report earlier in the month that showed a total of 346 scheduling conflicts at Central for the coming school year, which is one more than South's 345. These issues affected 276 students at Central and 267 at South, meaning some students had more than one conflict, according to the district.

Last year's data, she said, showed thousands of course scheduling conflicts.

"I think we had bad metrics," Notaro said. "We are at a tenth of where we were last year."

A few days before the meeting, Patch reported on widely varying data for course conflicts in the district.

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

But at the June 2 Availability and Opportunities Committee meeting, officials said 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.

In a statement after the story, the district said it incorrectly described the numbers in December. They did not apply to total requests, but rather the percentage of students who had all their course requests honored.

At the June 17 meeting, Superintendent Michael Lach cast doubt on the December numbers, which his administration released about five months after he took the helm.

He referred to the 68 percent number for South, saying he thought the district "didn't collect the data in exactly the same way" as it does now.

Lach pushed back on suggestions to monitor more numbers associated with course scheduling conflicts.

"The more things the community is tracking, the harder it is for me," he said.

He said the administration could provide more figures, but "all that does is open things up to more critique and more questions and distracts us from focusing on what the goals are."

Notaro said more of the numbers will come out through public records requests filed by watchdogs such as Alan Hruby and Adolph Galinski. Patch will publish what they get and note that Central is larger and has a wealthier student body, she said.

Hruby released his findings to Patch, which published a story last week. Hruby disputed the district's numbers, saying they included scheduling conflicts for courses that aren't running at the other school next year.

Hruby said the larger Central has more courses running than South. By his numbers, one scheduling conflict occurred for every 9.7 students at Central for next year's courses and one for every 4.3 at South. Those numbers, which exclude courses not available at the other school, are a fairer representation of the disparity, Hruby said.

The original draft of the committee's report stated, "We should all feel good about our current status of availability and opportunity."

But committee members agreed to drop that language, saying it would draw objections.

Instead, the report says, "The D86 community generally recognizes that our Program of Studies is both a strength and offers room for significant improvement."

Fischer said the district needed to remove courses from the program of studies that have not been run in years.

For weeks, Lach has not responded to Patch's questions about the data.

At the June 17 meeting, Lach said Jason Markey, assistant superintendent for academics, handled the data on course conflicts. Markey's last day is Monday. No one has been appointed to fill his position.