The local schools compare well to their similarly wealthy counterparts in the suburbs, the district asserted.
Posted Fri, May 30, 2025 at 7:36 am CT
HINSDALE, IL – Hinsdale High School District 86's latest report has an apparent answer to those who say Hinsdale South gets the short end of the stick on course offerings: There's little problem.
A couple of weeks ago, the district released a report for the new Availability and Opportunities Committee, which was created to look at inequities between the two campuses.
According to the report, 98 percent of the courses in the program of studies were provided to Hinsdale Central students for next school year. Ninety percent of them are running; some were axed because either zero or too few students enrolled.
At South, 96 percent of the courses in the same program of studies were provided, with 87 percent of them running.
The district compared itself to other similarly wealthy schools – Deerfield, Glenbrook North, Glenbrook South, Lake Forest and Stevenson.
Find out what's happening in Hinsdale-Clarendon Hillsfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
"Compared to a small, non-random sample of well-regarded nearby high schools, South has generally more course offerings," District 86 said in the report.
With a wealthier student body, Central's enrollment is twice South's.
The report did not mention one of the biggest complaints at South – scheduling conflicts.
According to the district's data from 2023, 215 course requests were denied, compared with Central's 35.
Lower enrollment usually means that fewer sessions can be offered for a particular course, making conflicts likelier.
South residents have pushed the idea of changing the boundary to equalize enrollments. But Central residents near the border fear their property values would plunge if they become part of the South zone.
Of the school board's seven members, just Liz Mitha and Asma Akhras hail from the South area. Like their Central zone colleagues, neither supports a boundary change.
The board appears to follow an unwritten rule to avoid discussions of such changes. Occasionally, that rule is broken.
In a 2022 debate, then-board member Cynthia Hanson, who is from the South zone, said the board had "danced around" a particular subject.
She said the district should consider doing something about the difference in enrollments between the schools. Such a move, she said, would lessen the gap in offerings.
Hanson did not utter the B-word at first. That was left to then-Superintendent Tammy Prentiss.
"Are you asking to relook at boundaries?" Prentiss asked.
Hanson said it was a consideration. She said it seemed like a possible way to avoid the costs of offering low-enrollment classes.
Before leaving the board in 2023, then-board President Erik Held, who lives in the Central area, brought up the idea of a boundary change.
He called changing the line a solution "no one likes to ever talk about." But he said it's a tool in the board's toolbox.
"No board can ignore the tools they have at hand, no matter how difficult the conversation would be," Held said.
Editor's note: An earlier version of the story included percentages of students who saw at least one of their requests denied in 2023. Those percentages were incorrect. Some students may have had more than one request denied.