Tuesday, January 21, 2014

UPDATE: HMS Instructional Plan Options and Recommendations Posted on Board Docs

The D181 Administration has posted on Board Docs the options and recommendation for the Hinsdale Middle School Instructional Plan that will allow school to resume for over 800 students.  Here are the links for the documents which we will address below:


  1. Agenda for Tonight's meeting:Click to open agenda.
  2. Board Report outlining three options and making one recommendation: Click to open report.
  3. Proposed Split Schedule at CHMS for both schools' students: Click to open schedule.
  4. Proposed HMS Room Assignments at CHMS: Click to open room assignments.
We encourage our readers to review all of these documents.  The option being recommended is OPTION 2 which states:

"Option #2 - HMS would be closed for the remainder of this week. If the ductwork cleaning has not been completed by Sunday, January 26, implement a split schedule with Clarendon Hills Middle School beginning Monday, January 27 (with CHMS attending from 7:00 – 11:30 a.m. and HMS attending from 12:00 – 4:30 p.m), until Hinsdale Middle School is reopened."


Option 1 would also implement a split schedule but it would begin in two days on Thursday, January 23.

Whatever option is approved by the BOE, the "missed days" so far must be made up. Under Option 2, the district would use currently scheduled "Not in Attendance Days" on 2/17 (President's Day weekend), 4/18 (Good Friday), June 2 (Grading Day) and then use Emergency Days the week after school ends for all other students. The number of emergency days would depend on the number of days the students have been off from HMS.  The dates of the Emergency Days are June 6, 9, 10, 11 and 12.

The Administration is also recommending that the two days ALL students missed on January 6 and 7 not be made up.  That would mean that if students stay out of school all of this week, they will have 5 instructional days to make up.

Tonight's meeting should be quite interesting.  We are impressed that the Administration was able to put together this presentation in less than 24 hours after being asked to by the BOE at last night's meeting.  The first question the Board should ask Dr. Schuster is why it took her this long to formulate this plan so students could return to school sooner.

In our opinion, Dr. Schuster has already informed all parents that HMS will not reopen before Wednesday, January 29, so clearly, she believes that students will be going to CHMS for at least 2 days next week.  If that is going to happen anyway, then why keep them out of school this week?  Without hearing the full discussion, at this time, we would encourage the Board to approve Option 1 so that HMS students can return to school the day after tomorrow.  Depending on what they actually discuss -- and we hope they have a meaningful discussion -- we may change our minds.

We will weigh in after the Board votes tonight and let everyone know the decision.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Option 1 won. The entire podcost will be available on the district web page around 9:45pm tonight. The live feed did not work because over 250 users attempted to listed in.