Hinsdale High School Teachers Association

After a long process, District 86 announced a new principal for Central next year:

On Monday, December 14, 2009, the Hinsdale Township High School District 86 Board of Education unanimously approved the appointment of Mr. Michael McGrory, Principal of Ames High School in Ames, Iowa, as the next Principal of Hinsdale Central High School for the 2010-2011 school year.

Mr. McGrory brings much experience, energy, and excitement to this position, having served most recently as the Principal of Ames High School since 2001. In this role, he manages budgetary, operational, and personnel aspects of a high school with a very diverse and high achieving student population of 1,500, and oversees 105 certified teachers, and 65 support staff. In addition, he implemented a High School Reform recommendation and oversaw a $13 million building renovation project. Ames High School is comparable to Hinsdale Central in that it is a state leader in its number of National Merit Finalists and 93% of its students attend a postsecondary institution. Professionally, Mr. McGrory serves on various district and state committees, and he participates in community committees and volunteer opportunities, as well. Prior to his principalship at Ames High School, he served as Principal of a Middle School for three years, and Principal of a K-12 school for two years.

Mr. McGrory was introduced to the faculty and staff on Tuesday morning, followed by a short reception for us to begin to get to know him. I look forward to continuing the productive and collaborative relationship that has been developed over recent years with our current and former building leaders. We wish him well, and look forward to working together at the start of the 2010-11 school year.

Congratulations and welcome to Hinsdale Central, Mr. McGrory!

For American Education Week, our current Interim Principals wrote the following letter to the local media:

The occasion of American Education Week provided us the opportunity to reflect on our experience at Hinsdale Central.  In August, we met with a group of students and asked them what they liked most about attending Central.  The first thing they said, to a person, was their appreciation for the fine teaching and support staff.  Their eyes “lit up” when they shared about the passion which teachers have for their subject and for teaching; when they shared how much the support staff cares, helping students through both academic and non-academic issues; and when they shared about the excellent relationship which students have with the staff at HCHS.

Since that day in August, we have visited classes in which students have struggled with the material and have observed teachers differentiating instruction in order to meet the varied academic needs of those students.  We have observed teachers challenging students academically in order to “stretch them” educationally, preparing them for the post-high school experience.  We have observed dedicated coaches and sponsors giving students wonderful opportunities to grow in the areas of team work and learning the benefits of hard work.  We have observed counselors helping students understand what it takes to prepare a quality college application.  We have observed social workers meet with students in extreme social and emotional circumstances and help them cope with those circumstances.  The staff at Hinsdale Central is among the finest with which we have worked.  It has been an honor and privilege to be associated with them as colleagues.
Tom Paulsen
Frank Kesman
Interim Principals, Hinsdale Central High School

Thanks to Tom and Frank for their dedication and wonderful professionalism shown this year as well.

In last month’s IEA Insider, Jim Crandel, HHSTA’s Chief Negotiator during our last contract talks, writes about the importance of relationship building and the previous Board’s decision to not honor its commitment to retired teachers:

“Sure, we had our outrage, but what we needed was community members, parent organizations and the media to help our board realize that destroying teacher trust would NOT result in better schools.

Relationship building is key to the success of any organization. It’s one of the reasons your Association’s leadership has been discussing relationship building with the current Board via district administration. These talks have resulted in a compromise of sorts: a Memorandum of Agreement approved at the September 21st Board meeting that ensures Roundtable meetings between the Association and Board will continue during the negotiations process – the opposite of our current contract language. Although a step in the right direction, as we attempt together to achieve a successor agreement to our current contract, this process will be complicated by the profound breach of trust that culminated in the retiree grievance process Jim was writing about.

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The following are the prepared remarks presented at the Regular Action Meeting of the Hinsdale High School District Board Meeting, Monday August 17th, 2009:

On behalf of our members I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you a piece of history I found when going through files in our relocated Association office as we start the new school year.

Our organization has its roots in the Hinsdale Teachers Association, which served both District 181 and District 86 teachers in the early days of Hinsdale schools. However, in fall of 1956 members of the Professional Committee contemplated forming a separate high school organization, resulting in the first official meeting of HHSTA being held the following spring. Today we are proud to begin our 52nd year as the professional Association advocating for the teachers of our two high schools. Such an established history within our tradition of excellence is inspiring to me, as are the many individuals associated with our history.

For example, individuals like Harvey Dickinson often carry multiple connections within this tradition. A legendary coach; a nationally recognized Athletic Director; Harvey Dickinson is a HCHS Foundation Hall of Fame inductee in whose honor Central’s Dickinson Field is named.

In 1957, Harvey Dickinson was also the first president of HHSTA.

Too often individual connections such as this can be overlooked or forgotten if we view each other as separate entities: “the Board” or “the Association”. It’s easy to be wary of a faceless organization, to paint a group with a broad brush, or to tarnish the majority based on the minority. In reality we’re part of the same organization and far greater together than these labels imply separately.

With this in mind, I’d like to put a face to our Association. Certainly we are first and foremost the professional educators in our classrooms, student support networks, nurses’ offices, and our libraries. But our members are also the directors of school plays, variety show organizers, float builders, prom chaperons, and sponsors of a multitude of clubs and activities that take place before and after school.

Every year Association members flip pancakes and serve spaghetti to provide scholarships for our students. Every season, our members are the coaches that continue our highly recognized athletic traditions. And every day our members help students with their homework, their choice of college major or career, and through the ups and downs of high school life.

I’ll close by reiterating what leaders who have stood here before me have said: we look forward to working together to build upon our long tradition of excellence. By building our relationships and working together we will continue to achieve the best environment possible for our students.

Thank you and have a great year!

Shortly after the last contract negotiations ended in 2006, HHSTA filed a grievance charging that the school board ignored both the language and the intent of the contract clause pertaining to retired teachers’ benefits when it unilaterally increased - in many instances doubling or tripling -  the insurance contributions required of retired teachers.

The following are the prepared remarks presented by Kathy Wynn, Co-President at Hinsdale South, to the Board at the March 16th Board meeting:

On March 6, the binding arbitration between the Board and the Hinsdale High School Teachers Association was sustained in its entirety in favor of the Association.  Due to the decision by the Board that led to this arbitration, the district’s taxpayers will assume the burden of attorney fees, arbitrator’s fee, and interest payments associated with the Board’s action. This expense could have been avoided if the Administration and Board had honored the commitments it made to teachers who devoted their careers to teaching in District 86.

Now that the ruling has been made, HHSTA would like to move quickly to make whole all individuals affected by the Board’s unilateral changes in retiree insurance benefits. We believe that by working together we can move beyond the lack of trust generated by the Board’s actions which led to the arbitration case. With this in mind, HHSTA would like to reiterate the sentiment expressed repeatedly over the past several years: to resolve to work together on behalf of our students.

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Last May, HHSTA-Central looked at what “average” class size meant, and how to best determine just how many students are actually in the “average” class at Hinsdale Central as opposed to a nebulous staffing ratio most often quoted on this subject:

The HHSTA class size study at Central looked at all departments and the over 700 sections offered to Central Students that its members teach. The results showed:

Average All Class Size: 23.1
Average Core Class Size (English, Math, Science, and Social Studies): 22.4
Average Advanced Placement (AP) Class Size: 22.4
Percent of Classes with 13 or fewer students: 6.4%
Percent of Classes with 30 or more students: 9.6%

As was noted at the end of this post, this type of data fluctuates over time. So this year Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) report card data was examined to see how class sizes in 2008 compared. All data below is via the ISBE website, which has a searchable database of Illinois school report cards going back to 2002.

First, the comparison within district:

District 86 Average Class Size – 2008:
Hinsdale South:  19.4
State Average: 19.6
Hinsdale Central:  21.7

Hinsdale Central average class size, as determined by ISBE in 2008, is larger than both the state average and the average at Hinsdale South. How does this compare with other schools locally? For this comparison, ISBE data was compared with other high schools in our conference:

West Suburban Conference Silver Division Average Class Size 2008:
Lyons Township:  18.8
Proviso West:   19.0
Oak Park & River Forest: 19.2
Downers Grove North: 19.6
York:    21.4
Hinsdale Central:  21.7
Glenbard West:  26.1

Hinsdale Central average class size, as determined by ISBE in 2008, was larger that of all but Glenbard West. The next question asked was how did this data compare to the highest performing schools in Illinois? For this question, the ISBE data for the top 10 public schools from the Chicago Sun Times 2008 “Top 50 High Schools in Illinois” (excluding CPS schools) was compared :

Top 10 Illinois High Schools Average Class Size 2008:
Glenbrook North:  18.2
Deerfield:   18.5
Lyons Township:  18.8
New Trier:   20.0
Maine South:   20.2
Lake Forest:   21.3
Adlai E Stevenson:  21.6
Hinsdale Central:  21.7
Naperville Central:  22.2
William Fremd:  22.7

Hinsdale Central average class size, as determined by ISBE in 2008, was larger than all but two of the top 10 public schools in Illinois.

Conferences are a mix of experiences for teachers. There is the experience of being at school from 7:30am to 9:30pm, not seeing our loved ones or tucking in our own children that day. There is the stress of meeting so many new people, getting one’s books completely up to date, sitting in an uncomfortable student desk for hours, straining to be heard over the hundreds of other conferences going on, the hours of doing so invariably leading to one’s voice being hoarse the next day. And of course, there’s the part about being at school for approximately 14 hours and having to be back the next day at 7:30am prepared to teach.

On the other hand, there is the interaction with parents where teachers get to celebrate the experiences we share with their children; their strengths, their weaknesses, and all the things both good and bad they tell their parents about us that we never hear in class. There’s the gratitude that is expressed in person, the frustration shared, the excitement of planning for their child’s future college major. There’s also the sheer joy of learning from a parent that we did actually make a connection with their child - even if there was no way the student would tell us so in class for fear of looking like the teacher’s pet or somehow uncool by expressing a fondness for our subject.

Regardless of the experiences shared, what amazes me is the sheer volume of this important contact with parents that teachers are able to achieve in one event. During parent-teacher conferences this year, teachers from Hinsdale Central achieved the following number of parent contacts:

Number of parents seen: 1,000
Number of conferences held: 6,270
Number of “un-scheduled” conferences: 932

Total number of conferences: 7,202

These statistics reflect both the “scheduled” conferences that happen the day of the event as well as “un-scheduled” conferences yet to occur. These 932 “un-scheduled” conferences will take place in the form of additional phone calls, letters or email sent by teachers during their planning time, lunch time and personal time. Approximately two-thirds of Central teachers have un-scheduled conferences yet to complete, with approximately six-percent having more than 20 such additional conferences to complete.

Central has a long tradition of educational excellence. Numbers like this demonstrate both the sheer dedication of  Hinsdale Central’s teachers as well as the support by the community for what they do in their classrooms.