District 86 Memo

To the Hinsdale District 86 Board of Education,

If you're reading this, thank you for taking your time to read this message. I am Grant Zhang, a District 86 resident and incoming freshman student of Hinsdale Central High School. As a graduate of Westview Hills Middle School of the Maercker School District 60, I am right around the area of the line which would be drawn for the boundary change. I know people on both sides of this proximity line, and to see us divided would not only be a pain for me, but a pain for this entire D60 community. However, there are other reasons besides emotional reasons on why the boundary line should be changed based on which District 86 school certain students will attend.

You will have probably taken into

I actually believe that using the academic levels of the schools to try to prevent the boundary change is an invalid reason. According to https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/illinois/rankings, Hinsdale Central is ranked as 13th in the state of Illinois with a 95% graduation rate. Hinsdale South is ranked as 20th in the state of Illinois with a 93% graduation rate. These two schools are actually very close in math proficiency and reading proficiency. In fact, South's math proficiency is actually better than Central's. In mathematics, Hinsdale Central has a 33% math proficiency, and Hinsdale South has a 34% math proficiency. In reading, Hinsdale Central has a 61% reading proficiency while Hinsdale South's is 53%. The numbers express that there really isn't a large enough of a difference to declare that South is indeed so much worse than

It's our community and the family we have built in this community. Every community is special in its own way, and it should be something that we respect between other communities. Normally, we see multiple middle schools merge into a high school. However, in our district, we already see division in our community after middle school. While quite a large majority of Westview Hills students end up going to Hinsdale Central, there is a significant amount of people from Westview that end up going to Downers Grove North (around 10-15% of Westview's graduating class this year), including one of my closest friends and some others that I talked to and also built friendships with, and a few end up going to Hinsdale South. To further divide our school would be like stabbing a wound. I've personally seen the proximity line, and it basically divides our district in half, so the amount of people going to each high school would be less than 50% for all three schools, meaning everyone in Westview will be separated from a majority of the others, which would be sad for everyone. Many of us had cried because of the 10-15% of people who were going to go to Downers Grove North were going to separate from the majority of us. To make that number rise for the majority who would go to Central would bring even more sorrow, not to mention the fact that the Downers Grove