The town hall meeting hosted by the Niles North Parent Advisory Council (PAC) provided students, teachers and parents a forum to discuss the District’s Annual Review of Programs (ARP) before all the departmental directors and both school principals.

The issues in the ARP that seemed to cause the most controversy were offering an “honors option” in lieu of the stand-alone honors English and history courses at the junior level and shifting the school calendar to start the year one week earlier in the 2014-2015 school year.

In last year’s ARP, the administration recommended that the Board eliminate the stand-alone honors English and history courses in order to 1) advance students to the most rigorous coursework possible, 2) align with College Readiness standards and 3) make student placement simpler by moving from four tracks to two. Approximately 30 individuals expressed unhappiness with this proposal, according to a summary of public comments on the 2011-2012 ARP.

This year, the administration’s recommendation is slightly different: rather than eliminating the stand-alone honors courses completely, the proposal is to offer an “honors option” in which students in a regular level class can opt to “take advantage of exposure to more rigor in the classroom” and receive honors level credit. The ARP states that this structure is already in use in some world language, fine arts and science classes.

Senior Megan Pietz, while addressing the departmental directors at the meeting, spoke out against this proposal. “Your proposed idea to offer an honors option in the regular level American Literature and Composition course really worries me because I believe that you are confusing rigor in the classroom with the amount of homework,” she said. “Last year, 29 percent of juniors did not meet ACT reading standards, and I cannot understand how a teacher would be able help students become ACT ready and challenge others at the same time. Students don’t base their entire high school career around a test number so you should not base a child’s entire success or even this school’s success on a set of data as well.”

Another hot topic of the current school year’s ARP is the proposed calendar change. The change, which would be applied to the calendar of the 2014-2015 school year, would start the school year approximately one week earlier (Aug. 12, 2014), move first semester finals before Winter Break (Dec. 16-18, 2014) and would end the school year in late May (May 21, 2015), prior to Memorial Day.

The ARP provides rationale for this proposal by stating that it was a change suggested by students, would allow students to have a true break during Winter Break and would make it easier for them to secure summer jobs by ending the year earlier. The proposed calendar would also provide about 10 extra instructional days before AP and ACT/PSAE tests and would align with the calendars of many four-year universities.

Though the document claims students influenced this proposal, representatives from both Niles North and Niles West’s student governments came to the microphone to say that student government was notified of the change but didn’t get a chance to give their feedback about it. Others who spoke at the meeting were concerned that the calendar change would cut into family time at the end of the summer and would make scheduling difficult for students who attend overnight camps that align with the current school year calendar. The feeder school districts are not required to align with District 219’s calendar, which could be hard for families that have students in multiple districts.

All comments made at the meeting as well as on the document itself will be considered by the Board of Education before they direct the administration about which changes to pursue. This action is slated for the Board meeting on Dec. 17.

To view the ARP, click here. After reading the document you may leave comments below or follow this link.