Concerned taxpayers are circulating a petition to “Slow Down” the plan for substantial cuts and other changes to our highly successful science curricula at Hinsdale South and Hinsdale Central. Otherwise, these changes will be imposed in fall 2020 on all students at South and half the students at Central, where the changes are planned to be phased in over several years until all students will be subject to the new curriculum.
Ninth-grade biology and earth science will be phased out entirely. All students will be placed on the Physics First (PCB) science course sequence, scheduled to start with “Physics in the Universe,” an earth science-physics hybrid that we are told has yet to be created! It gets better — we don’t have enough physics teachers to staff PCB for all, so they are repurposing other science teachers, who can always use their flex days to bone up on physics or shadow a physics teacher. I am not making this up. See the Nov. 13 “information session” video on the district website. To free up more physics teachers, the plan is eliminate AP Physics I and II. Students can leapfrog straight from ninth grade “physics in the universe” to success in AP Physics C.
According to D86 board members, “all” of our science teachers “strongly support” all of these changes and more.
If you think this plan needs to go back to the drawing board with more course options on the table for all, sign the online Slow Down petition at https://chng.it/7sVRrXFGpQ. — Linda Burke, Hinsdale
