Gifted Program, Tentative Budget on D181 Agenda

After contributing to a Request for Proposal (RFP) meant to provide direction to interested parties, the District 181 Board of Education will vote Monday night at its regular business meeting on whether to authorize Superintendant Dr. Renée Schuster to complete the search process for a consultant to evaluate the district's gifted program.  

Questions in the RFP that board members expect the selected consultant to seek to answer about the gifted program include, "Should the program model vary by age/grade?" and "What are best practices in identifying students for a gifted program?"  

The RFP can be viewed in full here.

According to Schuster, issues some parents have with the gifted program include its selection process and whether advancing students beyond their grade level in certain subjects is beneficial. The superintendent said some even question whether a gifted program should exist at all.

“So by having an outside person come in and look at everything we do … they could give us an objective perspective upon which to make the decisions,” Schuster said.

Monday night's meeting will be held at  in Burr Ridge. It begins at 7 p.m. The board discussed the gifted program RFP at its Aug. 8 meeting. . 

Also Monday night, the board will vote on a tentative fiscal year 2012 budget that, if passed, would be posted for public viewing. According to board documents, a tentative budget must be posted publicly for 30 days before a final budget can be passed. 

The proposed tentative budget can be viewed in full here. 

The first day of school for District 181 students is scheduled for Thursday. It was announced in a joint statement Friday that during a six-hour mediated session Thursday, but progress was made. 

The current contract between the district and teachers' union expires Wednesday. Schuster said in an email Friday she could provide no details of the negotiations or confirm that another mediated session will take place before Wednesday.