Special APS board meeting could decide Hinkley teachers' fate

Photo by Heather L. Smith / The Aurora Sentinel

AURORA | A group of Hinkley High School teachers whose jobs are at risk could find out tonight whether they will keep their posts at the school next year.

The Aurora Public Schools District Board of Education will hold a special meeting tonight to vote on nonrenewal for more than 10 teachers from across the district. The agenda item is a holdover from last week’s board meeting, when the APS board voted 5-2 to reject the entire consent agenda and temporarily save the teachers.

Last week’s board meeting came a day after a daylong demonstration by Hinkley students across the street from the high school on Chambers Road. More than 200 students left the campus during an eight-hour protest Monday, waving signs bearing slogans like “Honk for Education” and chanting, “Save our teachers.” School administrators had originally threatened to suspend the students and bar them from prom, but ultimately backed off the threats. Instead, students said that teachers like Thomas Bergen and Daniel Stone had been suspended for encouraging the demonstration.

The board’s vote against the consent agenda item followed more than two hours of testimony from Hinkley students, parents, state Rep. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, and the four threatened teachers.

The agenda for tonight’s meeting includes a slightly modified list of teachers up for nonrenewal. Hinkley teachers Thomas Bergen and Daniel Stone are still on the list.

“I teach because it’s me, it’s who I am,” Daniel Stone said during the meeting last week. “I feel that at Hinkley High School, the teachers who are being non-renewed are those teachers (who) inspire, they listen, they do everything that they can.”

Tuesday’s APS board meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. at the Dr. Edward and Mrs. Patricia Lord Board Room at the district’s Educational Services Center, 1085 Peoria St.