As St Viator High School in Arlington Heights gets a new principal, one who used to teach math at a Jesuit school in Portland, Oregon, the students at York High School in Elmhurst find themselves following a few new policies that are designed to keep them safe and in an environment that promotes learning.
A monument in downtown Portland, Oregon (Voxitatis)
Brooke Puccini writes in The Viator Voice, the student newspaper at St Viator, that Karen Love is the school’s new principal.
After she left Portland three years ago, she worked at Loyola Academy in Wilmette. She told the paper she’s looking forward to serving the St Viator community and helping to lead a strong school into the future.
“I view it as being a servant leader—that I can help bring about change in the lives of young people and create a future for the students,” she was quoted as saying. “I am excited to learn more about the technology integration at Viator … I feel like it is hugely important to provide the 21st-century skills.”
But, she added, “It is not about the device; it is the skills translated.”
Belvidere North High School welcomes a total of 11 new teachers and staff members to the building this fall, The North View reports.
The new dean of students, Maria Bounthong, was quoted as saying she was looking forward to the new school year. “I am looking for the students of BNHS to be more engaged and on time to class this year,” she told the student newspaper.
Some administrative changes at York High School
Finally, students at York High School in Elmhurst will be required to wear their student IDs on a lanyard at all times while they’re in the school building, This Is York reports.
The policy was changed a bit from previous years because of concerns for student safety. Assistant Principal Drew McGuire explains:
Every year the Elmhurst Police Department does a safety check of our building, and last year we had an undercover cop or police officer get into the building and walk through the building without being asked who he was. Was the school ever in jeopardy? Never. Was the school ever unsafe? No. Was anybody ever at risk? No. But that was a real clear kind of, “OK, this is an issue and we need to address it.”
“Our job here is to make sure that all of our students are ready for whatever they do after they leave high school,” the student newspaper quoted Melissa Moore, assistant principal for student services, as saying. “One of the things that is really important at work and school is you always have to have some kind of identification on you. That’s a really important life skill, and we were finding a lot of our students don’t have their IDs on them.”
