Oak Park and River Forest High School hires former Homewood-Flossmoor, Naperville administrator
Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200 has hired an administrator experienced in curriculum to be its new assistant superintendent for student learning to replace Laurie Fiorenza who resigned, effective June 30, without explanation in April.
Fiorenza's replacement will be Jen Hester, who has worked for the last five years as the director of student curriculum, instruction and professional development at Homewood-Flossmoor High School District 233, a one-school district like OPRF.
Prior to working at Homewood-Flossmoor, Hester worked as the top academic or curriculum administrator at Naperville Community Unit School District 203, which includes Naperville Central and Naperville North high schools, and St. Charles Community Unit District 303 which includes St. Charles East and St. Charles North high schools. She served for eight years as the chief academic officer at Naperville District 203 before that position was eliminated in a cost cutting move. She was going to be reassigned to be a reading specialist at a middle school in the district but instead worked for a year as consultant before being hired at Homewood-Flossmoor.
'I'm thrilled to have Dr. Hester join the district,' OPRF District 200 Superintendent Greg Johnson said in a news release. 'She really stood out among the other candidates for her array of experience in large, diverse districts, expertise in curricular knowledge, passion for classroom instruction and understanding of data and school metrics. She'll be a tremendous asset as we work to ensure all students can achieve their full potential, both here at OPRF and once they graduate.'
Hester was chosen from a field of 90 candidates and underwent three rounds of interviews. The first rounds of interviews included teachers and students as well as administrators.
Hester grew up in York, Pennsylvania, where her mother, grandmother and an aunt were all teachers. After graduating from Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania she began her career teaching sixth grade in Hanover, Pennsylvania. After teaching sixth grade for three years she came to Chicago to attend graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she earned a master's degree in educational leadership and a doctorate in curriculum and instruction. Much of her graduate work focused on reading and literacy
Hester worked for the Chicago Public Schools for three years starting as a literacy specialist and rising to become the manager of high school literacy at CPS before going to St. Charles as a literacy coordinator before rising to curriculum director.
Hester, whose husband John Schalk grew up in River Forest and graduated from OPRF in 1989, said the OPRF job appealed to her because of shared values.
'I feel like my core beliefs and values really align with Oak Park and River Forest's vision and mission,' Hester said, adding she is especially committed to work to improve the academic achievement of Black and Hispanic students. 'I come from a long line of educators and I've had lots of help myself along the way from those educators and I definitely believe that all kids can and will succeed at high levels.'
At Homewood-Flossmoor, Hester led a detracking program somewhat similar to what has been implemented at OPRF in the Honors for All freshman program. At Homewood-Flossmoor, Hester said, lower level classes were eliminated in an attempt to give all students exposure to rigorous core classes.
'We did some work there with detracking and ensuring that all kids were in the rigorous, grade level core curriculum,' Hester said. 'I'm also very proud of being part of and leading, with my team, a lot of our equity learning and work,' Hester said.
While Homewood-Flossmoor High School and OPRF are similar in size, OPRF is a little bigger, and both have diverse student populations their demographics differ. According to the most recent school report card 73.6% of H-F students are Black, 12.3% are white and 9.7% are Hispanic. At OPRF, 51.8% of students are white, 19% of Black and 15.4% are Hispanic.
While both H-F and OPRF were designated as commendable schools by the state last year and both have reputations as excellent schools, OPRF's recent academic performance has been significantly stronger. According to the 2024 Illinois School Report Card, only 26% of H-F juniors scored high enough on the SAT to meet the state's tough English Language Arts proficiency standards compared to 64% of OPRF juniors. In math only 18% of H-F students met the state's proficiency standard compared to 55% at OPRF. According to the state, OPRF has a higher percentage of low income students, 20%, than H-F where 14% of students are designated as low income.
Like many schools across the nation Homewood-Flossmoor has a wide gap in test scores between white and Black students although its achievement gap is not as wide as it is at OPRF. At H-F the gap between the percentage of white students and Black students meeting state proficiency standards was 38 points in ELA and 33 points in math while at OPRF it was 52 points in ELA and 51 points in math.
Hester said her first priority upon starting her job at OPRF on July 1 will be to get to know the school better.
'My first goal is always to make connections to everybody who's there and really seek to understand what's important to them, what matters, what makes OPRF OPRF,' Hester said.
She said she is not ready to comment in detail about the Honors for All Program which just completed its third year. The first Honors for All cohort took the ACT in the spring and will be seniors in the fall.
'I need to get in and learn,' Hester said. 'I need to come to Oak Park and River Forest and really learn what Honors for All means and understand the goals more deeply than you can through an interview process and then the goal is, always, for all kids to learn at high levels.'
Hester will be paid an annual salary of $195,000 at OPHF.
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