For the 2022-2023 school year, Oak Park and River Forest High School hired 47 new faculty across all of its departments, 18 of whom are teachers, according to data provided by Janel Bishop, director of employee relations and recruitment at OPRF, and data presented at a board meeting on Aug. 25. In hiring these new employees, the school is trying to meet the formal goals they set in the 2019-2020 school year to hire a more diverse faculty and staff that best reflects the diversity of the student body.

According to the strategic plan set in 2017 (revised in February 2021), OPRF intends to “increase representation of minority teachers to 35 percent of the overall faculty” by July 2025. Currently, 27 percent of the overall faculty is made up of people of color, according to data presented at the Aug. 25 board meeting.

As for why OPRF wants its faculty to reflect the diversity of their student body, Bishop cited a report from the National Education Association detailing how “minority students achieve at a higher rate if they are taught by teachers that represent their racial background.” Both Erika Eckart, head of the OPRF English Division, and Julie Lam, Ed.D, OPRF director of student learning, echoed this sentiment.

Expanding upon the school’s goals, Eckart said, “a diversity of voices brings new ideas to the (school) and helps challenge us and think about perspectives we hadn’t considered before, which is so valuable in refining your teaching.”

“Being someone who is Asian-American, I did not have a lot of Asian-American educators growing up, let alone leaders. It really made a difference for me when I was teaching when one of my principals was Japanese American. That was the very first time I saw someone who looked like me in a leadership role at a school,” said Lam. “It’s made a significant impact on my career path.”

Since before the pandemic, there has been a rising shortage of educators in the United States. The Illinois State Board of Education reported 5,302 educator vacancies as of 2022, 1,066 of which are in Cook County.

Fortunately, amid the teacher shortage, OPRF remains unaffected. “We’ve been very lucky in that we’re a place people want to work, because of the work environment, the compensation, and the prestige,” said Eckart.

Rex Ovalle, a new English teacher at OPRF this year, recounted his orientation before the start of the school year: “At my orientation, it was a very diverse crew (of teachers)…Those different perspectives are only going to make teaching in the building better as a consequence,” he said.

Additional reporting by Ashley Brown

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