New leadership hired for three D300 schools

New leadership is inbound at three schools within Community Unit District 300.

The school board this week approved hiring principals at Oak Ridge School and Liberty Elementary School, both in Carpentersville, and at Lake in the Hills Elementary School.

Nathan Jarot, current principal at Oak Ridge, will oversee Lake in the Hills Elementary School. Stacy Wilkinson, the education services division head at Jacobs High School, has been tapped to lead Oak Ridge, which is moving from trailers into the district's former Carpentersville headquarters.

And Robert Chleboun, an elementary school principal in Riverside School District 96, will oversee Liberty.

"I'm very happy with the selection," Trustee Joe Stevens said of the hires. "Two of them we've known - they're internal candidates. The third one we just met on Monday, but he seems like a very good man."

Prior to spending three years at Jacobs, Wilkinson was a special-education teacher in the district for a total of nine years at Dundee-Crown High School and Oak Ridge.

Jarot's career in the district began as a fifth-grade teacher at Perry Elementary School in Carpentersville. He became a teacher and team leader at Lakewood School, also in Carpentersville, for six years, before working as the school's dean, adviser and curriculum administrator. He was later promoted to assistant principal, a job he held from 2008 through 2010 until he became principal of Oak Ridge.

He succeeds Principal Tammy Poole who is taking a job within another school district.

Chleboun has been principal of Blythe Park Elementary School in Riverside School District 96 for 10 years. Prior to that, he was an assistant principal at an elementary school in North Shore School District 112 and taught within the same school district for 11 years. He will replace Amanda Edwards, who is changing careers.

Chleboun looks forward to getting to know Liberty's school culture and environment so he knows where to take it in the future.

"I want to be a support for our staff to develop a partnership with our teachers, parents, community, my administrative colleagues so we can continue to focus on the good things that are happening at the school and be able to expand them," Chleboun said.

Chleboun's annual salary will be $106,106, Jarot will make $97,039 and Wilkinson will make $90,288, district spokeswoman Allison Strupeck said via email. Their appointments are effective July 1.