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Larkin principal leaving Elgin after 27 years in U-46

Larkin High School Principal Jon Tuin this week announced he's leaving his job to head up a high school in California.

He's the second high school principal Elgin Area School District U-46 has lost in three months.

In February, Northwest Suburban High School District 214 hired away Elgin High School Principal Jerry Cook to become the next principal of Wheeling High School.

Both men will be gone at the end of this school year. District officials said they will interview candidates to replace Cook over the next few weeks.

Tuin said Friday that it was a tough decision to leave after 27 years with the district. He taught at several U-46 elementary schools, served as principal of Willard Elementary for six years, then assistant principal at South Elgin High School for a year. He has been Larkin's principal for eight years.

"This hasn't just been a job to me," Tuin said. "I call it a calling. Whenever you've invested so much into a place, it's not easy to say I'm just going to leave. I definitely have a fond place in my heart for Larkin. It's been the most challenging and most rewarding experience of my professional career without a doubt."

Tuin, 55, said it was time to think about where he would like to retire. He will be heading up Tustin High School in Orange County near Santa Ana, where he grew up.

His wife, Heather, who teaches sixth grade at McKinley Elementary in Elgin, also is leaving the district after 19 years.

Among the highlights of Tuin's career at Larkin is helping more disadvantaged students graduate and go to college.

"I can think of a number of students who probably wouldn't have gone, if it wasn't for the people here," Tuin said. "That's why I came here ... to see Larkin students proud of their school and thinking of themselves as capable as students in other schools."

During Tuin's tenure, the Elgin school once known for student fights and unruly behavior has seen a transformation.

"There were definitely some rough years," said Tuin, adding that prejudice against Larkin students was the biggest challenge to overcome. "People making an assumption because our school was a certain demographic that it must be a bad school ... that's the part that really hurts me and hurts our students."

Roughly 66 percent of the student population is Hispanic, 16 percent are white, and about 10 percent are black. But the problem is that nearly 73 percent of students are poor.

"Ethnicity is not an issue. It's poverty that's the challenge," Tuin said. "It doesn't determine your future, but it definitely impacts. Our students are predominantly first-generation (college goers). It's just a challenge to get students believing they can go to college, because it wasn't modeled for them. We're still trying to overcome it."

The school's Advancement Via Individual Determination college readiness program once had enough students to fill only one classroom. Today, 500 of the school's roughly 2,100 students are taking AVID classes, Tuin said.

Another example of Larkin's improved reputation is more students from the district's other four high schools now attend the Visual and Performing Arts Academy housed there.

"We would lose more students to the other academies," Tuin said. "About four years ago that started to shift, and for the last three or four years we've had more students coming into our academy than leaving our school for other academies."

  Jon Tuin, in his first year as Larkin High School principal, talks to students participating in a new expectations assembly. After eight years at the helm, Tuin is leaving the Elgin school at the end of this school year. BRIAN HILL/bhill@dailyherald.com
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