New leader for Lake Park High east campus
Lake Park High School District 108 has hired another principal.
Mary D. Hawley, associate principal for instruction at John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, will be the new principal at Lake Park East Campus, starting July 1. Hired this week at an annual base salary of $137,500, she will replace retiring Edward Wardzala.
"I love working with high school students," said Hawley, an Evanston resident with more than 20 years' experience in education.
"I love watching them grow and change to become young adults," she said.
Hawley has been a teacher, department chairman, assistant principal and associate principal.
Hawley has been in her position in Arlington Heights since 2005. Before that, she was an assistant principal for curriculum and instruction at DeKalb High School for three years. She has a master's degree in educational leadership from University of Illinois at Chicago and a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is completing her doctorate in curriculum studies from DePaul University.
School officials said Hawley's background in curriculum development has set her apart from the three other people who applied.
"She has a very diverse and strong background in school improvements," school board President Barb Layer said.
Hawley has experience in developing school improvement plans, evaluating division heads, overseeing professional development, and curriculum and instruction.
She also comes from a lineage of educators. Her father was an associate dean at the University of Illinois and her mother was a teacher at an elementary school in Northbrook. Both parents worked at a university in Ethiopia when Hawley was very young.
Hawley is the second new principal District 108 has hired.
Janet M. Constien, an assistant principal at Addison Trail High School, was hired in December to replace Lake Park West Principal Martin Quinn.
Like Wardzela, Quinn will retire at the end of the school year.
"Both schools will see new leadership," Layer said. "It will be another chapter in Lake Park's life."