As St. Luke Parish School in River Forest looks ahead to its 100-year anniversary, it builds on a strong tradition of excellence with an eye towards the future. Founded 96 years ago, St. Luke maintains a strong and unwavering focus on academic excellence along with faith formation in the Catholic tradition.
Today, St. Luke builds on those strengths by promoting a teacher-driven agenda for the future of the school. The diverse faculty and staff includes teachers in their first years to teachers with over thirty years of classroom experience. St. Luke looks to those teachers to promote a new era of change and innovation, which will further student learning and academic success.
Principal Tim Wesley says that the teachers are the defining marker of the school. “We see their influence as twofold. First, we see it in their instruction acumen. We also see it in the amount of care and concern they bring to our students. From the way they greet our students each morning to the way they keep in touch with parents throughout the school year, our teachers show that they care.”
St. Luke continues to be a leader academically in both standardized test performance and high school readiness. Students at St. Luke consistently place in the highest quartile, or top 30%, nationally and locally on standardized tests, including the ACT Aspire. St. Luke graduates attend Fenwick, Saint Ignatius, Trinity and other highly selective Catholic high schools, with most students placing in Honors level courses.
In recent years, St. Luke has made a significant investment in advancing a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) curriculum in kindergarten through fourth grade and has upgraded the junior high math curriculum for grades six through eight. Saint Luke has heightened its standards and rigor in foreign language, moving to an academic Spanish program. St. Luke has also made a concerted effort to expand its learning center to ensure it can meet all students’ needs. On staff, St. Luke has a school counselor, social worker, two learning specialists, and a speech pathologist who participate in a response to intervention model.
In order to build upon its strong history and grow in the future, St. Luke recently went through a significant strategic planning process. Calling the resulting Strategic Plan a collective and expansive vision for the next five to seven years of the school, Principal Wesley notes that the process began with a retreat of the Board of Specified Jurisdiction and eventually touched all parts of the St. Luke community. “We did focus groups and conducted surveys with alumni, parishioners, current parents and teachers. Student voices are very important, so we included them as well.”
At the end of the year-long process, Board Chair Cassie Crotty states that St. Luke now has a plan that provides a direction and framework for moving forward in the coming years. “We really tried to address what is important to the school and envision what we want to be known for. There are three main pillars to the Strategic Plan: a strong academic environment, a strong faith-based school and a school steeped in community.”
St. Luke Parish School invites you to learn more about its offerings. To view details on the Strategic Plan visit www.school-stlukeparish.org. To schedule a visit to the school, contact the Admissions Director at 708-366-8587
