Cook County Schools welcome new staff, moves forward with security upgrades and improvement projects

As students returned to the classroom this fall for the start of the school year at Cook County Schools ISD 166, they were greeted by nine new staff members.

“We onboarded nine new licensed staff, five of whom are our teachers,” said ISD 166 Superintendent Chris Lindholm.

The new teachers who recently joined the school staff are filling positions for industrial arts, high school social studies, elementary second grade, music/band, occupational therapist, speech language pathologist, physical education and health, and more.

“Lots of new faces, lots of new people to onboard and get going,” Lindholm said. “We’re super excited they’ve joined our Cook County team.”

The 2025-26 school year began on Sept. 2. During the first week of school, the ISD 166 School Board held a work session to explore options to upgrade the security camera system within the school. Currently, the school has 70 cameras on site, but Lindholm said, “they’re older and a lot of them have failed and just need updating.”

The school’s initiative to update the security cameras and improve the school’s overall security was included in Question One of the November 2024 referendum, which Cook County voters passed.

“We heard overwhelmingly from our community that security is a high, high priority that we need to invest in,” Lindholm said. “So part of our planning through this process is putting in systems to monitor doors so that we know when they’re ajar and not locked, and just completely refreshing our security camera system.”

The school will put the project up for bid in October and begin the selection process in November, Lindholm said.

WTIP’s Kalli Hawkins spoke with ISD 166 Superintendent Chris Lindholm about the start to the school year, new staff, an updated timeline for facility and ground improvement projects, the November 2025 referendum, and more. The audio from the interview is below.

Kalli Hawkins September 9, 2025