Oak Park and River Forest High School hired 12 new faculty members for the 2026-27 school year, and none are Black.

The gap drew pointed criticism at the Sept. 10 OPRF District 200 board meeting, where board member Fred Arkin said the district has spent a decade trying to match its faculty's racial makeup to its student body with little to show for it.

Of the 12 hires, five are Hispanic, one is Asian American and six are white, according to a board report presented at the meeting. Half the new faculty are people of color, up from 23% in 2025-26, when only five of 22 new hires were non-white. But the absence of any Black hires stands out at a school where 15% of students are Black and only 10% of teachers are.

That teacher-student gap has barely budged. The board report's five-year trend shows Black faculty fell from 12% in 2022-23 to 10% in 2026-27. Black student enrollment dropped from 20% to 15% over the same period.

Arkin, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, called for expanded outreach at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). He also questioned the status of a "grow your own" program meant to recruit OPRF minority alumni back to teach, according to the Wednesday Journal.

About 30 teachers are expected to retire over the next two school years. District officials told the board those departures will create openings to diversify the faculty.

Roxana Sanders, assistant superintendent for human resources, said the small number of annual openings makes it hard to shift the faculty's composition quickly. She noted that finding science teachers of color is especially difficult and pointed to pension rule changes that have shrunk the overall teacher pipeline.

Janel Bishop, director of employee relations and recruitment, outlined steps the district plans to take: hosting a job fair, implementing a new application system and expanding advertising on job boards that reach candidates of color. Bishop told the board that OPRF attended an HBCU job fair a couple of years ago but found more recruiters than candidates, according to Tribune reporting. The district also gives implicit bias training to anyone who serves on a hiring committee.

Board president Audrey Williams-Lee asked staff to provide data on the actual availability of Black teachers in the labor market. She said the talent pool in some specialties may not be large enough to match the student population.

Board secretary Jonathan Livingston called the applicant numbers "astonishingly low," even after the average number of applicants per faculty position nearly doubled from 10 in 2025-26 to 19 in 2026-27. The applicant pool totaled 223 candidates, with 41% identifying as non-white, according to the board report.

The district's overall faculty retention rate stood at 96% during the 2025-26 school year. Faculty of color were retained at 97%.

The board has not announced a timeline for the planned job fair or expanded HBCU recruitment.