A new director of campus safety will start at Oak Park-River Forest High School next week, the fourth hire for the role in 14 months.
On July 11, the Oak Park-River Forest High School District 200 Board of Education approved the hiring of Kristen Devitt to be campus safety chief at OPRFHS, the district’s lone school. Devitt, who has been working as a regional director of security for Kaiser Permanente Hawaii, will start at the high school Aug. 1.
She will be the school’s fourth director of campus safety in a little more than 14 months.
The three previous campus safety leaders, Cherylynn Jones-McLeod, Cindy Guerra and Traccye Love, all resigned for what was described as personal reasons.
Jones-McLeod held the position during the 2022-2023 school year. Guerra was in the role from July 2023 until November 2023. And Love, a former Oak Park police sergeant, was campus safety chief from January 5, 2024 until April 12, 2024, according to district employment information.
Despite serving only a little more than three months on the job, Love said she was proud of her work at OPRFHS, and gave herself credit for establishing a better relationship between the school and the Oak Park Police Department.
OPRF has not had a police officer assigned to the school since 2020 when, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, an agreement with the village of Oak Park ended. Through that pact, an Oak Park police officer had been stationed at the school as a resource officer.
Since then, the high school and police department have been trying to determine what their relationship would be like. Love said during her three months at the school, some progress was made with improving the relationship.
“There is a relationship at OPRF that needed healing and repair and that is one with the Oak Park Police Department,” Love said in a text message. “During my short tenure at OPRF, I feel that I helped in the process of strengthening that relationship.”
Devitt could not be reached to further discuss her more than 4,000 miles move from Hawaii to Oak Park, and taking the public safety reins at Oak Park-River Forest.
According to information on her LinkedIn social media page, Devitt was the director of school safety at the Wisconsin Department of Justice from 2018 to 2022 before taking the job at Kaiser Permanente Hawaii.
Devitt is a certified threat manager and a former police officer. She worked for three years as a police officer in LaSalle, Illinois and for seven years as an officer in Madison, Wisconsin before being named police chief in Fulton, Wisconsin – a town of about 3,580 residents – for a little more than a year, according to the social media site.
She then served as the law enforcement program coordinator at Blackhawk Technical College in Janesville, Wisconsin before being hired as lieutenant of patrol for the Janesville Police Department for 15 months, according to the site.
Devitt will be paid an annual salary of $130,000, but will be paid $118,544 for 2024-2025 due to the Aug. 1 start.
Devitt earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Illinois State University in 1999 and a master’s degree in adult and continuing education from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville in 2014.
District 200 officials would not comment on Devitt’s hire, with spokeswoman Karin Sullivan telling Pioneer Press in an email it “would be better to wait till after she’s started.”
Bob Skolnik is a freelancer.