Social studies department chair Jenne Dehmlow will no longer be serving on staff at Naperville North High School beginning in the fall of 2014.

Dehmlow will be the new social studies department chair at Downers Grove North High School (DGNHS).

“[NNHS] is a hard place to leave for a variety of wonderful reasons,” Dehmlow said. “There are people here that will be incredibly difficult to not see everyday.”

Dehmlow, an NNHS graduate, has taught at NNHS for five years. She said the switch to DGNHS involved many factors, some of which were financial. Being able to lead a smaller team of teachers at DGNHS and anticipating the needs of her daughter, an incoming freshman at NNHS, both contributed to her decision as well.

“I hope that any student that came to my office felt welcome,” Dehmlow said. “Hopefully, everybody felt that I cared about them as equals.”

Dehmlow is the head coach of the NNHS step team, and because she feels as though her coaching experience truly enriched her experience at NNHS, she is considering starting an all-male step team at DGNHS.

“[Coaching is] a wonderful way to connect to young people in a way that I don’t usually get to see,” Dehmlow said.

Next year, the step team’s assistant coach, Jenni Johnson, will replace Dehmlow as head coach.

According to principal Kevin Pobst, Dehmlow’s potential replacement, NCHS social studies teacher Eleanor Barbino, has been recommended to District 203 Human Resources. The Board of Education will make a final decision regarding Dehmlow’s replacement in June.

Pobst said NNHS was looking for a good team-builder and leader, someone with the same compassion as Dehmlow.

“She’s just been great for students,” Pobst said. “When you lose somebody like that, it’s hard to replace everything that they brought.”