LM Nov-Dec 2025

Polyak. .. cont’d. 2026 IASA Dr. Nick Polyak

Vega the Leyden Eagle mascot, Superintendent Dr. Nick Polyak, left, and East Leyden High School Principal Julie Lam, far right, stand with 2025 Illinois Teacher of Year Victor Gomez, who teaches at East Leyden.

IASA: What are you most proud of that may have contributed to this honor?

IASA: Speaking of Leyden, is there anything about your school district that might surprise people the most? NP: Most people don’t know where Leyden is. That’s usually surprising in and of itself. But I think the consistency and leadership that we’ve had in this school district is usually very surprising. We’ve had, including myself, five superintendents over the last 74 years. We’ve also only had two school board presidents in the last 45 years. So that consistent leadership and trust is really a hallmark of the school district. We just celebrated our 100th anniversary, and I tried to put that in perspective for our teachers. I said 100 years sounds like forever until you think that a teacher’s life cycle is about 33 years. So every classroom has maybe only had three teachers in it over that same period of time.

NP: One of the ones that I’m most proud of are the ones that speak about opportunities for our students. And one that has gotten a lot of notoriety is Teatro Leyden, our bilingual theater program. The National School Board Association gave it their grand prize Magna Award a number of years ago as the top equity program in the country, but what I love about it is it’s opened up language as a superpower for our kids on stage. We have a show every year that we perform in both English and Spanish. When they won that award, they were gifted $10,000 and they used that to hire a Latina playwright in Chicago to write a custom show for Leyden. Our kids got to help workshop the script and do the world premiere of the show. Opportunities like that for kids to perform on stage and get recognized—I think that’s something I’m really proud of.

6 LM Nov–Dec 2025