Had it not been for his high school coach, Lawrence Cook says his life would be very different.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be sitting in this spot,” the 57-year-old chief school business official at Homewood-Flossmoor High School said. “I’m in a good spot.” After 24 years in education, Cook retires in June.

As a student in Milwaukee Public Schools, Cook was in his senior year thinking he’d join the military, but Von Mansfield, his biology teacher and coach, told him he should consider going to college. Mansfield would later serve as District 233 superintendent.

“He inspired me to apply and go to a university, the educational route as opposed to the military,” Cook said. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in engineering but transferred to math education.

“I was tutoring a lot of my friends in math,” he said. Those efforts convinced him to go into teaching.

Cook taught math for two years in the Milwaukee Public Schools and served as a football and track coach. He came to Illinois in 1995, teaching math for seven years at Rich East High School and coaching track, wrestling and football.

“Math is teaching a way of thinking. Equations and perimeters. The only thing that makes it hard is that it’s new (to the student), but these are the perimeters,” Cook said. “In real life, you have set perimeters you have to stay within, sometimes they’re called law, sometimes directions. You’ve got to stay within.”

After that stint, Cook came to H-F in 2002 as dean of students, then serving as math department chair, assessment chair and associate principal. During his years at H-F, Cook went back to school earning his master’s degree in educational leadership at Governors State University and a doctorate degree in educational leadership from National Louis University.

At GSU, he took a few courses in school finance. After earning his doctorate, he decided to go back to GSU to complete the chief school business official program.

When H-F’s finance director announced his departure in 2018, Cook took the spot, just as H-F was busy moving forward on the $13.98 million Fine and Performing Arts Center.

“…When you’re in the seat what you find out is, you can’t be an expert in all these things. You have architects, finance experts, contractors,” Cook said.

He appreciated the help they gave him so he could make “informed decisions” for District 233.

He has relied on the network of chief school business officials when going out for bid on contracts for food service, transportation and maintenance contracts.

Although Cook has been out of the classroom for years, he said it has helped him appreciate the needs and asks from teachers in budget meetings.

Cook looks back at his more than two decades and recognizes the “constant growth” at H-F: the many opportunities open to students academically, through extracurriculars and programs for social/emotional needs. He applauds the teachers who work every day to inspire H-F students.

What’s next? Cook can’t say, but he knows he will find something interesting to do with his time.