Former CPS administrator named new Archdiocese of Chicago schools leader
A former Chicago Public Schools administrator who founded the city’s charter school program will take the helm next month as the new superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Chicago, church officials said Monday.
Greg A. Richmond, who was a CPS administrator from 1994 to 2005, and established the district’s Charter Schools Office in 1997, will begin leading the archdiocese’s 162 elementary and secondary schools on Aug. 16, spokeswoman Susan Thomas said in a Monday statement.
“We are blessed to have attracted Greg Richmond, an education thought leader and Catholic school parent to the Archdiocese of Chicago Catholic Schools,” Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, said in a statement.
“We are committed to building on our legacy of preparing our students for life through an education that is wholistic and marked by a strong Catholic identity. This has been the success of our school system over many generations,” Cupich said.
The longtime educator’s experience “here and around the world will give us a creative, best practice-based approach to achieving that goal,” Cupich said.
Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the shuttering of several archdiocese schools in recent years, Richmond said Monday he is committed to growing enrollment at archdiocese schools in the years ahead.
“We live in a city and state that is losing population, and families are having fewer kids, and this is not unique to Catholic schools…that’s a demographic reality, and CPS has fewer students, too,” Richmond said.
But as the parent of two children who attended archdiocese schools on the city’s South Side in years past, Richmond said many families choose Catholic schools for their commitment to “educating the whole child.”
“Parents want strong academics, and that’s one of our strengths, but we also support our students’ social emotional and spiritual needs, and the children and their families are joining a community,” Richmond said.
Richmond is a founder of the Richmond Strategy Group, a senior fellow at the FutureEd think tank at Georgetown University, and a Pahara Fellow at the Aspen Institute,” officials said.
From 2005 through 2019, Richmond was the chief executive officer of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, where he established the nation’s professional standards for charter schools, officials said.
Richmond has also testified numerous times before the U.S. Congress at the invitation of both Democrats and Republicans, and in 2017, was inducted into the National Charter Schools Hall of Fame, officials said.
From 2011 to 2015, Richmond served as the founding chairman of the Illinois State Charter School Commission, “working with educators and communities throughout the state to evaluate proposals for new charter schools and monitor charter schools in Chicago, the suburbs, and downstate,” officials said.
In addition, officials said Richmond has advised education officials in England, Abu Dhabi, and Chile in the development of charter-like school systems in their countries.
Richmond was hired to take the place of Jim Rigg, who announced in March he was resigning as superintendent of Catholic schools for the Archdiocese of Chicago, and who was recently superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Miami.
The archdiocese’s new schools superintendent arrives in the wake of the closure of several archdiocese schools and and the consolidation of dozens of parishes in the city and suburbs earlier this year, due in part to rising debt and declining enrollment.
While enrollment at archdiocese schools has dipped slightly during the pandemic, officials said in January that some schools had seen an uptick in new students from families seeking in-person instruction at a time when many public school districts, including CPS, remained limited to remote learning.
Last week, archdiocese officials said fully vaccinated students, teachers and staff members will not need to wear masks in schools this fall, where they are anticipating a return to “near-normal, pre-pandemic” operations, including the resumption of school Masses, all extracurricular activities and before- and after-school care programs.
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