Sun-Times: Ted Kimbrough, who led Chicago schools through reform of early 1990s, dead at 83

Sun-Times photo of Ted Kimbrough

I vaguely remember former CPS Superintendent Ted Kimbrough. His time as head of the schools if I believed the news seemed rocky. Even to me as a very young grade schooler at Shedd School.

Kimbrough passed away on April 16, 2018!

Born Theopolis Dudley Kimbrough in Chicago, he grew up on Dodge Avenue in Evanston. After deliveries from the milkman, he liked to zip around the neighborhood sipping the cream off the tops of milk bottles. He went to Evanston Township High School and played for the school football team, the Wildkits, according to his son Blake.

Mr. Kimbrough got his bachelor’s degree in education from Northern Illinois University and a master’s degree in education from California State University in Los Angeles, his son said.

He spent 26 years with the Los Angeles Unified School District and served as school chief in Compton, California, before arriving in Chicago in 1990. Mr. Kimbrough was hired to help guide the system through its early days of school reform, a titanic shift of authority from the schools’ central-office headquarters to newly elected and empowered local school councils.

Not unexpectedly, the historic decentralization was a rocky one. Power squabbles included assertions that LSCs based hiring on race or ethnicity and that contracts were given to cronies.

Within two years, Mayor Richard M. Daley was hinting he was disenchanted with Mr. Kimbrough and student performance. But the superintendent said he couldn’t be fully responsible for a system where major decisions were made by LSCs and the principals they hired.

In addition to the landmark reform effort, Mr. Kimbrough also had to deal with the system’s regular financial crises.

By 1993, the Chicago school board bought out his contract. He went on to serve as superintendent of schools in Sacramento. He retired in 1997.