After an arduous search process that included 72 candidates spanning from California to Pennsylvania, Trinity High School elected to stay in house with the announcement that Kristy Reilly will be the new principal and vice president of academics.
Reilly, with 14 years of teaching experience, the last six at Trinity, will start July 1 and replace Amy Gallie, principal for the past six years, who is pursuing opportunities outside of education.
The announcement coincided with Trinity’s third-place finish Friday in the IHSA Class 3A state basketball tournament.
So for Reilly, it was a memorable weekend.
“We really are Blazer Nation,” Reilly said Monday, adding Trinity was the only all-girls school at state at any level. “We had like three buses of students going down. We were holding our own and packing the stands. It’s been awesome.”
Let’s not forget she’s also pretty excited about her next professional step.
“I made it through this incredible pool of highly qualified candidates,” she said. “I could hardly believe it was me. The excitement was through the roof.”
Reilly began her career as a teacher in the Teach for America program in Chicago Public Schools, where she taught a host of subjects, including biology, chemistry and physics, and planned professional development on a CPS instructional leadership team. Before Trinity, she taught at Legal Prep Charter Academy in Chicago, where she was a science teacher, teacher coach, department chair and served as director of special education services.
At Trinity, she has served as chair of the school’s science and physical education department and leader of its New to Trinity Cohort. According to Trinity president Dr. Tina Taylor-Ritzler, that role made her an instructional coach for faculty.
“Almost half of our faculty, they go to her when they need support,” she said.
Taylor-Ritzler said Reilly was the only internal candidate for the position, adding that the school worked with a pair of consultants to circulate the position widely.
“We had people apply for the position who were superintendents, principals,” she said. “We had the full gamut of student experience. I was looking for someone who would be a champion for our teachers and own the academic side of the house.”
In her role, Taylor-Ritzler said Reilly will head up everything inside the classroom, including pedagogy and assessment. As vice president of academics, she will be on the school’s leadership team, headed by Taylor-Ritzler and including vice presidents of institutional advancement, finance and operations and student life.
No surprise, then, that Reilly said she is most excited to continue Trinity’s path of academic rigor as an International Baccalaureate institution.
“I want to see more and more of the awesome stuff we’re doing,” she said of her initial goals. “Academics, extracurriculars … we have so much going on and we want to build on that.”
The next 12 weeks until the end of school, she’ll be teaching but also realizing that her role will change radically next fall. Won’t that be a little strange?
“I don’t think it’s going to be weird,” she said. “It’s going to be fun. The next 12 weeks, the countdown is on, but there is still a lot to do, a lot to learn and get accomplished. We’re going to do one step at a time.”
Reilly lives in Oak Park and has been married to her husband, Brendan, for seven years and they have two daughters, “two future Blazers,” she said. Plus, many of her husband’s family attended the school.
“My mother-in-law graduated from Trinity in 1978,” Reilly said. “When I called her, she was more excited than anybody.”